A vice is a simple machine of two surfaces driven together and apart by a spiral incline plane (a screw). Using leverage and the amplification of force inherent in the screw, incredible pressures can be applied to whatever is caught in the vice. As we observed in our last entry from the Gospel of John, the vice is tightening on Pilate.
On one side is Pilate’s governing mandate to enforce the peace of Rome. On the other is a desire for some measure of truth and justice. Tightening the vice are the Jewish leaders and the crowd demanding for Jesus to be crucified.
One point of clarification, Pilate, by all accounts, was a brutal man living in a brutal time, which makes what happens next all the more interesting. John records, “As a result of this Pilate made efforts to release Him, but the Jews cried out saying, “If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar.” (John 19:12, NASB95) The politically expedient thing would have been anything other than seeking to release Jesus. But the Jewish leaders turned the vice tighter by invoking Caesar. Pilate had no choice.
“Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!” So they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified.” (John 19:13–16, NASB95)
In an astute political move, Pilate shifts roles from being in the vice to the one controlling it. Now the Jewish leaders are caught in that same vice. They challenged Pilate to choose between Jesus and Caesar. And now, Pilate challenges the Jewish mob to make the same choice.
Since the beginning of the Roman occupation, the Jewish people chafed and struggled against that oppression. Before Christ’s birth, there was a brief time of Jewish self-governance. They had thrown off the rule of the Seleucid Empire in a rebellion led by the Maccabees. That self-rule lasted about a hundred years until Pompey the Great captured Jerusalem.
Up until the moment when the Chief priest shouted, “We have no king but Caesar,” they longed for the coming of the Messiah who would return Israel to the rule of a Jewish king. Pilate extracted a heavy toll on them because of their jealousy. Said another way, they declared, “our king is a pagan non-believer that holds our beliefs in contempt.” Where is the defiance of David, Daniel, and the three thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace that refused to bow down?
“They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, “JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’; but that He said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’ ” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” (John 19:17–22, NASB95)
We’ll focus on the crucifixion in our next article. For today, let’s consider Pilate’s bill of indictment. The sign posted above Jesus’ head was a mockery. In it, we see the return of Pilate’s brutality and gamesmanship. Not only does it attempt to mock Christ, but in a greater sense, it mocks the Jewish leaders that demanded Christ’s crucifixion. The scene shouts – this is what Rome does to all other kings that refuse to bow to Caesar. And Pilate made sure everyone heard the message by inscribing it in the three common languages of the day: Hebrew, the language of the people; Greek, the language of the market; and Latin, the language of government.
But here, we must recognize that Pilate had it all wrong. Jesus wasn’t the King of the Jews; He was and is the King of kings. Everything that happened at Pilate’s court and on Golgotha is part of ushering in the Kingdom of God. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:13–16, NASB95) Jesus is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
We all must decide. Do we bow down to the kingdoms of this world or Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords? Pilate chose political expediency. Driven by their petty jealousy, the Jewish leaders chose Caesar. Whom will you choose?
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