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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Psalm 144:1-2 Psalm 14:1-2 (after the law of God) Psalm 8 Psalm 118:1,6,8 Psalm 144:5-6 Scripture reading: Zechariah 6:9-15 Text: John 19:1-11 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
There are certain sayings from the Bible which get taken up into our culture. One of those is the saying of Pilate in verse 5 of our text: “Behold the man!” In the Latin Vulgate translation, it says “Ecce homo.” And you find “Ecce homo” (Behold the man) in art, music, literature, and film. There are numerous paintings throughout history that have the title “Ecce homo.” When philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his autobiography, he entitled it “Ecce homo.” In more recent times, the theme song of Mr. Bean was “Ecce homo.” In Jerusalem, there’s a church called the Church of Ecce Homo. It’s called this because some believe Pontius Pilate said those words near that spot, “Behold the man!”
When Pilate spoke those words, he had his own agenda. I’ll go into that later. But we also need to see that God had his agenda with Pilate’s words. Through Pilate, God was testifying that Jesus Christ was the true human being. He was the human being who came to do what Adam had failed to do. He was the human being who came to pay the penalty for everything sinful the children of Adam have done. “Behold the man!” points us to Jesus as the Second Adam, the one who has come to bring us into a richer experience of what it means to be human, an experience aligned with what God intended from the beginning.
I preach to you God’s Word from John 19:1-11, Behold the Man!
We’ll consider the Man:
- Assaulted and mocked
- Presented as innocent
- Assigning blame
When Jesus appeared before Pontius Pilate, he had already been physically assaulted once. In chapter 18 we read of how one of the Jewish religious leaders slapped Jesus across the face. But now the physical side of Christ’s sufferings begin to amplify.
Verse 1 tells us Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. First of all, Pilate himself didn’t do this to Jesus. He was the Roman governor – he didn’t get his hands dirty with that kind of thing. He had soldiers to do that. That’s what happened here. It says that he was “flogged.” The word actually has a broader meaning. Some translations have “whipped,” but there’s also the idea of beating included in the original Greek word here. From what we read in verse 3, that beating was essentially the nature of the violence Christ experienced at this point.
Now in the other gospels, we read about Christ being scourged after Pilate had handed him over to the Jews. But here in John, it may seem like this scourging is happening before that. So there may appear to be a chronological discrepancy between the accounts of Christ’s suffering. However, it only appears that way. You see, there’s something you need to know about how the Romans dealt with their prisoners. There were different levels of physical violence someone would experience before being crucified. The first and lightest level was known as fustigatio. This was a beating at the hands of Roman soldiers. The most severe level was known as verberatio. That was a severe flogging or scourging, so severe that sometimes prisoners died from it before even getting to the cross. So in verse 1 of John 19, we read about the beating or fustigatio. In verse 16, when John says that Pilate delivered Jesus over to be crucified, that’s where we have to insert the scourging or verberatio that we read about in the other gospels.
So the Second Adam, the true human being, was beaten by these tough Roman soldiers. They took things one step further. They knew about the reason Jesus was there. The Jews were upset because he claimed to be king. So they decided to have a little fun with him and mock him. First, they twisted together a crown of thorns. When we hear thorns we might think of little thorns like on a blackberry bush or something. But these thorns were probably huge, possibly several centimetres long. This thorny crown was then pushed down into his scalp. It would have caused a lot of pain and would have produced a lot of blood. Jesus would have had a bloody face as a result of this thorny crown.
Now we have to think about this in the context of the whole Bible. Where do we first read about thorns in Scripture? After the fall into sin in Genesis 3. Thorns are part of the curse that comes upon the earth because of Adam’s sin. Later in the Old Testament, in the prophets, we find again that thorns are often associated with God’s curse. You see an example of that in Isaiah 5:6. God says he will destroy his vineyard and cause briers and thorns to grow up in it. So with all that in mind, when you see the Second Adam wearing a crown of thorns, you have to see him bearing the curse of sin. That’s the picture the Holy Spirit is conveying. He’s bearing God’s curse against your sin. The weight of sin is on his head pressing out of him his precious blood. With him bearing your curse and with you believing in him, you can be sure your curse is gone.
The soldiers also mocked Jesus by dressing him up like a king and pretending to greet him like they would Caesar. They put a purple robe on him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Our English translation can’t really capture the contempt found in the original Greek. The first word is the Greek equivalent of the Latin, “Ave.” That was a standard greeting and it would have been used with the Roman emperor, “Ave Caesar.” But “King of the Jews” is said in a certain way that would actually be used in speaking down to an inferior. You can perhaps imagine it being said like, “Hail, you ‘king’!” It’s said with contempt and malice. Utter mockery. Then to top things off, they continued beating on him.
When the First Adam was created, he was created as God’s representative on earth. He was what we call a vice-regent. God was the Emperor so to speak, and Adam was his king. Psalm 8 speaks of this. In the rhymed version of Psalm 8 in our Book of Praise it says in stanza 4, “All things you gave to him as his domain, that over your creation he might reign.” Adam’s role was to have dominion over the earth – that’s a royal calling. But he failed to do this – instead, he allowed Satan to take dominion over him. This is something we’re all implicated in. We all fail to act as God’s royal representatives. Because of that, we now see the true human being, the Second Adam, being dressed up like a king and being mocked in our place. We are the failed kings who deserve to be mocked and condemned for our failure. But he’s willingly suffering what we deserve. And if we place our faith in him, we are those being restored to what we were created to be.
In verse 4, Pilate comes out again to the Jewish crowd and announces for a second time that he has found no guilt in Jesus. There’s no good reason to crucify him. But wait a moment. Perhaps you’re wondering why Pilate had him beaten then. Probably it was to appease the Jews. It was like throwing them a bone, giving them at least something. But it could also have been to teach Jesus a lesson. You know, be more careful in how you speak and act and don’t provoke the Jewish religious leaders to envy the way you’ve been doing. Another possibility is that Pilate hoped that seeing Jesus all beaten and bloody, they would feel some pity for him and give up their vendetta against him.
Whatever the case may have been, Pilate presents Jesus to the crowds with his thorny crown and purple robe and then says, “Behold the man!” As I mentioned in the introduction, Pilate had his own agenda in presenting Jesus to the crowds and saying this. We don’t know for sure what that agenda was, because the Bible doesn’t tell us. But we can imagine that it served to show the crowds that Jesus was harmless and pathetic. “Here’s the man you think is such a troublemaker – beaten up and bloodied. You people are pathetic too if you think you need to take him seriously. He may be deluded, but he’s hardly a threat to you or anyone else.”
Pilate had his agenda, but God had his. In Zechariah 6:12, God says, “Behold the man…” It’s a prophecy about the Messiah, the coming Christ. In verse 11, a crown is placed on the head of Joshua the high priest. The high priest is symbolically crowned king. And it’s not by coincidence that his name is Joshua, the OT equivalent of the Greek name “Jesus.” And God says, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch…” The Branch is the priest who will also be a king. It’s pointing ahead to Jesus. When we hear Pilate say, “Behold the man!” we need to hear God saying, “Here is the one I spoke about in Zechariah 6. He has come to fulfill everything for your salvation.”
But instead of greeting their Messiah, the Jewish religious leaders cry out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” They shout it repeatedly. They have a blood lust. They see Jesus already beaten and bloodied and rather than have pity for him, they want more of his blood. They’re like sharks that have scented blood in the water and now they get into a frenzy for more.
Pilate says, “Take him yourselves and crucify him…” He said that contemptuously. He knew they wouldn’t do that. For one thing it was the time of the Passover and to kill someone themselves during that time would have been inappropriate. For another thing, the Jews wouldn’t have crucified Jesus. Only the Romans crucified. The Jews want Jesus crucified, probably because it was a much worse way to die and it included the element of being cursed by God. So they wanted the cross, they wanted it now, and if they didn’t get it, there was an implication that Pilate was going to have a hard time with them.
Whatever else may be said about Pilate, we can say that he did have some sense of justice. So he says for a third time, “I find no guilt in him.” In the Bible, certain truths are emphasized by repeating them three times. The most famous example is in Isaiah and the book of Revelation when God is said to be “holy, holy, holy.” It means God is extremely holy. Here too, the Holy Spirit tells us something with Pilate’s three-fold repetition of “I find no guilt in him.” Jesus was thoroughly innocent. Absolutely devoid of any guilt due to his own sin. Not only was he innocent, he was perfectly righteous, perfectly obedient to God.
Loved ones, when you place your trust in Christ as your Saviour, the words of Pilate are what God now says about you. God says to you, “Because you are in Christ the guiltless one, I find no guilt in you.” Not only that, but he goes a step further, “Because you are in Christ the righteous one, I find perfect righteousness in you.” Brothers and sisters, you might feel weighed down by guilt over this sin or that sin. But when you look to Christ, that weight is lifted. In his love and grace God accepts you and declares you innocent and righteous in his sight. It’s such an encouragement to have Jesus as your Saviour, isn’t it?
When Pilate announced Christ’s innocence, that did nothing to persuade the Jews to give up their bloodlust. They called out and claimed that according to their law, Christ had to die because he had made himself the Son of God. It seems like they were referring to Leviticus 24:16 which said that any blasphemer was to be put to death. In their minds, claiming to be the Son of God was blasphemy, therefore Jesus ought to die. And Pilate should make it happen for them because if he doesn’t, there’s going to be a lot of unhappy people. That could cause a heap of trouble for Pilate. Pilate knew that his position as governor was on shaky ground and any controversy or trouble could see him losing his job. So they’re trying to manipulate him to get him to do what they want.
It’s ironic how the Jews appeal to God’s law to have Jesus put to death. After all, who is actually breaking the law in this situation? It’s not Jesus. It’s the Jewish leaders. They are engineering the death of a righteous man, the only righteous human being who has ever walked the face of this earth. They want to put to death the only man who has ever lived the way God designed humanity to live – the true human being. If the Jews were speaking truthfully they would have said, “We have a law, and according to that law, we ought to die because we have sinfully plotted against the Son of God, the true man.” And actually, according to God’s law, all of us sinners deserve the death penalty. We deserve what Jesus received, but he took our place if we believe in him.
Verse 8 tells us how Pilate became even more afraid upon hearing about the Jewish law. So he was already afraid, but now he’s become even more so. It was probably because he thought he was on the cusp of some kind of rebellion if he didn’t give the Jews what they wanted. He was more afraid of the crowds than of doing the wrong thing. So typical for fallen human beings. But it could also be that he was afraid because of what his wife had told him. We read about that in Matthew 27. Pilate’s wife sent him a message about Jesus, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” That combined with the news that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God may have shaken Pilate up because of the possibility that Jesus was some kind of divine messenger. The Romans had their gods and the myths about them. Some of these myths included the gods sending messengers. If you were a Roman governor and you had a divine messenger in front of you, the last thing you’d want to do would be to have him beaten by your soldiers. And maybe it was all these things combined that brought Pilate to a place of fear. Whatever we might say, it’s clear he was troubled by the case.
It brought him back inside the headquarters for one last conversation with Jesus. He asked Jesus about his origins. Christ didn’t answer, probably because he’d already told Pilate before. Jesus said in chapter 18 that his kingdom was not from this world, implying that he too was not from this world. There was no need to repeat that, especially since it would not have changed anything.
Christ’s silence irritated Pilate. He said in verse 10, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” When Pilate said this, he was thinking about the authority he’d been given by Caesar. Tiberius Caesar had made him governor over Judea and therefore he had the final say in judging cases like that of Jesus.
But in his answer, Jesus clarified the reality for him. Pilate did have authority, it’s true. So today does everyone in government. But all that authority comes from above. It comes from God. Christ was essentially saying what the apostle Paul would say in his letter to the Romans. Romans 13:1 says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Pilate’s authority came from God, just like our state [provincial] government’s authority comes from God, and so does our national government’s authority. God sovereignly ordains who he wants in these positions of authority. We need to respect government because we need to respect God’s sovereign will in these matters.
In this case, Jesus brings up the divine origin of Pilate’s authority to make a specific point about who bears the bulk of the blame for what’s going on. Pilate is limited in what he can do, being in the position that he’s in by God’s sovereign determination. It’s the one who’s handed him over that has the greater sin, therefore the greater responsibility. There are a couple of things we need to briefly look at here.
First, who is the one who delivered Jesus to Pilate? That would be Caiaphas the High Priest. He was the one in charge of all the other religious leaders. He was leading the effort to have Jesus crucified, therefore he has the greater sin.
Second, notice the idea of greater versus lesser sin. Sometimes you’ll hear people say that all sins are equal. That’s not true. Jesus taught there was a sin greater than that committed by Sodom and Gomorrah, the sin of covenant apostasy. Here he says the sin of Caiaphas is greater than that of Pilate. What makes Caiaphas’s sin worse? Several things. First off, who he was. He was Jewish. He had been taught the Old Testament, brought up with it. He was a High Priest. But not only who he was, but also what he knew. He was a religious leader and so knew the Old Testament extremely well. The sin of Caiaphas was high-handed, not accidental or done in ignorance. Last of all, the sin of Caiaphas was made worse by the fact that he and the others shouted publicly for the crucifixion of Jesus. Though all sins deserve God’s wrath and curse, some sins are worse than others and the sin of Caiaphas was very serious indeed.
The last thing we need to see is that there’s both divine sovereignty and human responsibility in view here. God ordained that Pilate would be the governor of Judea. The Romans would be in charge and therefore the cross would be the way Jesus dies. But on the other hand, the Jewish religious leaders like Caiaphas are responsible for manipulating and forcing the hand of Pilate. If they hadn’t made an issue out of Jesus and his claims, there’s no way Pilate would have had him crucified. Over the last three years of Jesus’ ministry, Pilate doesn’t appear to have noticed Jesus at all. He didn’t care about him. But the Jewish religious leaders sure did and they wanted him dead. They’re the ones who bear the bulk of the responsibility for Jesus’ death then. And so later on, in the book of Acts, Peter and John will confront the Jews with their responsibility for Christ’s crucifixion. And we’re told that many of them repented of their sin. We don’t read that about Caiaphas, however. If he did repent of what he did to Jesus, we don’t read about it in Scripture. If Caiaphas died without repenting of this horrible sin, he has been experiencing a punishment worse than that given to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. His greater sin deserves that.
Now for us, loved ones, we have to realize that all of us have committed lesser and greater sins. Some of our sins are done in ignorance, some with a high hand. Some of our sins are done in private, some in public. Some of our sins were committed when no one was looking up to us, some when we were in positions of responsibility. Whatever the case may be, no sin is too great that it cannot be washed away by the blood of Christ. And no sin is too small that it does not need to be washed away by the blood of Christ. Repent of all your sins great and small, confess them to God, and ask for forgiveness through the Saviour. All your sins, both lesser and greater, will be put away from you as far as the east is from the west. God promises this to us in the gospel.
We’ve seen this morning that Jesus is the true human being. He was the only one able to take our place, suffering the blows, wearing the thorny crown, being mocked and abused. The true human being was the only one able to bear our guilt and take it to the cross. He had no sin of his own, so he was able to bear every single one of ours. “Behold the man!” Behold your Saviour. AMEN.
PRAYER
O Lord Jesus, our Saviour,
Thank you for being the true human being for us. You took our blows, you bore our thorny crown, you endured the mockery we deserve. You took our guilt to the cross so that it could be addressed once and for all. We praise you for doing all this for us out of your great love. Lord Jesus, we worship you for the fact that because of you, we can now hear our Father say that he finds no guilt in us. For taking that weight off of our souls, we love you and we will be forever grateful.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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