Server Outage Notice: TheSeed.info is transfering to a new Server on Tuesday April 13th
| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > What was written on the cross above Jesus | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Psalm 146:1-3 Psalm 32:1-2 (after the Law of God) Psalm 45:1-3 Hymn 45 Hymn 46 Scripture reading: John 19:1-27 Text: John 19:19-22 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
During the occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War, there were many Dutch people who didn’t cooperate with the Nazis. Many resisted and even fought back. But sadly, there were also some Dutch people who collaborated with the Nazis. After the war was over and the Netherlands was free, there was a reckoning for these collaborators. For example, Dutch women who had consorted with German men often had their heads shaved in public. That was a mark of shame.
There have been other examples of marks of shame in history. The Romans were well-known for humiliating those who opposed their rule. The cross was meant for that purpose. Nailing someone naked to a cross and hanging them out in public was meant to shame the criminal and announce to the world that this is what happens when you mess with Rome.
But even before the cross, a condemned criminal would have faced terrible humiliation. There was the scourging, being whipped and beaten by Roman soldiers. Also on the way to the place of crucifixion, the condemned person would have a sign indicating the crime for which they were being crucified. The Romans would either hang that sign around the neck or have someone walking in front holding that sign. Either way the whole world would see that this horrible shame is what happens when you don’t do what Rome says. And then when the person was nailed to their cross, this sign would be there with them continuing to announce to the world the reason for this great shame.
So what we read about Jesus and what happened to him with this sign wasn’t out of the ordinary. Most likely the criminals beside him had signs on their crosses too. What is extraordinary is the content of the sign above Jesus and how it’s presented. It’s part of the deep humiliation suffered by our Saviour. But curiously, at the same time it also points us to his royal glory. God has much to say to us in what was written on the cross above Jesus.
We’ll consider:
- What Pilate meant by the sign
- Why the Jews were offended by it
- How the truth of God was behind it
We’re at Golgotha and we see three wooden crosses, each with a bruised and bleeding man nailed to it. But the middle cross is the one which gets all the attention. The man hanging on that cross has had the Jewish population abuzz for three years. During those three years of his public ministry, Jesus had preached and taught. He had shown compassion by healing the sick and even sometimes raising the dead. He was a controversial figure. The Jewish religious leadership hated him and wanted him dead. They’re the reason why he’s hanging on this Roman cross. They’d captured Jesus, tried him, found him guilty and then brought him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Pilate was reluctant to do what they wanted, because he knew in his heart that Jesus had done nothing worthy of death. But for pragmatic political reasons he decided to give the Jewish leaders what they wanted.
But he was clever and he had a way of getting something out of it for himself, some self-satisfaction. Verse 19 tells us he wrote this inscription and put it on the cross. We shouldn’t imagine Pilate himself holding a pen and sitting at a desk with a blank piece of papyrus or something. He didn’t actually do the writing himself. Instead, he would have commanded one of his underlings to do the writing. And the Roman soldiers who went with Jesus to the cross would have been the ones to put it on the cross. Pilate probably didn’t go anywhere near Golgotha on that Good Friday.
The sign or inscription simply said, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” This whole issue of Jesus being a king figured prominently in the proceedings involving Pilate. The first question Pilate asked Jesus back in the headquarters was, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus responded that he was a king, but his kingdom was not of this world. When Pilate presented his findings to the Jews, he asked them whether they wanted him to release for them “the King of the Jews.” At the beginning of chapter 19, when he was being scourged by the soldiers, they put a crown of thorns on his head and dressed him with a purple robe – mocking the idea of him being a king. Further in the chapter, when Pilate wanted still to release him, the Jews cried out that “Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” Then Pilate said, “Behold your King!” The Jews responded with the calls to crucify Jesus. Pilate said, “Shall I crucify your King?” To which they said, “We have no king but Caesar.” So you see, in the lead-up to our text, the idea of Jesus being king has come up a few times. It’s not really a surprise then for us when Pilate writes what he does.
But why does he write it? What were his motives? His motives had more to do with the Jews than with Jesus. He wanted to have a go at them. They had manipulated him into crucifying an innocent man, now he was going to have a little fun at their expense. He could provoke them and show them how he still had significant power and authority. “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” was meant sarcastically. Pilate didn’t actually believe Jesus to be the King of the Jews. He knew they didn’t regard him as their king. But if they were to have a king, this is the kind of king they should have. This is the kind of king that fits with who these miserable lowlifes are.
In Pilate’s thinking, the Jews don’t deserve a king who has great majesty and glory. They deserve a crucified man about to die. They don’t deserve a king wearing a crown of gold embedded with jewels. They deserve a king wearing a crown of thorns. The Jews don’t deserve a king wearing a beautiful robe. A king totally naked – far more fitting. They don’t deserve a king handsome and good-looking. No, Pilate thinks what’s more suitable for them is this bruised and beaten man bleeding with his beard torn out of his face. The Jews don’t deserve a king sitting on a golden throne surrounded by servants. No, what fits for them is the cross and what it offered for a throne. You see, the Roman cross had a little peg on it called a sedecula – those who were crucified could prop themselves up on this little seat and extend their suffering. That was Jesus’ throne on the cross. And where were his servants? They had almost all abandoned him and eventually they all would. No one wanted to be associated with this “King of the Jews.” How fitting for the Jews to have a king like this! All of this is part of Christ’s humiliation, but Pilate means it for the humiliation of the Jews. He thinks they’re pathetic people and a pathetic king is what’s appropriate for them. So that’s why he writes, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
But his thinking also works in reverse. A pathetic people goes hand in hand with a pathetic king, they directly correspond to each other. So Jesus is pathetic in Pilate’s eyes. He may have said that he’s a king, but obviously this king has no power, no glory, no majesty, no beauty. He’s the most unkingly king imaginable – perfect for the Jews. So, as I mentioned, this inscription was further humiliation for Christ as well. It’s part of his suffering the curse of God in our place. It’s part of the gospel of how God has worked out the forgiveness of our sins.
Every time you and I rebel against God and we sin, it’s like we’re trying to knock the crown off the head of our true king and place it on our own heads. Sin says, “I don’t want Christ as King of my life. I want to be king.” This evil is an act of treason. That treason must be punished, it will be punished. One way that it’s punished is for those who’ve done it to receive God’s eternal judgment in hell. There it’s as if sinners have a sign hanging over them reading their name and “King of His Own Life” or “Queen of Her Own Life.” That’s what you thought you were and that’s the charge that brought you to hell. You thought you were royalty and now you will be mocked, humiliated, and punished for that delusion into eternity. You wanted to be King, you wanted to be Queen – this is what you get. Your pathetic delusion has led you to your pathetic destiny.
But there is another way. That other way is Jesus. That other way is believing he took the humiliating punishment you deserve. He actually was a king, but he was mocked and humiliated by Pilate because of Pilate’s own hatred for the Jews. Jesus was caught in the middle of it, but yet he was degraded and mocked as well. That’s what we deserve, but if we believe in Christ and what he did on the cross, we’ll never receive what we deserve. Instead, we’ll get the opposite. We’ll actually reign with Christ forever, gloriously and majestically. We will be raised to the status of royalty through him forever and ever.
Pilate’s inscription had the desired impact. Golgotha was near Jerusalem, so it was a public place where everyone could see those who had been crucified, including Jesus. Just so there was no doubt about it, the sign posted over Jesus was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Aramaic was the local language spoken by the Jews. Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire. And Greek was spoken by everyone as the trade language, the lingua franca. It didn’t matter where you came from, you’d know why Jesus was hanging on that cross.
That brought the chief priests of the Jews to complain to Pilate. Before we look at their complaint, it’s worth noting that is the only place in the New Testament where they’re called “the chief priests of the Jews,” using that exact expression. This is the counter-point to “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” On the one hand, we have a King who is rejected by the people he is said to rule over. On the other hand, we have priests who are accepted by the people but about to be rejected by God in favour of the true priest. The true priest is making the once-for-all sacrifice which will make all these other priests irrelevant and obsolete.
But they don’t know that. All they know at that moment is that what Pilate has written is offensive. They want Pilate to change the sign. “The King of the Jews” makes it sound as if that’s what he actually is to them. Instead, they want it to say, “This man said, I am king of the Jews.” Notice the differences. First of all, it’s now about the claim Jesus made, a claim which the Jews regard as false. But second, there’s another subtle difference. Notice that Pilate’s inscription had “THE king of the Jews.” The Jews want just “king of the Jews,” without the “the,” without the definite article. Why does this matter? For the Jews, “the king of the Jews” suggests that Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament prophecies. They want to push Jesus as far away as possible from any Messianic claims. For them, he cannot and must not be the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Instead, they want the world to think that Jesus was just another person pretending to be some king. They want to ignore anything related to him being THAT king, the Messianic King from the line of David.
So they brought their alternative wording to the Roman governor. But he quickly shot them down. He said, “What I have written I have written.” He wasn’t going to back away from his sarcastic mockery of the Jews. They were going to have to live with this indignity.
Now why did the Jews find the idea of Jesus being the Messianic king so offensive? Because they hated him because he didn’t fit their understanding of what the Messiah should be like. In their understanding, when the Messiah came he would be on their team. The Messiah would support their agenda, their goals, their principles. He would have been a Pharisee, except that much better. But he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he called them out, he challenged them, he confronted them with their pride, their sin, their rebellion. They wanted a Messiah in their own image, and when he didn’t conform, they hated him and wanted him dead.
This problem is a common one – it still exists today, maybe even among us. It’s very easy to have our own ideas of what Jesus is like or should be like, ideas that serve our own agendas. For example, many people look at Jesus as a dispenser of good advice, and little more. And sometimes that advice is limited to something as basic as “Do not judge.” People take Jesus on their own terms, but not on his terms, not on God’s terms as found in the Bible. Loved ones, our text warns us against such an approach. To be faithful disciples of our Lord Jesus, we must constantly go to the Word and find there what our Master is like in every way. As we do that, we find he’s not there to serve our agendas. He’s there to be both our Saviour and our Lord. Our Redeemer and our King.
Last of all, we want to look at what God was saying in what was written on the cross above Jesus. Despite what Pilate intended, despite his mockery and sarcasm, there was truth in what was written. Though they didn’t honour him as such, Jesus of Nazareth was the King of the Jews. He was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, the King who would humble himself and deliver his people from the curse of sin.
At that moment, he may not have appeared very kingly. But God has often taken what is low and despised in the world and used it for his glorious purposes. In the Old Testament, just think of how Jesse’s sons parade in front of the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 16. Samuel is there to anoint the king who will replace Saul. All he knows is that it must be a son of Jesse. When he sees the oldest Eliab, he concludes that this must be the man – he’s not only the oldest, he’s tall and handsome. But no, instead, God picked the youngest. He picked David, who had been out watching the sheep. And now we see the Son of David on the cross. How can he be the King? And yet God tells us he is. And while the cross is his humiliation, there is glory in it and on the other side of it. The cross is the place where the skull of the serpent is smashed, where the victory over Satan and sin is secured. King Jesus has a glorious victory through this gruesome and lowly cross.
But he’s not only the Messiah, the King of the Jews. He’s the king of the world. There’s this sort of tension in our passage between those truths. On the one hand, Pilate has him described as the King of the Jews. But on the other hand, he has it described in such a way that the world can understand it – in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. It’s almost as if this truth of Jesus being king is struggling to get out there amongst human beings. But with God there is no such tension or struggle. In God’s Word, there’s no such tension or struggle. Back in the Old Testament, Psalm 2 spoke prophetically about the Messiah being King, not just of the Jews, but of the whole world. The King is set by God on Zion, on his holy hill. But this King will have the nations as his heritage and the ends of the earth as his possession. Psalm 2 is telling us that the Messiah is the King of the nations, the king of the whole world.
So the question our passage puts to us is this: do we recognize and acknowledge him as our King? His kingship is a reality, but not everyone acknowledges it. But if we think of ourselves as Christians, then we have to. Christ is the King of the whole world, he is our king. We’re going to then worship him as such, but also live with him every day as such. Daily decisions we make have to reckon with the kingship of Christ. Think of Christian education. Because Christ is king, our children have to be educated in such a way that Christ is acknowledged by them as king in every area of study, in every area of life. We should be thankful that we have the opportunity to have our children educated with the acknowledgement that Christ is king. What a blessing this is! We should make grateful use of these opportunities for the glory of our King.
And, loved ones, what a King we have. As we see him revealed here in John, we see the depth of his self-sacrificial love for us. What King is like Jesus? What King has gone to the length he has to rescue those who were rebelling against him? What King would suffer the kind of humiliation and sorrow that Jesus suffered on the cross? There has never been and never will be a king like this. And the good news is that the love we see here in our passage, that love for you is still the same. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The love of others may wax and wane, but Christ’s love remains deep and intense. The love that bought you at the cross is the love poured out on you today and every day. The hands that were nailed to the cross to pay your penalty, they’re the same hands holding you up before the throne of grace right now. Your life is being ruled by the most powerful, but also the most loving and gracious King imaginable. Brothers and sisters, be encouraged to continue entrusting yourself to this beautiful Saviour, your King Jesus. AMEN.
PRAYER
Our great and loving King Jesus,
We do acknowledge you as our sovereign Lord and King. We worship you as the one who loved us so much that you took our hell and laid down your life for us. You paid our penalty, you took our wrath. Thank you, King Jesus, for taking the humiliation and suffering we deserve. With your work on the cross, you have rescued us and for this we’ll be forever grateful. Please help us with your Holy Spirit to make our acknowledgement of your kingship more consistent in our lives. Lord, may there not be a single area of our lives where you are not recognized as royally supreme. We pray that you would also work this recognition in the hearts of our children and young people. Let them see too that you are not only a great Saviour in whom we must believe for salvation, but also a wise and good King who rules over our lives.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
Please direct any comments to the Webmaster
