Jesus before Pilate
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 20 March 2022
In John 18 we are in the middle of a series of trials that our Lord was put through: three of them with the Jewish leaders and three of them with the Gentile leaders. In all, there were six parts to this miscarriage of justice, and we were in Phase One now of the Gentile trial in John 18:28. Let me read today’s text to you till verse 38. Verse 28, “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning.”
“But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. 29 Pilate then went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this Man?” 30 They answered and said to him, “If He were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him up to you.” 31 Then Pilate said to them, “You take Him and judge Him according to your law.”
“Therefore the Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death,” 32 that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which He spoke, signifying by what death He would die. 33 Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered him, “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?”
35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.” 37 Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?”
Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” 38 Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.” This is the first phase of His Gentile trial before Pontius Pilate.
There will be three phases of that trial: the first before Pilate, the second before Herod, and then back to Pilate finally. When we come to verse 28 we read that they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, which is the Roman judgment hall. Now this is a clash of personalities, all of whom are sinful, all of whom are in some way or another culpable for this miscarriage of justice.
The only person who shines out as righteous, holy and pure is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one being accused of the crime. The ones who are the purveyors of justice are all evil. Jesus is the victim. He is mocked; He is despised; He is ridiculed. He is sentenced to death, and yet it is His purity and majesty that dominates the scene against the backdrop of all their sin.
Who are they? There’s Annas, the patriarchal high priest. There is Caiaphas, the reigning high priest. There is the Sanhedrin, who must upheld the law of the rabbis and of Moses. There is Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. There is Herod Antipas, a king who ruled in the area. There are false witnesses. And there are screaming crowds crying for the blood of Jesus.
There are also Roman soldiers and Roman executioners. All of those evil people are against Jesus to do deadly harm to the Son of God. In the midst of it all, He is the innocent Son of God. He is called the holy Child in the New Testament. The New Testament says in Luke 23, “He has done nothing wrong.” Paul says, “He knew no sin.” Peter says in 1 Peter, “He committed no sin.”
That is testimony to His holy perfection from the beginning of His incarnate life unto the end of it. And the harder they work to accuse Him of being a blasphemer and a rebel and an insurrectionist, a threat both to Jews and Gentiles, to the Roman power, and to God Himself, the more majestic He appears. The glory of Christ is seen in contrast to all the other characters.
The Romans did allow their nations that had been conquered a certain amount of self-government, and they had allowed that in Israel. But they did not allow the Jews to exercise the death penalty. The Old Testament law had established the death penalty. Genesis 9, establishes the death penalty; and the mosaic writings begins to expand the death penalty for crimes beyond murder.
The death penalty was designed by God to be a deterrent, and when it was used with swiftness it was a deterrent. But under Roman rule, that right to the death penalty had been rescinded from the Jews. Though that is true, it didn’t seem to bother the Jews when they stoned Stephen. In Acts 7, they crushed out his life by stoning him. There was no discussion about, “We can’t do this.”
So why suddenly are they so concerned to get the Romans to execute Jesus? Well, it was Passover and there were thousands of Jewish people there, many of whom knew about the miracles and teaching of Jesus. This might cause some kind of revolt.” But that’s not the real reason. The Jewish Talmud says, “Judgment in matters of life and death was taken away from Israel in 30 A.D.”
Do you know that the Romans made this law at this very time of the death of Christ? Here we see God in charge again. If Jesus is to die, it has to be carried out according to the new Roman law, so the Romans had to be the executioners. By the time they get through these three phases of civil trials, the crowd has become blood-thirsty, and screaming at the top of their voices, “Crucify Him. Crucify Him.”
Hatred can do that. So the Jews play a prominent role in this drama. They drive this entire episode. They drive Jesus to the cross. They cannot be taken off the hook for the death of their Messiah; they drove the entire execution, through the Jewish trial, and through the Gentile trial. In their stupid blindness, they were convinced that they were honoring God by killing His Son.
The Lord of glory was treated like a vile criminal. The holy One was condemned as a blasphemer. Liars gave false witness against the living truth, and Jesus who is the resurrection and the life was to die. John takes us into the judgment hall, the Praetorium. John starts in verse 28, “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning.”
“But they themselves did not enter the Praetorium lest they would be defiled, but they might eat the Passover.” Early Roman courts began at daybreak and ended at sundown, just like Jewish courts. So the Jews made their sentence viable at the break of dawn by passing the final sentence, and then rushed their prisoner to be the first ones at the Roman court at the break of dawn.
But there is no such Old Testament ceremonial law regulation. The rabbis had invented these things as they pushed the Gentiles further away. According to the Mishnah, the codification of Jewish law, it says, “The dwelling place of Gentiles are unclean.” This misinterpretation isolated the Jews. What is in the law of God is that if you touch a dead body there is a ceremonial uncleanness.
This is an amazing level of hypocrisy; they don’t want to be defiled, but they’re about to kill the Son of God. They were happy to keep the letter of their own invented worldly law while killing the One who came to fulfill it and the One who wrote it in the first place. So it is that this intolerable disdain and revulsion for God and the Son of God makes them act hypocritically as it always has.
Now the trial begins formally in verse 29, “Pilate then went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this Man?” Here we have the first phase of the trial, the accusation, or the indictment. Can’t have a trial until you have an accusation. Pilate went out, he wanted an accusation. He’s the judge. “Who is He? What has He done?” And Pilate finds out that Jesus has done nothing wrong.
Pilate is a judge, and he has the responsibility to uphold the Roman law, and he did not want to condemn Jesus to death. But he did. He knew Jesus was innocent, he repeatedly says He is innocent, and he has Him executed anyway. He tried several times to get out of it, his wife tried to get him out of it; but he never could. Why did Pilate cave into these Jews and execute a man that he knew committed no crime?
Israel would often have governors who were in charge of the Roman military power that was there, and also had judicial responsibility in the area and these governors were not to accept bribes nor to raise taxes. And they could be removed if the people reported them to the emperor and they were determined to be unfit. So Pilate was under constant threat of the Jews reporting him to Caesar.
In John 19:12, the Jews said to Pilate, “If you release this man you’re no friend of Caesar. We’re going to tell him again.” Why does Pilate even release Jesus when he knows He’s innocent? Blackmail! He had no courage because he killed Jesus to keep his job. So verse 30, “They answered and said to him, “If He were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him up to you.”
Pilate asked for an accusation, but they accused him of questioning their integrity. There was no accusation. They couldn’t find one single crime, and they had tried. Here we see again His innocence. If they don’t want a trial, why did they come? Verse 31, Then Pilate said to them, “You take Him and judge Him according to your law.” Do you understand what he just said to them? “Kill Him yourself.”
Well their law was the Law of Moses, which gave them the right of capital punishment, particularly with a blasphemer. Leviticus 24:16 says that a blasphemer should be stoned. But the Jews said to him, verse 31, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death,” So now they’re quoting Roman law. Why are they going to force this issue through Pilate, through Herod, and back to Pilate?
Verse 32 gives us the answer: “To fulfill the word of Jesus which He spoke, signifying by what kind of death He was about to die.” Why all of this? Because Jesus said this in John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” He was going to die by being lifted up. That’s how the Romans executed criminals, they lifted them up on a cross.
Jesus prophesied His own crucifixion. This frenzied madness is all under the control of a sovereign God to fulfill specific words that Jesus said. You say, “It seems like a very small detail.” It’s not. If ever He spoke a lie, He is not who He claimed to be. So there is no accusation. Verse 33, “Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
Verse 34, “Jesus answered him, “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?” Now the Jews had said He forbids tribute to Caesar. Jesus says He’s a king, but there’s nothing that rose to the level of any kind of problem for Rome. This is not some man who’s starting a revolution. Jesus paid His taxes; and He had the disciples pay their taxes.
Verse 35, “Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done?” This is some kind of Jewish issue that has nothing to do with the military. Verse 36, Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but My kingdom is not from here.”
Jesus is a king by nature, and He is a king over a spiritual dominion. He rules a kingdom where He creates and then regenerates His own subjects. The kingship of Jesus is in a realm all by itself. Man’s world produces many kings, many rulers. King Jesus is heavenly, eternal, and supernatural. There was nothing about Jesus that resembled an earthly king. He is the King of Kings.
Revelation 11 points to a day when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord. Verse 37, Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
There are two things there: “For this I have been born,” that’s His humanity. “For this I come into the world,” that’s His deity. He existed before He was born. He existed in heaven before He came into the world. And why? “To testify to the truth.” He’s the king of truth; His kingdom is truth; He is the truth. Jesus says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
If you reject Christ you do not know the truth. He is the eternal truth and the salvation truth. Verse 38, Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.” That is post-modernism. “There’s no absolute truth.” Jesus said this, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
Christ is flawless; He is faultless; He is righteous. He’s a lamb without blemish. He’s the king of truth, maligned, accused, hated, mistreated, executed; and what you see in the whole thing is His glorious perfection. This is a glimpse of Christ that should elicit that love in your heart. In the New Testament, God has spoken to us by His Son. What will you do with the truth? Let us pray.