Who Is Pontius Pilate?
Probably, the name Pontius Pilate
is one of the most notorious names in history. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor
of Judea from A.D. 26-36, serving under Emperor Tiberius. Pilate is best known
today for trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Although Pilate was responsible for
Jesus’ death, in fact three times he declared Jesus to be innocent (John 18:38;
19:4, 6). Pilate’s conscience was already bothering him when his wife sent him
an urgent message concerning Jesus, saying, “Don’t have anything to do with
that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of
him” (Matt 27:19). As he was interrogating Jesus, he intuited the light, but blinded
by darkness he was not able to see it, recognize it or submit to it. The story
of Pontius Pilate is indeed a story of tragedy. But we can learn a very
important lesson from his story.
Are You the King of the Jews?
In today’s story Pilate asks all the right questions, but for
all the wrong reasons. Frist, he asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33) Pilate
asked this question, simply because he wanted to know whether Jesus was a
threat to Rome’s power, a threat to his power. Unlike Pilate, there was another
group of people who asked the same question for the right reason. After Jesus
was born in Bethlehem, wise men from the
east came to Jerusalem and asked King Herod, “Where is he who has been born
king of the Jews?” (Matt 2:2a). Then,
why is this question important? It is because the King of the Jews refers to God’s Promised One, Messiah, the Christ.
The Lord God appeared to Abraham and promised, “To your seed I will give this land” (Gen 12:7). “And your seed will possess the gates of his
enemies, and through your seed all
nations on earth will be blessed…” (22:17-18). The Scripture does not say, “your
seeds,” meaning many people, but “seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ! (Gal
3:16) Again God made the covenant with David and promised, “… I will raise up your seed after you, who will come from
your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name,
and I will establish the throne of his
kingdom forever” (2 Sam 7:12b-13). Who is the seed whose kingdom will last
forever? Who is the seed? Solomon? No! The seed refers to the Promised One, the
King of the Jews, the Christ! And now, standing before Pilate, Jesus declares, “Yes,
I am the One. I am the son of Abraham. I am the son of David. I am the King of
the Jews. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the
world…” (cf. John 18:37). Pilate heard
this, but he didn’t get it; the wise men saw the king of the Jews, recognized
him, and worshiped him.
What Is Truth?
Pilate also asks another important
question to Jesus: “What is truth?” (v. 38) We don’t know exactly what was
behind the question. But based on the context we can assume that Pilate was being
sarcastic rather than asking a sincere truth-seeking question. In fact, today we
live in a society that has great difficulty answering to this question: “What is
truth?” Charles Colson in his book, Being
the Body describes four characteristics of the contemporary approach to
truth in this way:[1]
- Contemporary society is secular.
It has no thought about things eternal . . the focus is only on the
"here and now".
- Prevailing society is naturalistic. They believe all nature is equal in
value. The animals should have the same "rights" as
humans. Earth Day gets more attention than Easter.
- Our contemporary society is utopian. They
believe human beings are good by nature and in time are only getting
better.
- The prevailing society is pragmatic. People don’t ask, “What is truth?”
any more. Today the only question is: "Does it work?" “Does
it make me feel good?” “Does it get me what I want?”
For the Pilates of our world today
everything is in the eye of the beholder. For them there is no absolute truth. But
the Bible proclaims there is truth –
truth that is absolute and unchanging, truth that everyone should seek for and
submit to and believe. More directly, Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). He also said, “If you abide in my
word, you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth
will set you free” (8:32). But the Pilates of the world grumbled and said, “We
have never been slaves to anybody.” Jesus said the truth No.1: “I tell you the
truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” So the first step to know the
truth is to admit that we are slaves to sin. We are darkness. But the Pilates
of the world claim they can see. Unlike Pilate, there was a man who came to
Jesus by night. His name was Nicodemus. He admitted something was missing in
his life. He admitted his blindness, his ignorance, and humbly asked Jesus, “Teacher,
what is truth?” Pilate asked the same question, but he didn’t want to hear. He saw the truth, heard the truth right
before him. But anyway he chose to compromise truth to maintain peace and
expediency of his world; Nicodemus came to the truth, listened to it, believed
it and was set free!
What Will You Do with Jesus?
And finally, Pilate asked the Jews
this question: “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?” (cf.
Matt 27:22) That’s the crucial question that every one of us in this room must
answer. We can’t remain neutral about Christ. We have two choices. We can
either reject him or accept him. Christian apologist C.S. Lewis rightly said, “…People
often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I
don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man
who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a
great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic… or else he would be the
Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son
of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool,
you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and
call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about
his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
intend to.”[2]
Pilate and his soldiers chose the
option No.1. They flogged Jesus, mocked him, spat on him, killed him. Pilate
knew Jesus was innocent. He knew Jesus was not a threat to Rome’s power. He had
nothing against Jesus. But he rejected and crucified Jesus. Why? It was because
he couldn’t remain neutral about Jesus. It was because to recognize Jesus and
follow him would cost him everything. He knew the Jewish leaders held the upper
hand over him, Caesar. They said, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s
friend” (19:12) The Bible says, “So when Pilate heard these words, he decided
to deliver Jesus over to them to be crucified” (13-16). Pilate rejected Jesus
thinking that he was protecting his own interests and his way of life.
To follow Jesus costs us
everything. It requires us to restructure our life. It requires us to change
our allegiance, our values, our priorities, our lifelong goals and mission. Let
me tell you another parable of C.S. Lewis: Imagine yourself as a living house.
God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what
he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof
and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But
presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts enormously and
does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that
he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of -- throwing
out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making
courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage,
but he is building a palace. He
intends to come and live in it himself.
Jesus is the King of the Jews, the
Promised One, the Christ, the Son of God. He is the truth and came to bear
witness of the truth. He was beaten and crushed and wounded, so that we might
be healed. He suffered and died in our place, so that we might be forgiven and
have peace with God. He was raised from the dead in power, so that we may have
eternal life. So now I ask you: “What will you
do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?”
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