king of the Jews

185:2.13“3. Call­ing him­self the king of the Jews and teach­ing the found­ing of a new king­dom.”

185:3.1Pi­late took Je­sus and John Zeb­e­dee into a pri­vate cham­ber, leav­ing the guards out­side in the hall, and re­quest­ing the pris­oner to sit down, he sat down by his side and asked sev­eral ques­tions. Pi­late be­gan his talk with Je­sus by as­sur­ing him that he did not be­lieve the first count against him: that he was a per­verter of the na­tion and an in­citer to re­bel­lion. Then he asked, “Did you ever teach that trib­ute should be re­fused Cae­sar?” Je­sus, point­ing to John, said, “Ask him or any other man who has heard my teach­ing.” Then Pi­late ques­tioned John about this mat­ter of trib­ute, and John tes­ti­fied con­cern­ing his Mas­ter’s teach­ing and ex­plained that Je­sus and his apos­tles paid taxes both to Cae­sar and to the tem­ple. When Pi­late had ques­tioned John, he said, “See that you tell no man that I talked with you.” And John never did re­veal this mat­ter.

185:3.2Pi­late then turned around to ques­tion Je­sus fur­ther, say­ing: “And now about the third ac­cu­sa­tion against you, are you the king of the Jews?” Since there was a tone of pos­si­bly sin­cere in­quiry in Pi­late’s voice, Je­sus smiled on the procu­ra­tor and said: “Pi­late, do you ask this for your­self, or do you take this ques­tion from these oth­ers, my ac­cusers?” Where­upon, in a tone of par­tial in­dig­na­tion, the gov­er­nor an­swered: “Am I a Jew? Your own peo­ple and the chief priests de­liv­ered you up and asked me to sen­tence you to death. I ques­tion the va­lid­ity of their charges and am only try­ing to find out for my­self what you have done. Tell me, have you said that you are the king of the Jews, and have you sought to found a new king­dom?”

185:3.3Then said Je­sus to Pi­late: “Do you not per­ceive that my king­dom is not of this world? If my king­dom were of this world, surely would my dis­ci­ples fight that I should not be de­liv­ered into the hands of the Jews. My pres­ence here be­fore you in these bonds is suf­fi­cient to show all men that my king­dom is a spir­i­tual do­min­ion, even the broth­er­hood of men who, through faith and by love, have be­come the sons of God. And this sal­va­tion is for the gen­tile as well as for the Jew.”

185:3.4“Then you are a king af­ter all?” said Pi­late. And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, I am such a king, and my king­dom is the fam­ily of the faith sons of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For this pur­pose was I born into this world, even that I should show my Fa­ther to all men and bear wit­ness to the truth of God. And even now do I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who loves the truth hears my voice.”

185:5.9Fi­nally, Pi­late ad­dressed him­self once more to the so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which con­fronted him, by ask­ing the mixed as­sem­bly of Jew­ish rulers and the par­don-seek­ing crowd, “What shall I do with him who is called the king of the Jews?” And they all shouted with one ac­cord, “Cru­cify him! Cru­cify him!” The una­nim­ity of this de­mand from the mixed mul­ti­tude star­tled and alarmed Pi­late, the un­just and fear-rid­den judge.

185:6.2Pi­late would make one last ap­peal to their pity. Be­ing afraid to defy the clamor of this mis­led mob who cried for the blood of Je­sus, he or­dered the Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers to take Je­sus and scourge him. This was in it­self an un­just and il­le­gal pro­ce­dure since the Ro­man law pro­vided that only those con­demned to die by cru­ci­fix­ion should be thus sub­jected to scourg­ing. The guards took Je­sus into the open court­yard of the prae­to­rium for this or­deal. Though his en­e­mies did not wit­ness this scourg­ing, Pi­late did, and be­fore they had fin­ished this wicked abuse, he di­rected the scourg­ers to de­sist and in­di­cated that Je­sus should be brought to him. Be­fore the scourg­ers laid their knot­ted whips upon Je­sus as he was bound to the whip­ping post, they again put upon him the pur­ple robe, and plait­ing a crown of thorns, they placed it upon his brow. And when they had put a reed in his hand as a mock scepter, they knelt be­fore him and mocked him, say­ing, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they spit upon him and struck him in the face with their hands. And one of them, be­fore they re­turned him to Pi­late, took the reed from his hand and struck him upon the head.

185:7.5Pi­late was just about ready to re­lease Je­sus when Cai­a­phas, the high priest, ap­proached the cow­ardly Ro­man judge and, shak­ing an aveng­ing fin­ger in Pi­late’s face, said with an­gry words which the en­tire mul­ti­tude could hear: “If you re­lease this man, you are not Cae­sar’s friend, and I will see that the em­peror knows all.” This pub­lic threat was too much for Pi­late. Fear for his per­sonal for­tunes now ec­lipsed all other con­sid­er­a­tions, and the cow­ardly gov­er­nor or­dered Je­sus brought out be­fore the judg­ment seat. As the Mas­ter stood there be­fore them, he pointed to him and taunt­ingly said, “Be­hold your king.” And the Jews an­swered, “Away with him. Cru­cify him!” And then Pi­late said, with much irony and sar­casm, “Shall I cru­cify your king?” And the Jews an­swered, “Yes, cru­cify him! We have no king but Cae­sar.” And then did Pi­late re­al­ize that there was no hope of sav­ing Je­sus since he was un­will­ing to defy the Jews.

185:8.1Here stood the Son of God in­car­nate as the Son of Man. He was ar­rested with­out in­dict­ment; ac­cused with­out ev­i­dence; ad­judged with­out wit­nesses; pun­ished with­out a ver­dict; and now was soon to be con­demned to die by an un­just judge who con­fessed that he could find no fault in him. If Pi­late had thought to ap­peal to their pa­tri­o­tism by re­fer­ring to Je­sus as the “king of the Jews,” he ut­terly failed. The Jews were not ex­pect­ing any such a king. The dec­la­ra­tion of the chief priests and the Sad­ducees, “We have no king but Cae­sar,” was a shock even to the un­think­ing pop­u­lace, but it was too late now to save Je­sus even had the mob dared to es­pouse the Mas­ter’s cause.

186:2.8The Mas­ter never dis­played the least in­ter­est in Pi­late’s well-meant but half­hearted ef­forts to ef­fect his re­lease. He re­ally pitied Pi­late and sin­cerely en­deav­ored to en­lighten his dark­ened mind. He was wholly pas­sive to all the Ro­man gov­er­nor’s ap­peals to the Jews to with­draw their crim­i­nal charges against him. Through­out the whole sor­row­ful or­deal he bore him­self with sim­ple dig­nity and un­os­ten­ta­tious majesty. He would not so much as cast re­flec­tions of in­sin­cer­ity upon his would-be mur­der­ers when they asked if he were “king of the Jews.” With but lit­tle qual­i­fy­ing ex­pla­na­tion he ac­cepted the des­ig­na­tion, know­ing that, while they had cho­sen to re­ject him, he would be the last to af­ford them real na­tional lead­er­ship, even in a spir­i­tual sense.

187:3.3Many who passed by wagged their heads and, rail­ing at him, said: “You who would de­stroy the tem­ple and build it again in three days, save your­self. If you are the Son of God, why do you not come down from your cross?” In like man­ner some of the rulers of the Jews mocked him, say­ing, “He saved oth­ers, but him­self he can­not save.” Oth­ers said, “If you are the king of the Jews, come down from the cross, and we will be­lieve in you.” And later on they mocked him the more, say­ing: “He trusted in God to de­liver him. He even claimed to be the Son of God—look at him now—cru­ci­fied be­tween two thieves.” Even the two thieves also railed at him and cast re­proach upon him.

187:3.4Inas­much as Je­sus would make no re­ply to their taunts, and since it was near­ing noon­time of this spe­cial prepa­ra­tion day, by half past eleven o’clock most of the jest­ing and jeer­ing crowd had gone its way; less than fifty per­sons re­mained on the scene. The sol­diers now pre­pared to eat lunch and drink their cheap, sour wine as they set­tled down for the long death­watch. As they par­took of their wine, they de­ri­sively of­fered a toast to Je­sus, say­ing, “Hail and good for­tune! to the king of the Jews.” And they were as­ton­ished at the Mas­ter’s tol­er­ant re­gard of their ridicule and mock­ing.

185:5.6Pi­late was an­gered at the sight of the chief priests clam­or­ing for the par­don of a no­to­ri­ous mur­derer while they shouted for the blood of Je­sus. He saw their mal­ice and ha­tred and per­ceived their prej­u­dice and envy. There­fore he said to them: “How could you choose the life of a mur­derer in pref­er­ence to this man’s whose worst crime is that he fig­u­ra­tively calls him­self the king of the Jews?” But this was not a wise state­ment for Pi­late to make. The Jews were a proud peo­ple, now sub­ject to the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal yoke but hop­ing for the com­ing of a Mes­siah who would de­liver them from gen­tile bond­age with a great show of power and glory. They re­sented, more than Pi­late could know, the in­ti­ma­tion that this meek-man­nered teacher of strange doc­trines, now un­der ar­rest and charged with crimes wor­thy of death, should be re­ferred to as “the king of the Jews.” They looked upon such a re­mark as an in­sult to ev­ery­thing which they held sa­cred and hon­or­able in their na­tional ex­is­tence, and there­fore did they all let loose their mighty shouts for Barab­bas’s re­lease and Je­sus’ death.

187:1.2Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the cap­tain led the pro­ces­sion, car­ry­ing small white boards on which had been writ­ten with char­coal the names of the crim­i­nals and the na­ture of the crimes for which they had been con­demned. For the two thieves the cen­tu­rion had no­tices which gave their names, un­der­neath which was writ­ten the one word, “Brig­and.” It was the cus­tom, af­ter the vic­tim had been nailed to the cross­beam and hoisted to his place on the up­right tim­ber, to nail this no­tice to the top of the cross, just above the head of the crim­i­nal, that all wit­nesses might know for what crime the con­demned man was be­ing cru­ci­fied. The leg­end which the cen­tu­rion car­ried to put on the cross of Je­sus had been writ­ten by Pi­late him­self in Latin, Greek, and Ara­maic, and it read: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.”

187:1.3Some of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties who were yet pres­ent when Pi­late wrote this leg­end made vig­or­ous protest against call­ing Je­sus the “king of the Jews.” But Pi­late re­minded them that such an ac­cu­sa­tion was part of the charge which led to his con­dem­na­tion. When the Jews saw they could not pre­vail upon Pi­late to change his mind, they pleaded that at least it be mod­i­fied to read, “He said, ‘I am the king of the Jews.’” But Pi­late was adamant; he would not al­ter the writ­ing. To all fur­ther sup­pli­ca­tion he only replied, “What I have writ­ten, I have writ­ten.”

187:2.5Af­ter the Mas­ter was hoisted on the cross, the cap­tain nailed the ti­tle up above his head, and it read in three lan­guages, “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.” The Jews were in­fu­ri­ated by this be­lieved in­sult. But Pi­late was chafed by their dis­re­spect­ful man­ner; he felt he had been in­tim­i­dated and hu­mil­i­ated, and he took this method of ob­tain­ing petty re­venge. He could have writ­ten “Je­sus, a rebel.” But he well knew how these Je­ru­sa­lem Jews de­tested the very name of Naz­a­reth, and he was de­ter­mined thus to hu­mil­i­ate them. He knew that they would also be cut to the very quick by see­ing this ex­e­cuted Galilean called “The King of the Jews.”