John 19:1-27 "The Crucifixion"

A week ago Jesus ascended up into Jerusalem.

Praised by the crowds as the son of David-

the promised Messiah who would rule over the nations with a rod of iron-

he had come to his own.

But his own did not receive him.

Now, a week later he has been betrayed by one of his own disciples,

condemned by his own high priest,

and now stands before the Roman governor as an outlaw-

outside of the law of both God and man.

And yet as he reaches the nadir of his humiliation,

he is also lifted up to reach the pinnacle of his exaltation.

As he had said, "If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself."

It is only through the joint action of Jew and Gentile alike

that he can be offered as the final sacrifice that will atone for the sin of the world.

Having heard Jesus declare that his kingdom is not of this world,

Pilate is convinced that Jesus is not a threat to Roman authority.

He would like to free this lunatic,

but he must first placate the Jews.

The last thing he needs is for them to write another letter to Caesar complaining against him.

So he had his soldiers flog Jesus.

This is not a judicial flogging, but a political one.

He does not believe that Jesus deserves this beating,

but he must pacify the Jews.

This is the first time that Jesus' blood is shed by the hand of man.

He had sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane at the hand of his Father (Lk 22:44),

but only now does man require his blood.

They give him fitting garments for his task:

a crown of thorns and a purple robe-

oddly matched to his calling as the suffering servant of Yahweh.

"Hail, King of the Jews!" they cry, as they strike his battered body with their hands.

But he is silent.

This is the judgment day, and he must bear these blows.

"Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

Then, with Jesus covered in blood, with a crown of thorns and a purple robe,

Pilate brings him out to the Jews.

"See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him."

And he calls out with a voice ringing across the ages,

"Behold the man!"

Whether in pity or in mockery, Pilate asks the Jews,

Isn't this enough?

Behold this ridiculous specimen of humanity!

He is no threat to Rome-or to you.

After being mocked and beaten, who will ever listen to him again!

And the Jews are silent.

Remember that throughout John's gospel, the "Jews" refer to the leaders of the people.

And here the leaders are silent.

Perhaps they wavered-as Nicodemus had.

Only the chief priests and officers hold firm to their conspiracy:

"Crucify him! Crucify him!

Thinking that perhaps he has succeeded in his little game, Pilate replies,

"Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him."

But at the mention of guilt, now the Jews close ranks.

They remember how Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God.

At first they had refrained from stating the details of their accusations,

fearing that Roman law would not care about their religious charges against Jesus.

They had focused their energies on the charge that Jesus was a political threat--

"the King of the Jews"

But now in their "holy anger" over Jesus alleged blasphemy,

they cry, "we have a law, and according to that law he ought to die

because he has made himself the Son of God."

This was new.

Now Pilate is even more afraid.

Now he understands why the Jews are so determined to have this man put to death.

He is frightened of them,

but he is also frightened of Jesus.

He takes him back into his headquarters and demands,

"Where are you from?"

Initially he had asked "who are you?" and "what have you done?"

But now he asks the most important question.

Where are you from, Jesus?

But Jesus is silent.

He had repeatedly declared that he had come from the Father,

but now he does not answer.

Pilate's curiosity does not stem from faith, but from fear.

In his fear he cries out, You will not speak to me?

Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

Pilate waves his Roman credentials before the face of the Son of God.

To this Jesus responds:

"You would have no authority over me at all

unless it had been given you from above.

Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin."

This are Jesus' final words at his trial.

He does nothing to escape his death.

"Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

Jesus acknowledges Pilate's God-given authority as magistrate of Rome.

He will submit to the judgment of this mere mortal

because his Father has called him to this hour.

Indeed, Jesus suggests that Pilate is simply doing what any magistrate would do.

Any magistrate would fear the authority of the Son of God.

No earthly kingdom may tolerate the kingdom of heaven

without losing the ultimate allegiance of those who trust in Christ.

Pilate is merely the unfortunate magistrate who found himself

in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The chief priests, on the other hand, should have known better.

Their sin is greater because they sin against knowledge.

They know that Jesus does not deserve death,

but they will use Pilate as their puppet to crucify the Lord of Glory.

Pilate knows that they are trying to use him,

so he desperately tries to find a way out.

From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out,

"If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.

Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar."

Now Pilate sees how he can get out of this.

He will use the Jews words against them.

-and Jesus is expendable

He is ready to pronounce judgment,

so he goes to the judgment seat called The Stone Pavement,

or Gabbatha, in Aramaic.

And John identifies the time very precisely:

it was about the sixth hour of the Day of Preparation of the Passover.

Mark also identifies the time, but he says it was the third hour (9 a.m.)

when Jesus was crucified.

The synoptic gospels all say that darkness fell

from the sixth hour to the ninth hour-from noon until three p.m.

But John identifies the sixth hour with the hour of Pilate's judgment

John knows full well that the other gospels say

that the sixth hour was the hour of darkness.

This is why he says that it was "about the sixth hour."

If it had been noon when Pilate's judgment was rendered,

John would have said, "it was the sixth hour."

But I believe that John wants you to associate Pilate's judgment

with the falling of darkness.

There is another association that is also very plain from John's gospel.

In John 4:6 Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well at "about the sixth hour"

It was "about the sixth hour" that he had promised to give living water to the nations.

That living water is about to be poured out.

But around the sixth hour of the Day of Preparation for the Passover,

the hour when the Passover lambs were being brought for slaughter,

Pilate brought Jesus out to the Jews.

(Mark 14:12 plainly identifies the Last Supper as a Passover meal,

so either Jesus and his disciples celebrated a day early-which is unlikely-

since Mark identifies it as the first day of Unleavened Bread-the Passover,

or John is using the day of preparation of the Passover symbolically.

19:31 will identify it as the day of Preparation for the Sabbath,

and perhaps John is calling the Sabbath during Passover week,

the "Passover" for rhetorical effect)

But Pilate brought out the Son of God before them and declared:

"Behold your king!"

The last time he had said, "behold the man!"

This pitiful specimen of humanity-this bedraggled king.

But now he says, "behold your king!"

Now there is mockery in his voice.

Yes, some mockery for Jesus-but even more for the Jews.

And they play their part very nicely:

"Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!"

Pilate, now for the first time feeling in control of the situation, asks,

"Shall I crucify your King?"

And in a final betrayal of all that the priesthood stood for,

Caiaphas and Annas declare "We have no king but Caesar!"

They had declared only minutes before that they were the guardians of the law:

"We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die

because he has made himself the Son of God."

They had appealed to Moses in order to condemn the one greater than Moses.

Now, they appeal to Caesar in order to condemn the one greater than Caesar.

Judged by the law of Moses and the law of Rome,

Jesus must be put to death.

So he was handed over to be crucified.

But Pilate isn't finished with the Jews yet.

Jesus will be crucified between two others.

Even in death he will be portrayed as the King of the Jews.

Pilate wrote an inscription for all to see, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews"

and wrote it in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek,

so that everyone should understand who this Jesus is.

Again, there is some mockery of Jesus-but even more of the Jews.

For Pilate identifies Jesus as the king of those who would put him to death.

And in this mockery we see the truth.

As Caiaphas had prophesied that it was better for one man to die for the people,

than that all should die,

so now Pilate prophesies that Jesus is indeed the King of the Jews.

And when the chief priests complain,

"No, do not write, "the King of the Jews," but rather,

"this man said, I am King of the Jews,"

Pilate refuses.

He will kill an innocent man-but he will not lie about him.

For Jesus never claimed to be King of the Jews.

Jesus had plainly insisted that his kingdom was not of this world.

The focus of the action has been on Pilate.

Since 18:29, Pilate is the one who has gone out and come in, and spoken and questioned.

Pilate is the one who has feared and flogged and written.

Jesus has been passive.

He has been the direct object-the one who has been led, questioned, flogged, and brought

and now he is the one who is crucified.

John does not encourage us to speculate on Jesus' mental or physical state.

He states very simply what happened to Jesus.

Instead, John turns our attention to how all that happened to Jesus

was to fulfill the Scripture.

No less than four times in the next fourteen verses

John will show that the scripture was being fulfilled.

We will conclude today by looking only at the first.

The soldiers took Christ's garments and divided them among themselves.

We often think about the sign given to the shepherds:

you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

We do not often think about the sign given at the cross:

you shall find the king, robbed of his clothes, and hanging on the cross.

John tells us that when they divided his garments, and cast lots for his tunic,

this was to fulfill the Scripture which says,

"They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots."

This is quoted from Psalm 22:18.

We sang part of this Psalm today-My God, my God, O why have you forsaken me?

It is the cry of our Savior from the cross.

But Psalm 22 goes on to say that in the midst of his affliction,

as his mouth goes dry and his body wastes away,

they will divide up my clothing.

When Ham looked upon his naked father, Noah,

he came under God's curse.

We are called to look upon this naked Christ,

for if we would be clothed,

then we must behold the plundering of Christ's clothes.

This was the fitting end for the Second Adam.

The first Adam was created naked and unashamed.

He was clothed to cover the shame of his sin.

The second Adam walked through life clothed.

He was unclothed to uncover the shame of his sin-bearing.

The shame that Adam bore for his sin,

is now revealed openly in Christ.

God himself gave clothing to Adam as a gift of his common grace.

The first God-given clothing consisted of animal skins,

and through the shedding of blood, man was protected from his own sin.

But now the second Adam is left unprotected.

God's grace is stripped away.

God "put clothing upon the first Adam

only because he would one day take it off the second Adam." (Schilder 3.173)

Naked and exposed, there is no place for Jesus to hide.

Adam had hid behind fig leaves,

but Jesus is nailed to the cross for all to see.

And his clothes are divided among the soldiers.

All of his worldly possessions are gone-even the clothes off his back.

He who was rich beyond all measure, now, for our sakes became poor.

David had expressed this sense of incongruity as the plundered King in Psalm 22.

He was the rightful king,

and yet he was plundered.

First, when he wandered in the wilderness, fleeing from Saul,

when Saul took from him his wife and his home.

And then his own son, Absalom, chased him from his home,

and plundered all his goods.

Now the Son of David is being plundered.

All that David had spoken figuratively is happening to Christ literally.

But Jesus is not only a man like David.

Jesus is also the living God who had clothed Adam in the beginning.

The one who clothed us is now stripped bare.

You don't want to look at him, do you?

But you must.

Because hanging naked on the cross, Jesus endured the agony that you deserved.

That should have been you.

It is here that the gates of hell open wide-

and as they do, you must continue to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

Look to him in faith, because he is the Word made flesh.

Though he hangs naked on the cross,

this is what he came to do.

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."