The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

What follows belongs only to St. John. 'Pilate went again into the judgment-hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.' Pilate may have had a misgiving that he and the prisoner were not in their right relations to each other. There was something in the criminal which judged Him. He shook off the feeling, as most would have done, by boasting of his superiority. 'Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?' No doubt he watched the countenance of Jesus, to see if such words did not make Him quail. The calm answer came: 'Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.' He did not dispute the authority of the governor or of the empire. It was God-given authority. They believed it was their own. He told them whence it was derived. The heavier sin lay with those who boasted that they were chosen by the righteous God, and who sought the aid of the rulers of the world to put down Right. Pilate was convinced that Jesus was not a rebel, whatever his words about a kingdom might mean. 'From thenceforth he sought to release Him: but the Jews cried out, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend. He that maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar.' The governor had too much Roman sense not to see through this petty sacerdotal artifice, this affected reverence for a ruler whom, as Jews, they hated. 'When he heard that saying,' probably to indulge his scorn of men who were driving him into an act that he disliked; perhaps—though I think there is over-refinement in attributing that motive to him—because he fancied he should have the people on his side against the priests—'He brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment-seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out. Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him! Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar.'

If Pilate had had a deliberate scheme of policy to extract from a turbulent province a solemn recantation of the faith which had kept alive its national existence from age to age, he could not have effected his purpose more perfectly than he did by this proceeding. For an unusual crowd must have been assembled; it was the feast which celebrated the deliverance of the land from a foreign tyrant, and its allegiance to an invisible king. There and then the rulers of the land severed all ties except those which bound them as servants to the emperors. If Pilate had been (as indeed he was) a prophet of God, he could not have proclaimed more solemnly and awfully that the Jewish people were thenceforth ineffectual for any moral purpose, as witnesses against human tyranny or human idolatry, and that there is no real alternative for any people between the acknowledgment of the Man as King and the worship of a military tyrant or Man-God. This, therefore, is the crisis in the history of that day and of the world. 'Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led Him away.'

All the Evangelists speak of the title on the cross. St. John dwells upon it with great emphasis: 'And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that He said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.'

If we have understood the meaning of this Gospel, we shall feel the emphasis of the words, 'What I have written, I have written.' The Jews had declared, 'We have no king but Cæsar.' But they cannot prevent the servant of Cæsar from declaring, in bitter mockery, to all men who could read Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, 'This Man, whom they have forced me to put to death as an evil-doer, is their King. Look up, and see what kind of a king they have.' The insult was felt by them; they must bear it. And that Hebrew nation has said by the prophets and apostles whom it has sent forth, has said by all who have believed through their word, has said in their own tongue, has said in Greek and in Latin to the nations which Alexander vanquished and civilized, to the new world of the West which Julius Cæsar reclaimed from chaos, 'Our King is your King; to this malefactor you must bow down; by this sign you must conquer, or be conquered.'

'Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.' Do you ask how St. John could speak of that act of the soldiers whilst Jesus was hanging there? Do you ask how he could dwell upon fulfilments of the Scripture at such a time? Think a moment! Would anything give you the same impression of horror, if you were standing by an ordinary deathbed, as the sight of men contending for the raiment and goods of him who was leaving them? Is there anything so horrible as the thought how much death is regarded as only an event which gives the survivors a right to appropriate the things which the man has no more use for? If we had not been told that it was so when the Prince of the whole earth was dying, how much less we should know of the indifference which it is possible for human beings to feel! How much less we shall know of what He had to bear! 'These things therefore the soldiers did,' in the sight of the Cross, under the eye of the Son of God. We might in their place have done the same; there was nothing in the mere sight of the suffering to prevent it. 'They parted my raiment among them; for my vesture did they cast lots.' Thus a man of the old world, dying in desertion and darkness, expressed a part of his suffering, not a less intense part of it than the dryness of the 'throat with thirst, than the melting of the heart like wax.' And that suffering was all fulfilled, all raised to its most intense point in Him who gave Himself for all, that all might be brought within the power of a love which they seemed utterly incapable of perceiving. I am sure there is immeasurably more in these words than I can enter into or dream of; but I dare not leave realities for metaphors at such a time. It may be lawful to speak of the divisions in Christ's Church as the rending of His seamless robe; they are that, and much more than that; they are the rending of His body and of His heart. But they are too awful, and the Cross is too awful, to permit plays of the fancy. Let us ask God to keep us from them, that we may have some faint perception of the truth of His grief, as He entered into the inmost experience of ours.

'Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.'

This is all which St. John tells us of the Cross, and of the words that were spoken upon it. We may think it little; but it has been found enough for tens of thousands of men and women dying on their beds, by the sword, at the stake. When they have doubted, and have even been led by religious teachers to doubt, whether human affections did not belong to frail and sinful mortality, the words, 'Woman, behold thy son: son, behold thy mother,' coming from the Divine lips, have testified to them that selfishness only is accursed, that all which belongs to love is imperishable. When they have felt the intensity of bodily pain, and have felt how little they could obey the dreary command to think of their souls; the cry, 'I thirst,' has bound them to Him who knew the fulness of their sorrow, who entered into the wants, not of souls, but of men. And when all sight of the future has been shut out, and there has been in their minds only the sense of evil triumphant and exulting, a voice which no clamour could drown has said to them, 'It is finished.' 'The battle is fought; the victory is won. A little while, and the hosts which look so mighty now, shall be seen no more for ever.'

'The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day, (for that Sabbath-day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and He knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.'

That some in St. John's day had begun to deny that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh, nay, that he regarded this denial as the anti-Christian doctrine, we know from his Epistle. His Gospel is the answer to this denial, because it begins from the divine ground, and shows how impossible it is to maintain that ground, unless we believe in the Word made flesh. He that saw the water and the blood then bare record of the fact, the import of which concerned the life of the Church and of every man. If we look at the subject from this point of view, we are not obliged to decide whether St. John spoke of the water and the blood in a common sense, as a point of evidence, or in a sacramental sense, as involving a high mystery. The common sense is the sacramental sense; the evidence of Christ's actual relation to our nature is the assurance that He cleanses it of its defilement, that He endues it with a new and higher life. What more is conveyed by this sign, or, rather, what a force it gives to the whole history of the crucifixion, St. John himself must tell us.

'For these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken. And again another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'