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§45 Pilate and the Condemnation of Jesus (John 18:28–19:16a)

The sentencing of Jesus to death takes place within the framework of a series of exchanges between the Roman governor Pilate and the Jewish religious authorities. The time is from early morning (18:28) to noon (19:14) of the day after Jesus’ arrest. The structure of the narrative is determined by the fact that the Jewish authorities, for reasons of ritual purity, would not go inside the palace that served as Pilate’s headquarters (v. 28). Contact with the dwelling of a Gentile—even a temporary dwelling, for Pilate’s official residence was at Caesarea—would render them ceremonially unfit to eat the Passover meal. Because of this, the action shifts back and forth constantly between the inside and outside of the palace. Pilate himself is always in the center of the action, whether addressing the Jewish authorities outside the palace (18:29–32, 38b–40; 19:4–8, 12–16a) or dealing with Jesus within (18:33–38a; 19:1–3, 9–11). Each of these encounters makes its own contribution to an understanding both of Pilate himself and of the factors that inevitably led even such natural enemies as Pilate and the Jewish authorities to cooperate in Jesus’ death. The narrative may conveniently be divided into six scenes:

Pilate and the Jewish authorities (18:29–32). Pilate’s question about the charges against Jesus (v. 29) is presumably one to which he already knows the answer. Roman soldiers would hardly have participated in Jesus’ arrest (cf. v. 3) without his knowledge and permission. But the question had to be asked as a matter of procedure. The answer of the Jewish authorities (v. 30) probably reflects their impatience at this formality, as if to say, “You know very well what the charges are. Let’s get on with it.” Pilate’s initial cooperation in the arrest probably stemmed from what he saw as an opportunity to bring a potential troublemaker under questioning and learn whether he was dangerous to the political order or not. If the Jewish authorities could be assisted in curbing subversives among their own people, so much the better. Pilate’s preference is that now that Jesus is in custody, the Jews themselves should take him yourselves and judge him by your own law (v. 31).

His assumption is that they have not already done so. Although the synoptic Gospels speak of Jesus being condemned by the assembled priests and elders in the high priest’s house and by the Sanhedrin, there is reason to doubt that he had been formally tried and found guilty by the Jews. If he had been found guilty of such a charge as blasphemy or deception of the people, he would have been put to death by stoning like his brother James the Righteous, the leader of the Jerusalem church, in A. D. 62 (Josephus, Antiquities 20.200; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23.4–18) or like Stephen in the book of Acts (7:54–60). The reply of the Jewish authorities to Pilate, We have no right to execute anyone (lit., “We are not allowed to kill anyone”; Gr.: apokteinein), is most naturally understood as referring to the sixth commandment of the Decalogue (“You shall not murder”). The issue was not whether the Jews had the right of capital punishment under Roman law but rather what their own law did not permit them to do. If they executed someone not formally convicted of a crime, they would be guilty of murder according to the law of Moses. If some of the religious authorities judged that a person deserved to die (cf. 19:7) but were either unable to make their charges stick or unwilling to press their case for fear of a popular uprising (cf. Mark 14:2/Matt. 26:5/Luke 22:2), their only recourse was to manipulate the Romans into carrying out the judgment on their behalf. Jesus had said all along that the Jewish authorities were trying to “kill” him (Gr.: apokteinein, 7:19; 8:37, 40). The narrator (5:18; 7:1) and even the crowds in Jerusalem (7:25) had confirmed that this was the case. The result of the only meeting of the Sanhedrin mentioned anywhere in the Gospel was not a formal conviction but simply a plan by the Jewish authorities “to take his life” (11:53). When these same authorities now told Pilate, “We are not allowed to kill anyone,” they were condemning their own actions and exposing their own hypocrisy. The narrator’s viewpoint is that they would indeed “kill” Jesus as surely as if they were to drive the nails and thrust the spear with their own hands. Yet their hesitancy to act on their own authority without a formal conviction meant that Jesus would die by a Roman rather than a Jewish method of execution. Instead of being crushed by stoning, he would be “lifted up” in gruesome death by crucifixion, and in this prospect the narrator sees the fulfillment of Jesus’ own words (cf. 3:14; 8:28; 12:32–33). Nothing that happens will take Jesus by surprise; all the devious plans of the religious authorities and all the vacillations of Pilate stand under a divine necessity. The Son of Man “must” be lifted up in a redemptive, and therefore triumphant, death (cf. 3:14–16).

Pilate and Jesus (18:33–38a). Back inside the palace, Pilate questions Jesus for the first time. The theme of their conversation is kingship, a theme that will dominate the narrative from this point until Pilate places the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” on Jesus’ cross and insists that it stand as written (19:19–22). The title king of the Jews occurs first in Pilate’s opening question to Jesus (v. 33). The question Are you the king of the Jews? is found in all four Gospels, and in each of the Synoptics Jesus’ answer is noncommittal (lit., “so you say,” Mark 15:2/Matt. 27:11/Luke 23:3), the equivalent of no answer at all. In this Gospel, however, the question is asked twice (vv. 33, 37a); in each case Jesus’ answer builds on the enigmatic “so you say,” but moves beyond it to deeper issues (vv. 34, 37b):

Is that your own idea [lit., “Do you say so on your own”] or did others talk to you about me? (v. 34).

You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this one purpose, to speak about the truth (v. 37b, GNB).

The first reply (v. 34) addresses Pilate at a very personal level, as if to ask him, “Do you really want to know the answer for your own sake, or are you simply carrying out your duty as magistrate?” Pilate deflects the personal thrust by freely admitting that it is not his own question. He is not a Jew and has no interest in Jewish disputes about kingship. He only wants to get at the facts in Jesus’ case. As if to elicit from Jesus himself the charges that the Jewish authorities are bringing against him, Pilate asks, What is it you have done? (v. 35), but Jesus will not be drawn into specifics. Instead, returning to Pilate’s first question, he redefines kingship. He has a kingdom but it is not of this world (v. 36). Like Jesus himself, it is “from above” (cf. 8:23). To see it or enter it, a person must be “born again” or “born from above” (3:3). Jesus is not speaking of the kingdom’s location, but of its source—and therefore of its nature. Its source is God, even as Jesus comes from God. As God sends Jesus, so God and God alone brings the kingdom to realization. It is not established by armed violence; Jesus is not the sort of king who needs, or permits, the protection of the sword (cf. vv. 10–11).

Jesus’ redefinition has stretched the meaning of kingship almost to the breaking point. Pilate, somewhat confused, can only repeat his initial question: You are a king, then? (v. 37a; cf. v. 33). This time Jesus’ reply (v. 37b) builds even more explicitly on the traditional “so you say,” and in so doing seems to move beyond the theme of kingship to the more characteristically Johannine theme of revelation. For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, he says, to testify to the truth, adding, significantly, for Pilate’s benefit, everyone on the side of truth listens to me (v. 37b; cf. 8:47). Even here, Jesus is not repudiating kingship but continuing the redefinition of it that he began in verse 36. Ultimately he is King, but for the present his role is to testify to the truth. He is the Revealer of God (cf. 1:1, 18). His purpose is not to call attention to himself but to the truth that God sent him to make known. Once, when his revelation led to the conclusion that he was “the Prophet who is to come into the world,” Jesus had fled from the consequent attempt “to make him king by force” (6:14–15). And though his followers acknowledged him on occasion as “King of Israel” (1:49; 12:13), his full revelation as Revealer and King has awaited the “hour” of his death and resurrection (cf. 12:16, 23).

Jesus’ second reply to Pilate, even more than the first, confronts the governor personally with the force of his claims. The statement Everyone on the side of truth listens to me (v. 37b) implies the question “Are you on the side of truth, Pilate? Are you listening to me?” In discourse after discourse, Jesus has confronted the world of Judaism, and now, in one brief but significant exchange, he confronts the whole Gentile world in the person of a single Roman magistrate. Pilate’s parting shot, What is truth? (v. 38), leaves the issue unresolved. The intent of Jesus’ last prayer “to let the world know that you have sent me” (17:23; cf. 17:21) is not yet realized, but in his brief conversation with Pilate, the mission to the Gentiles has begun (cf. Paul’s allusion to this scene in 1 Tim. 6:13).

Pilate and the Jewish Authorities (18:38b–40). On the basis of his interview with Jesus, Pilate makes the first of three declarations of Jesus’ innocence under Roman law (v. 38b, cf. 19:4, 6; also Luke 23:4, 14, 22). He proposes that Jesus be released, in accordance with a Passover custom, but by repeating the provocative term king of the Jews (v. 39), he reminds the Jewish leaders of what, in their eyes, was Jesus’ crime and so fuels their wrath once again. The point is probably not that Pilate was being hypocritical, but that he could not resist an opportunity to make fun of the Jews for worrying about such a pitiful king. In any event, they rejected his proposal and demanded instead the release of a certain Barabbas, identified only as one who had taken part in a rebellion. The narrator allows the irony of the rejection of the Son of God in favor of this notorious criminal to speak for itself (for a more explicit reflection on this irony, cf. Acts 3:14).

Pilate, Jesus, and the Jews (19:1–8). The note of ridicule in Pilate’s use of the phrase king of the Jews in 18:39 comes vividly to the fore in this section. Pilate decides to dramatize to everyone present what a pitiful and harmless figure Jesus is and what a pitiful race of people the Jews are for taking him seriously, whether as a king or as a dangerous pretender and blasphemer. All that happens—presumably inside the palace—in verses 1–3 is preliminary to the presentation of Jesus to the chief priests and their officials outside the palace in verses 4–8, and all of it—the beating and slapping, the thorny crown, the purple robe, and especially the mocking shout Hail, king of the Jews!—is the product of Pilate’s sick and anti-Semitic sense of humor. He seems obsessed throughout with the grim joke that Jesus is the Jews’ king. The words with which he presents Jesus to the assembled Jewish leaders—Here is the man! (v. 5)—are intended to arouse not so much pity as a sense of the ridiculous. To the Gospel writer, however, they are profoundly significant as a reminder of who it is who is going to be presented as king (v. 14) and then crucified (v. 18). It was as “Son of Man” that Jesus was to be both “glorified” (12:23; 13:31) and “lifted up” (3:14; 8:28; 12:34), and man is the closest a Roman Gentile could be expected to come to the idiomatic Jewish expression “Son of Man.” Like the high priest Caiaphas (11:51–52), Pilate is understood here as speaking more wisely than he knows. His elaborate joke serves the narrator and his readers as nothing less than the last decisive announcement of Jesus’ paradoxical “glorification” in the face of death and shame.

Pilate’s words, and the sight of Jesus robed in purple and crowned with thorns, agitates the assembled priests and guards all the more as they shout: Crucify! Crucify! (v. 6a). Up to a point this exchange between Pilate and the religious authorities virtually re-enacts their first encounter in 18:29–32. Pilate’s reply, You take him and crucify him (v. 6b) reiterates his earlier advice to take him yourselves and judge him by your own law (18:31). It also makes clear that, as far as Pilate was concerned, they had the power to carry out the death penalty if they so decided. Though they were unwilling or unable to do so, probably out of a lack of broad-based support, they remained firmly convinced that We have a law, and according to that law he must die [i.e., the law of blasphemy, Lev. 24:16] because he claimed to be the Son of God (v. 7).

The mention of the title Son of God for the first time in the Passion narrative recalls earlier disputes between Jesus and the Jewish authorities (e.g., 5:18; 10:33, 36). It was the understanding that Jesus was claiming to be “God,” or “equal with God,” that led all along to charges of blasphemy (10:33), attempts to stone him (8:59; 10:31), and the fixed determination that sooner or later he must die (5:18). To Pilate, however, divine sonship was a new factor in the discussion, and it awakened in him a new emotion (as far as the present narrative is concerned)—fear. Unlike the Jews, he heard the title Son of God in a polytheistic rather than monotheistic framework, and if he was dealing not with a pitiful and amusing mock king of the Jews but with some kind of favored messenger from the gods, the joke was no longer so funny as he had thought!

Pilate and Jesus (19:9–11). Pilate’s superstitious fear comes to expression at once with the question, Where do you come from? (v. 9). Jesus has already answered the question implicitly. If his kingdom comes not from this world, but from above, so too does he (cf. 3:31; 8:23). He chooses not to make the answer explicit, and in fact gives Pilate no answer at all. Yet when Pilate makes the claim that Jesus’ fate is in his hands (v. 10), Jesus responds significantly that not only his origin but his destiny is from above, in the sense that it rests with God and with him alone. Pilate’s claim of authority over Jesus, when translated literally, sounds like a feeble echo of Jesus’ own claim in 10:18. The similarities can be shown as follows:

10:18	19:10 (lit.)
No one takes it from me, but I lay it of my own accord. I have authority [Gr.: exousian echō] to lay it and authority [exousian echō] take it up again. This command I received from my Father.	Do you not know that I have the right [Gr.: exousian echō] to release you and I have the right [exousian echō] to crucify you?

When Jesus says in answer to Pilate, You would have no power [exousia] over me if it were not given to you from above (v. 11), he is reasserting his own claim from 10:18. In relation to all human beings and institutions, Jesus’ fate is in his own hands. But in relation to the Father (10:18b) he has received a command that he must obey. Pilate’s authority over him is therefore a derived authority; it is from above. Pilate is but an unknowing instrument in the hands of God, while Jesus is the Father’s loving Son and obedient servant. Jesus is not speaking in abstract or universal terms about a divinely given authority that the state has over matters of justice and human life, but of his own mission in particular and of the specific plan by which the Father has chosen to “glorify” his only Son.

It is clear that Jesus does not view Caiaphas (the one who handed me over to you) or the Jewish authorities in quite the same way he views Pilate. Jesus does not hesitate to judge both Caiaphas and Pilate guilty of sin (cf. 9:41; 15:22), but he pronounces Caiaphas, and those he represents, guilty of a greater sin (v. 11b). The reason is not that they stand outside God’s sovereignty but that (as they are seen in this Gospel) they are arrayed on the other side altogether, with their “father, the devil” (8:44), the “prince of this world” (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). Like him, and like his child Judas, they have “no hold on” Jesus (14:30) and have nothing to do with God’s redemptive plan. Their actions, no less than Pilate’s, help bring that plan to realization, yet their role is somehow different. Pilate “is from the earth [Gr.: gē; 3:31] and speaks about earthly matters”; like John the Baptist he can “receive only what is given him from heaven” (3:27). But Caiaphas and his allies “are of this world” [Gr.: kosmos; 8:23] and of this world’s ruler; like him, they are liars and murderers because they have rejected Jesus’ teaching and relentlessly sought his life (cf. 8:37–38, 44–45). Pilate is but a pawn, while they are the Enemy. Though they are Jewish, it is not their Jewishness that distinguishes them or makes their sin greater. It is, rather, their consistent identification with the “world” in all its unbelief and darkness and their consequent murderous intent toward Jesus the true light (cf. 1:5–9; 3:19–21).

Pilate, Jesus, and the Jews (19:12–16a). It is difficult to know what Pilate made of Jesus’ remarks. The narrator appears to be condensing a longer account so as to bring the story more quickly to its conclusion. The phrase tried to set Jesus free in verse 12 (Gr.: ezētei, imperfect tense) suggests that Pilate may have made several attempts, not specified in the text, to have Jesus released. Already afraid that Jesus might have power with the gods, Pilate had now been reminded of his own accountability to higher powers (v. 11). But when he tried to use the authority he claimed he had to free Jesus, he found his efforts blocked by the political realities of his own situation. The upshot of all his efforts was that at some point the religious authorities played their trump card: If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar (v. 12). The bottom line was that if the emperor were to learn that Pilate was protecting a claimant to kingship, Pilate’s status as friend of Caesar (a title of privilege bestowed by the emperor as a reward for faithful service) would be in jeopardy—so would his official position, and perhaps his very life.

The blunt personal threat had an immediate and remarkable effect on Pilate. He brought Jesus outside the palace for one last time, presenting him to the assembled Jewish leaders with the words Here is your king (v. 14). The parallel between this expression and Here is the man! in verse 5 could suggest that he is merely resuming the mockery of verses 1–5 and bringing to an end his grotesque mock coronation. But something has changed. There is a seriousness in Pilate’s behavior and a bitter solemnity here that was not present before. Realizing that the Jewish authorities have forced him to accede to their demands, Pilate takes his revenge. By sitting in the judge’s seat, he gives to the announcement Here is your king a ceremonial and quasi-official character. The ultimate insult he can hurl at the Jews is that this truly is their king, the one they deserve and the only one they will ever have. His insult finds its mark, for it draws from them in angry response the ultimate blasphemy of the God of Israel: We have no king but Caesar (v. 15). In denying Jesus, they deny in the end their own Jewishness, and in a strange turn of phrase, Pilate is said to have handed him over to them [the Jews] to be crucified—a Roman method of execution!

The narrator is careful to fix precisely the time and the place of all this. It is the day of Preparation of Passover Week; the hour is about noon (about the sixth hour); the place is called the Stone Pavement, also designated by the Semitic name Gabbatha (vv. 13–14). Why is the incident so momentous as to warrant such fullness of detail? The most plausible answer is that it is Jesus’ long-awaited “glorification.” If the cross is the ironic moment of Jesus’ “lifting up,” is not his formal presentation as king outside the governor’s palace the ironic moment of his glory? Is it only coincidence that the place of crucifixion and the place of the presentation are each carefully designated with both Greek and Semitic names (vv. 13, 17)? It appears that the two events are intended to form a pair, with the precise time reference of verse 14 placed between them to do service for both. They are joined not simply for the sake of chronological accuracy but to allow Jesus’ kingship and his crucifixion to illumine and interpret each other (Shall I crucify your king? Pilate asked in v. 15). Jesus in this Gospel reigns as king—of the Jews and of all people—not from a throne, but from a cross; and his death is not the tragic and shameful defeat it appears to be but the decisive revelation of his kingship, and of the glory of God.