John 18

Division 3. (John 18:1-40; John 19:1-42; John 20:1-31; John 21:1-25.)The Perfected Offering and the Resurrection of the Life. We have reached now the third division of the Gospel, in which we see the perfected offering, and that resurrection from the dead which is its manifest acceptance. John gives, as has been already said, the burnt-offering aspect of the Lord’s work, which would alone suit the view of His Person as the Only-begotten of the Father. “Lo, I come to do Thy will” is here the characteristic; and as the Mighty Worker He carries it to completion. As the free-will sacrifice He freely lays down His life. Throughout it reads like a triumphal progress. There is no agony in the Garden, no cloud upon the Cross. He testifies Himself that the work is finished; and this is confirmed by the threefold witness of the Spirit, the water, and the blood. The resurrection of the Lord is, as we might expect, more fully opened up in its consequences for us than in the other Gospels. Subdivision 1. (John 18:1-40; John 19:1-16.)Sovereign Lord and Willing Offering. In the first subdivision His sovereignty is shown over all circumstances, which makes Him, therefore, the free and willing Offering that He is. There is the complete fulfilment of His own words: “No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; I have authority to lay it down, and authority to take it again; this commandment have I received of My Father.” How perfectly the freedom and the constraint unite together here!

John 18:1-11

Section 1. (John 18:1-11.)Obedient to the Father’s will. The first section beautifully exhibits both characters. He goes over the “black” winter-torrent Kedron, so significant of the “brook in the way” of which He had to drink, in order that He might with His work accomplished “lift up the head.” For the refreshment that He procured for others was that which was His own; and it broke out of the dark abyss of suffering which was now before Him. Over Kedron, then, He passes to the garden, carrying with Him His disciples; He was carrying them indeed, though by a way they knew not, to the paradise of God. But He is clearly going forward with perfect knowledge of all, on His own part: Judas, we are significantly told here, knew the place as one of frequent resort by the Lord with His disciples. He is not shunning but seeking now the “oil-press” of sorrow. Eternal joy is to be the sure result. How pitiful, in view of this, the array mustered to take the One who comes forward to meet it! “Whom seek ye?” He asks; and when He tells them, He is the One they are seeking, as if fulfilling the divine decree as to that supreme Name of Jesus, they all go backward and fall to the ground. Then, being warned, He gives them leave, if still they will, to take Him; but with the stipulation (blessed Shepherd of the sheep!) that they must let His followers go. And they let them go! even though Peter, out of harmony with His Lord’s mind as so frequently he is, uses his sword against them! What of them all? Alas, the poor tools of their own enemy! will He contend with souls that He has made? No, all is settled for Him entirely apart from any thought of them or of their master: He does not speak in John of the twelve legions of angels ready to take the place of the twelve, -twelve now no more! -who are soon to forsake Him.

The. Son is in the presence of the Father only; and “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” is His unanswerable, all-sufficient argument.

John 18:12-27

Section 2. (John 18:12-27.)The deceit of an enemy and the denial of a friend. They bind Him who is bound already, the meek Lamb of sacrifice; and now we have a scene how different in the high priest’s court. The questioning before Annas is only given by John; who on the other hand does not relate, though he implies, the trial before Caiaphas. As father-in-law of the latter, and one who had been at a former time, high priest himself, he may have been, as Lange suggests, regarded by the Jews as still the true one; his relationship to the present one giving him his opportunity also to affect a position which he could not openly take. The Romans set up one after another as it pleased them, -a thing rightly enough offensive to the upholders of the law, and which seems to appear as this in the remark twice made, that Caiaphas was the high priest for that year (ver. 13; John 11:49). The two seem to have occupied even the same house. Caiaphas, we are reminded, was the man who had given counsel to the Jews as to the expediency of one man dying for the people, which God overruled to be a prophecy of a Saviour, but which showed him as a judge prepared with his verdict.

Arenas is as much allied to him in spirit as in flesh. His whole aim here is to ensnare the Lord with questions as to His disciples and His doctrine, for which Christ refers him to what He had taught everywhere with the greatest publicity. It was for His accusers to make their charges, and prove them against Him. To the one who smites Him for want of reverence for the high priest He only replies with a quiet remonstrance. Annas is baffled, though not turned from his malignity, and sends Him bound to Caiaphas; of the trial before whom the evangelist takes no further notice. It was a trial scarcely in form, and, as we have seen, decided before it was commenced. It is left a blank, as in fact was that of Annas. With Peter’s denial we are sadly familiar, and John appears to add nothing to it; but he himself, though unnamed, surprises us with the quiet boldness of faith and love which carry him through untouched and unquestioned, where the apparently bolder disciple breaks down so helplessly. He is known to the high priest, and to the keeper of the gate, and known as a follower of Christ too, as her question to Peter shows, “Art thou also one of this man’s disciples?” Afterwards we shall find him in the same open way with the mother of Jesus at the cross, and obtaining a precious recognition, and a precious charge, from the dying Saviour: and through all he is untouched and unquestioned. Blessed it is to see him who speaks so of love an example of it: unquestioned by men, he is unquestioned also by the Lord: there is plainly no need of it; and happy is he who is in such a case. Let us seek for nearer acquaintance, and we shall be truer to Him; here is the soil in which faith rooting itself will grow vigorously. Let us get nearer to His heart, that we may be qualified to walk evenly and undisturbed through the world’s allurements and its threats alike, armed against each by the secrets learned there.

John 18:28-19

Section 3. (John 18:28-40; John 19:1-16.)Hearts made manifest.

1. In the third section the Lord answers for Himself before Pilate; and this is proportionately much dwelt upon, and particulars given which we do not find elsewhere. It is evident that what we are shown is the searching out of the Roman’s conscience in the light of the Presence before which he stands. Judge and accused change places; and, hard as the governor may be -a man stained with many crimes, he yet compares favorably with Israel’s leaders, blinded and darkened with the light they have shut out. That Pilate shrank, though vainly, from what the insane fury of the Jews forced upon him is plain in all the Gospels; but John shows us the under-workings of a convicted soul, as no other does, and the Lord’s compassionate faithfulness towards the, miserable victim of his own self-treachery. Hearts are made manifest all through, and the Light shines upon all the clouds that would obscure it.

Even the refusal of the people to take the matter into their own hands, when Pilate would put it in them, only works, as is noted, for the fulfilment of the word of Jesus. Crucifixion was not a Jewish punishment. The “hanging upon a tree” was with them after death, and not a mode of inflicting this: but with death all was ended for the Lord; and the rich man’s sepulchre begins His vindication. 2. Before Pilate the Lord answers at once, when He is questioned, that He is King of the Jews. But He asks, Is this his own question? -has he personal interest in it? Of Messiah he must have heard, and of all the hopes that were connected with it; more surely still, of a reign of righteousness and truth to replace the long oppression, and bring peace at last to a weary, if not sin-weary world. Was the intervention of God anything, -even an alarm perhaps, to one of the world’s rulers? But Pilate puts off the question as a mere Jewish one: let him look at how his own case stands as a man accused by his own people; what reason had they?

The Lord answers him, but keeps His steady pressure upon the conscience, already uneasy, of the real criminal before Him the real Judge. He lets Pilate know that His Kingdom is not of this world, -has not its origin or nature from the world: else would, He not have been left, unarmed and without a struggle, to the merciless hands that had been laid upon Him. Had His followers, -out of all the crowds that had gathered round Him, -been organized into such a force as would be needed for the establishment of a kingdom such as Rome could fear or take into account? His Kingdom plainly was not like one of these. But then He really was a King? the Roman questioned. And the Lord answers that indeed He is a King: that His birth and coming into the world (and here a gleam of His divine nature flashes out) was to bear witness to the truth. Truth, in a false and hollow world, to establish this was the purpose of His life and mission. By this would He establish also His kingdom over the hearts and minds-of men. Truth is one, decisive, imperial: he that would learn it must be subject" to it. And here Christ drops a word for the conscience of His hearer, “Every one who is of the truth heareth My voice.” Pilate answers like the sceptical Roman that he is, “What is truth?” Alas, their Pantheon of captured gods had had bitter fruit in their rough conquerors. They had learned to believe in gods no more, save in him who had over-topped them all, their emperor; and in him the farce was but too transparent. And yet here was a word to get behind even such defences: for, if he knew not what was truth, he could know, at least, whether he was “of” it. And, if to be true were needful for such knowledge, was the lack of this, perhaps, what made truth appear such an unattainable thing? 3. Something, at least, makes Pilate uneasy; he stays for no answer, but goes off to the multitude, to declare that he can find no fault with Jesus. His business was, in that case, only to release Him; but he seeks compromise with his conscience, instead of yielding to it, and, in what seems to him a way of escape from a difficult situation, puts the whole matter into the people’s hands. Thus he makes it almost impossible to return to the path of righteousness from which he has departed, and proclaims himself openly as not of the truth. But the people reveal themselves in a worse fashion still, and do what even a Pilate believes impossible. It is this impossibility upon which he reckons, only to find that he has shut for himself the door of escape which he had hoped to find. They immediately avail themselves of the opportunity to show their preference of a robber and murderer to their own glorious King. We have noticed elsewhere how strangely yet significantly this name Bar-Abbas, “son of the father,” comes in here. It was the Son of the Father, just as that, -whom they were refusing now; but of what father was this lawless one the son? A shadow it is, surely, of their awful apostasy to come, when they will receive him who comes in his own name, true child of the rebel and “murderer from the beginning” of whom the Lord had warned some before, in words which had cut deep into those who heard them, that they were the spiritual children. The works of their father they were indeed now doing. Pilate, now in their hands, gives up Jesus to be scourged; hoping, however, as it would seem, by this according to his former proposal (Luke 23:22), to appease the people, that he might then release Him. In every compromise of this sort he only and miserably fails. John does not dwell upon all this: he mentions the scourging, the crown of thorns, the mockery of the purple robe; but these very briefly. By all this, Pilate vainly endeavors to awaken sympathy in behalf of the One whom again, to his own condemnation, he declares to be without fault. We may be sure, from his known character, he would have gladly found what would have justified him in pursuing with good will the course upon which he was now being urged unwillingly. Yet he emphatically reiterates that he finds no fault in Him.

Israel it is who hound Him to the death; crying out what death, -the most cruel and ignominious one, -they have chosen for Him. “Take ye Him and crucify Him,” Pilate answers" for I find no fault in Him." Then they bring out their real accusation: “We have a law, and by our law He ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God.” He must die, because He is what He is, and affirms it. He must die for the grace which has made Him become Man! 4. But Pilate is stricken again by such an accusation: for the legends of heathen superstition are revived at the suggestion, and he remembers, no doubt, that gods and sons of the gods had visited men, according to current beliefs, which he had perhaps too rashly discredited. Did He not carry Himself as if indeed divine? And there were other influences, as the dream of his wife, to make him tremble. He calls Him once more before him, and with an unaccustomed awe upon his spirit, asks Him, “Who art Thou?” He is not a weak man (save as the slave of his own lusts is weak); he is not easily moved to pity; nor is it pity now. He had mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices, and could have trampled these Jews down now remorselessly, had he not been in hands for the moment stronger than his own.

So the Lord plainly and compassionately tells him now. He would have had no authority at all against Him, had it not been given him from above. God, (though moved in a way far different from men,) God had delivered Him up; and, alas! the Jew had found in this his opportunity, misconceive it as he might, to pour out the enmity of his heart upon the very One of whom all the ages prophesied, and whom he had been prepared by the voice of heaven’s messengers continuously uttered to expect. The Jew had then, indeed, a greater sin than Pilate’s: the actual traitor was but the representative of his nation then. 5. Pilate is shaken more than ever by the Lord’s words, and again seeks to release Him; but he is not master of himself, and cannot be of others. The Jews know the man, and know their opportunity, and bring to bear upon him an argument that makes him plastic in their hands at once. God is a possibility indeed, but Rome is a certainty, and nearer at hand. “If thou let this Man go,” they cry, “thou art not Caesar’s friend; every one that maketh himself a king declareth against Caesar.” “Pilate’s playing with the situation,” observes Lange, “is now past; now the situation plays with him. First he said -not asked, -What is truth? Now his frightened heart, to which the emperor’s favor is the supreme law of life, says, What is justice?” He takes his place on the judgment-seat, therefore, and with what seems something between a taunt and a faint, final plea, says to the Jews, “Behold your King!” But they are only stung to madness: “Away! away with Him!” they cry, “Crucify Him!” “Shall I crucify your King?” he asks again; and now they are made in divine government to pass upon themselves the judgment under which they have ever since been lying: the chief priests answer, “We have no king but Caesar.” It was not the verdict of the Jews alone, and they have not suffered alone. The whole world has been lying under the yoke which they have preferred to the easy yoke of Christ. They have often got very tired of Caesar, -true; and, as we see by their fitful movements every now and then, would fain be rid of him. They are always crying, “Give us better government;” but all they can do is, with doubtful betterment, to divide him up into many little Caesars; better, as they think, because weaker, and with divided interests, so that the balance of power may secure the even weights of justice. That is still an experiment, some think; but this chronic war is never peace, not can be; and the reason is, men have refused the Prince of peace. Modify it, rename it, disguise it, as you please, the reign of Caesar is the only alternative. The struggle on Pilate’s part is ended; he consents to the people’s verdict; the Lord of life is adjudged to death, -to the death of the Cross.