John 19:1-16

John 19:1-3    Jesus Flogged and Mocked

The narrative moved once more to inside Pilate’s headquarters.

History speaks of a Pilate who was no stranger to brutality. The author gave no reason for Pilate’s flogging an innocent man. Was it an effort on Pilate’s part to enlist sympathy for him?

The text refrained from giving any detail regarding how the soldiers’ put the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head.

Purple dye was impossibly expensive. Purple clothes were affordable only by royalty. In fact, the soldiers would have dressed Jesus in a scarlet robe belonging to one of them.

The scene was one of extreme humiliation and attempted depersonalisation, though there was only muted description of physical cruelty. In the eyes of the narrator the whole scene was one of consummate irony. Jesus was indeed king, and his path to kingship was precisely his free, deliberate, love-inspired choice not to escape his own murder.

Jesus’ coronation as king – totally devoid of glory, majesty and power – served radically to subvert, and forever call into question, the values of the world. What Jesus embodied in kingship was total commitment to the way of love, integrity, freely accepted vulnerability, and the readiness to pay the price of these in a world that desperately, but unknowingly, cried out to be saved from itself and its futile “values”.

John 19:3-5     Second Attempt to Release Jesus

The action moved again to the outside; and Pilate engaged once more with the Jewish chief priests and temple police.

For a second time, Pilate publicly asserted Jesus’ innocence.

Though Pilate had said that he was bringing Jesus outside, the text insisted that Jesus came outside. He was always the one in control.

Here is the Man (1)

Whatever about the historical detail, the intent of the author was clearly theological. He had begun the Passion narrative with Jesus’ arrest in the garden, an allusion to the creation story of Genesis. He returned to the theme again. The flogged and brutalised Jesus was indeed the quintessential human being. (The theme will be developed a little later in the commentary [19:25].) The scourged and humiliated Jesus had been stripped of every external vestige of personality. He was totally without honour. All he possessed was his inner identity.

Every would-be disciple needs to follow a similar journey. The path to resurrection goes by way of dispossession and the inexorable death to every trace of ego.

John 19:6     Priests and Police Demand Crucifixion

This was the first explicit demand for crucifixion, and the first indication that those seeking it were specifically the chief priests and their police. They demanded crucifixion because crucifixion carried with it the association of being cursed by God. The Book of Deuteronomy had declared:

Death by crucifixion would, they hoped, serve to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the general populace.

This was Pilate’s third public declaration of Jesus’ innocence [18:38; 19:4].

As the narrative had unfolded, there had been no formal Jewish trial of Jesus, nor any formal pronouncement of sentence. Was Pilate telling the chief priests to conduct their own trial and to impose their own sentence on Jesus? 

There is an ambiguity. The Jewish leadership, in fact, did not have the power to crucify. (Scholars are uncertain whether at this stage they even had the power to enact the death penalty at all. If they did, their method of capital punishment was death by stoning. They could not crucify Jesus.) Pilate would have been keenly aware of this. Some commentators wonder whether Pilate’s comment was his way of taunting the chief priests by emphasising their powerlessness, and, thereby, subtly humiliating them.

John 19:7-11     Second Interrogation - Son of God

Finally the Jewish leadership stated their real reason for seeking the death of Jesus (though the text reverted from explicitly identifying them to using the general term Jews).

This was the first mention of Pilate’s fear. In this case, his fear was not of the Jewish leadership but of Jesus. In the highly superstitious climate of the age, the reputation of a Son of God carried overtones of paranormal power.

The action would move inside once more.

At the beginning of the narrative, two unnamed disciples of John had asked Jesus: Where do you live? [1.38]. Unlike those disciples, Pilate was not seeking truth but self-preservation. Jesus was not interested.

Pilate’s question was essentially a threat – but a veiled threat because he was still superstitiously fearful of Jesus.

The only power over Jesus was the power from above, the power of the Father; and that power consisted uniquely in the strength of the creative love that animated both. Pilate might have the capacity to coerce or to destroy Jesus. He had no access to the true power that gives life.

Who was meant by the one who handed Jesus over to Pilate is not clear from the text. In the narrative the words had been used of the actions both of Judas [13.21] and of the chief priests [18.30]. It would seem from the text, however, that whatever about the greater guilt, Jesus still judged Pilate to be guilty.

The Greater Guilt

Was Satan the one “guilty of the greater sin”, the one Jesus had already branded as the father of lies [8:44]? As the narrative had already made clear, the power of sin lies essentially in darkness or blindness [9:40-4] that cloaks an unwillingness to believe. Most people are aware to some extent of their sins of weakness, those instances when the ego momentarily loses control and succumbs to the pressure of the surface desires or fears of the moment (the kind of sin exemplified by Peter’s denials and the disciples’ desertion). These surface sins are quite distinct from those that come from deeper within, such as Judas’s loss of faith and subsequent treachery, or the callously “prudent” decision of Caiaphas to preserve the status quo by the murder of Jesus [11:50]. In both those instances, as in most of humanity’s major sins, their perpetrators think of themselves as realistic, even as virtuous. In some cases, their blindness is unrecognized; in others, there may exist a suspicion of duplicity, which they manage to deny or evade, or choose not to face. Their blindness is the expression of their "deeper guilt". If eventually uncovered by their ego, it can drive its victims to remorse, cynicism or even despair; if discovered in the light of God’s mercy, it can be the occasion of repentance and lead to true human growth.

John 19:12-16     Jesus Handed Over to be Crucified

Threat of Report to Rome

The final action in the drama moved again to the outside. Once more, Pilate entered into dialogue with the relentlessly determined chief priests and their police. They were gaining the upper hand in the honour struggle.

That he tried to release Jesus indicated that he felt his freedom in some way curtailed. Apparently, he was unwilling to anger the Jewish leadership too much; social stability demanded a certain degree of cooperation between the Roman and Jewish administrations, and was particularly important at a time when the general population was in fervently nationalistic mood (as during the Passover festival). Yet, at the same time, he was unwilling to lose face before them and appear to lose the confrontation.

In this case, however, the Jewish leaders were more than Pilate’s match. On hearing their threat, prudence and personal honour gave way to fear, fear this time, not of Jesus, but of Rome. As governor, Pilate enjoyed the rank and honorific title of “Friend of Caesar”. However, he was far from the centre of power, and expatriate Jews were a powerful lobby in Rome. If he were accused before the emperor of having dismissed a charge against a revolutionary leader, he could well find himself in trouble. When it became an issue of Jesus’ death or his own, Pilate had no qualms; the innocent Jesus would be crucified.

The narrative heightened the dramatic effect. Pilate sat formally to pronounce judgment.

Scholars know of no reason for the solemn identification of the place of judgment. However, the timing had clear theological overtones. At noon [the sixth hour] the killing of the lambs for the Passover feast that same evening began in the temple. At the beginning of the narrative, John had identified Jesus as the Lamb of God. Now, the killing of the true Passover Lamb was about to be formally enacted. The liberation from Egyptian slavery and oppression, remembered and taken hold of once again in every annual celebration, would be fulfilled in the world’s liberation from the universal slavery and oppression of sin. Jesus’ killing would be the means to that liberation – though how it brings it about remains mystery. (The Gospel would list a number of other Scriptural precedents, in addition to that of the paschal lamb, in order to throw further light upon the mystery enacted.)

In his discomfort and pique at their power over him, Pilate played the game of humiliation (and the trading of “honour” and “dishonour”), succeeding in leading the chief priests to proclaim their allegiance to Caesar, even though it might choke them.

From the author’s point of view, this was the climax of the whole scene. He showed the Jewish leadership, through their hatred of Jesus, publicly repudiating their allegiance to the covenant and formally disowning their identity as People of God. They were those who had been tried. God was no longer their king. Their king was Caesar.

Jesus no longer mattered to Pilate – he was dispensable. Pilate had scored his little victory. Jesus was handed over once more. The chief priests had achieved what they wanted. Jesus would soon be out of the way. They would be free to return to the temple and get on with the business of killing the paschal lambs in preparation for their imminent, and now superseded, festival. Who had the greater guilt?

Next >> John 19:16-30