EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
John 19:1. Therefore (see Luke 23:22-25).—He was under the erroneous impression that this treatment of Jesus might soften the enmity of the Jews toward the Prisoner. Scourged (ἐματίγωσεν).—There is no evidence that Jesus was twice scourged. Scourging was usually a preliminary of crucifixion among the Romans. St. Matthew and St. Mark use a different word (φργελλώσας).
John 19:4-5. Pilate therefore went forth (see John 19:1, above).—He imagined that the sight of the poor tortured form might move compassion. I find no crime, etc.—Had Pilate been able to find any crime in Jesus, he would not have hesitated to condemn Him.
John 19:6. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye Him, etc.—There is a ring of angry sarcasm in the words which must have galled those proud Jews. Pilate means, “I shall have nothing to do with crucifying one who is innocent. Do it yourselves, if you dare.”
John 19:7. According to the law.—Our law, they say, must be respected, whatever you do about the political charge (Leviticus 24:16). We only can be judges in this matter, and according to our law He should die.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— John 19:1-7
John 19:1-2. The scourging of Jesus and the crown of thorns.—Pilate plunged ever deeper and deeper into the toils. Justice and injustice cannot be reconciled. It went sore against this proud Roman’s conscience to offend the majesty of Roman law, in the attempt to please the clamouring mob of Jewish priests, rulers, and populace. Had he made a firm stand the guilt would not have rested on him. It is not easy always to be popular as well as just. He tried various expedients to extricate himself from the difficult position in which he was placed. He thought that by releasing Barabbas, and holding up Jesus to contempt, the latter might be delivered and the Jews propitiated.
I. The scourging.—
1. Our Lord had already predicted this part of His sufferings (Matthew 20:19; Luke 18:33). It was the preliminary to crucifixion. Pilate in ordering the punishment secretly hoped that the accusers of Jesus would be satisfied with the infliction of this cruel punishment.
2. We follow the meek and lowly, the divine victim into the courtyard of Pilate’s palace. He was handed over to the cruel executioners and rough soldiers of the guard, bound to a pillar, so that the back was bent and the skin tense. The blows were inflicted with switches or thongs, at the extremity of which were pieces of bone or lead. These were wielded by callous men, usually slaves. Even at the first blow blood was drawn, and ere the ten or fifteen minutes of the punishment were ended streams of blood flowed from the lacerated and wounded frame.
3. But this, too, was part of the divine plan. And great as were the pangs of this terrible torture to the body, yet deeper was the agony of soul which He endured. How great, how incomparable, was His obedience! “They made long their furrows upon His back” (Psalms 129:3). But it was all done in order that with. His stripes we might be healed (Isaiah 53:5).
II. The crown of thorns.—
1. Herod had already sent Jesus to Pilate clothed with mock emblems of royalty. No doubt these had been removed; but the remembrance of them led the soldiers to imitate in cruel fashion this jest of Herod.
2. Jesus was evidently entirely given into their hands—a strange thing, Pilate, to do in the case of one pronounced by thyself innocent. Breaking off twigs from a thorny plant abundant about Jerusalem, they wove it with their mailed hands into a rude wreath or crown, and thrust it down over the Saviour’s brow, the sharp thorns lacerating the flesh and causing great pain. Over His lacerated frame they threw a cast-off soldier’s robe to represent a royal robe. They bowed in mockery before Him, crying, “Hail, King of the Jews,” thus mocking that clamouring mob of the people and their Messianic hopes. It was not Jesus so much that was mocked as the people He came to save, and who in rejecting Him were filling up the measure of their wrath.
3. And Jesus bore it all in patient, meek submission for our sakes. “He is led as a lamb to the slaughter,” etc. (Isaiah 53:7). Did none of those barbarous men ask, “What manner of man is this?” One perchance did so (Luke 23:47).
III. The crown and robe were symbolic of a real kingship.—
1. He who wore the thorny crown and mock royal mantle shall yet be hailed as King of kings, etc. (Revelation 17:14), as the apostle was privileged to see Him in vision in His heavenly glory.
2. But the way to this glory was through suffering. And here, as at His birth, Jew and Gentile unite to proclaim Him to be what the angels declared He was to the Jewish shepherds, and the star of prophecy to the Gentile magi. Christ is a king; but it was through humiliation that He rose to glory, for the sake of man.
3. Man was made for dominion (Psalms 8:4-6); but through sin his kingly rule has been in part destroyed—he has not even full dominion over himself. So we see not yet all things put under him (Hebrews 2:8). But Jesus identified Himself with men, offered for them that obedience which they had failed to give—offered it in the only form in which here and now it can be offered, through humiliation for sin, and free self-surrender in all things to the will of the Father. Thus He became the great High Priest and King for humanity; and all who are His, who believe in Him as the only way of escape from moral and spiritual slavery, He makes “kings and priests unto God” (Revelation 1:6), raising them to a more glorious throne than that from which humanity had fallen.
4. And the way to this dominion is the way of suffering—the scourgings of anguish because of sin, the thorny crown of repentance, the crucifixion of the old nature, etc.—all a painful and bitter cross. But to those who thus ever come and are faithful unto death shall be granted the crown of life in the reign of heavenly glory (Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:21).
5. So, too, the Church has triumphed and will triumph through suffering for the truth. It is thus it is freed from the dross of earth and refined for glory. It is the glory of true members of the Church that they are able to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ.” As He the Captain of salvation was perfected through suffering (Hebrews 2:10), thus also is His body the Church.
John 19:1 “And scourged Him.” (Outline address for children.)
I. Why do we read this so unconcernedly?
1. It was nearly two thousand years ago. An old story. But if we are “Christians,” we know Jesus now. We speak to Him and hear Him; He is no stranger.
2. The awful crucifixion following makes it seem less noticeable. But this He bore for us; and we ought to think of it. The scourging added terribly to the agony of the cross.
II. Do we know what “scourging” means?
1. Have any among us ever seen a criminal sentenced and flogged? Have any among us ever seen a boy flogged? Most painful to witness.
2. Describe Roman “scourging.”
3. Had it been a cruel murderer of women and infants, a brutal criminal! But the kind, good, “Jesus” (describe His life).
4. Had He been tried and sentenced! But this was done by a weak-minded ruler, afraid of the priests and the mob. It could not take place under our good laws and strong government.
III. Jesus bore it all—no terror, no cry. How brave He was!
IV. It was part of what Jesus bore for you. It was your sins caused Him this humiliation.
V. Will you think of Him and love Him for it? And when you know that He is asking you, by the voice of His Spirit within you, to do something, or not to do something, for His love, for His sake, will you try? He will help you if you ask Him.
Lastly.—Take away with you this little text: “By His stripes [I am] healed” Isaiah 53:5).—Rev. T. Hardy.
John 19:3. “Behold the mam!”—
I. In these words Pilate unwittingly gave utterance to a great truth.—Christ Jesus was indeed the man, the great representative of all that is highest and grandest in humanity. What nobler or more beautiful life was ever lived on earth than the life of Jesus of Nazareth, through all its hours (on earth) from opening to close? As we view Him standing in silent dignity near the judgment seat of the vacillating Pilate, before the fiend-inspired mob calling out “Crucify Him!” we know that no other life has been lived, no other ever dreamed of or imagined, that can be compared even to His. From that hour of conscious awakening to the sense of His great mission in the temple, amidst the doctors and teachers, where He knew and felt that He was about His Father’s business, to this closing scene of His public ministry, He stands before us “the perfect man,” holy, harmless, undefiled; for His enemies could find no flaw in His character; and the Roman judge who reluctantly and in unmanly fashion gave Him over to a violent and shameful death declared again and again, “I find no fault in Him.” As we behold Him we must think of that heavenly teaching and doctrine that are the centre and crown of all that is noblest and best in the world to-day, of that tender humanity that showed itself in His continually doing good, of that meekness and lowliness combined with dignity and power that proclaimed Him the very King of men. Well may we, looking merely at His humanity, echo the words of a great modern writer on this aspect of His character. “He walked in Judæa eighteen hundred years ago; His sphere-melody … took captive the ravished souls of men, and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments and rich symphonies, through all our hearts, and modulates and divinely leads them” (Carlyle).
II. The man Christ Jesus is the holy, divine Son.—If we see this we must see something more. This perfect man, this flower of humanity, cannot be merely man. No such flower has bloomed, nor ever can bloom, on the field of human nature as it now is. There is something about this man that points us to another sphere. As one has well said: “I find the life of Christ made up of two parts, a part I can sympathise with as a man, and a part on which I am to gaze; a beam sent down from heaven which I can see and love, and another beam shot into the infinite that I cannot comprehend.” Not only is this suffering man the holiest and best that earth has seen, He is “Emmanuel, God with us.” Some glimmering of this truth seems to have visited Pilate, and made him dread yet more to deliver up Jesus to the impious multitude. But no doubt his scepticism and worldly unbelief tended to dismiss the thought. The priests, rulers, and scribes, as well as many in the vast crowd crying out “Crucify Him!” would have confessed this, had they not been blinded by hatred. Ah! He came to give light, but that was not what men wanted. They did not wish to see themselves in the penetrating light of His omniscient purity. The midnight burglar and transgressor flee the light, and will endeavour to overpower him who persists in letting in a clear ray upon their evil deeds; and the old philosopher said well that if truth appeared in the world in her unadorned loveliness men would persecute her. And thus it happened here. Truth did appear. The truth came to men with heavenly radiance to be the life and light of the race; but those to whom He came “hated the light because their deeds were evil.” “They denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto them” (Acts 3:14). But to all who look to Him, this crown of humanity, Emmanuel, becomes their high example, their guiding star, the strength of their life, the comfort of their death, their hope for eternity—“Behold the man!”
III. We behold here the awfulness of sin.—In beholding Christ at Pilate’s judgment seat a sense of the awfulness of sin in God’s sight is borne in upon us. For how does Jesus appear as Pilate points to Him? The awful Roman punishment of scourging was just ended. As Pilate was only a procurator he had no lictors in his train, so that the punishment was left to the rude and brutal soldiery. The arms of the victim were lashed down to a post near the ground, and on the bare shoulders, head, and face the lashes were inflicted with a whip of leather thongs loaded at the extremity with lead or bone. Thus the prophetic language of the prophet received a literal fulfilment, “They made long the furrows upon My back.” Over His bleeding form the rude soldiers threw in mockery a purple-dyed soldier’s cloak to represent a kingly robe, upon His bleeding head and bruised face they pressed a torturing crown of thorns, and into His hands, bound and helpless, they thrust a cane to represent a royal sceptre. Then they made a further mockery of His royal dignity, by each making pretended obeisance, as at a royal levee; and in place of salute each spit in the bruised face, and each with the mock sceptre smote the thorny crown more firmly on the bleeding, bruised head. What a scene! A carnival of fiends, one would feel almost inclined to say. And yet not an impossible scene by any means—only a result that may be expected when men give themselves over to the power of the spirit of evil. Such scenes were too common in those days; and in these times, when the Gospel is denied, as in the great French Revolution—or where it never had power, as in the scenes of torture among the North American Indians—the same diabolic spirit may be seen in its awful working. But amid it all Christ stood in silent dignity. “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth.” For He was a voluntary sufferer for the sins of men. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Some would say, No! Not for this end did He suffer and die, but that He might overcome sin in the future by winning men from its love and power by His holy example. Therefore, as Christ sealed the truth of His mission by His sufferings and death, it might be said He died for sin, and to take away sin. Now, no doubt this is in part true, as Christ’s own words will show: “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” But surely it is not all the truth. The death of the innocent Jesus would scarcely be called a proof of the divine origin of His mission, or a confirmation of the truth of the Gospel.[7] Indeed, the very opposite was the effect. “The cross of Christ was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.” And if it is further said that the resurrection was a confirmation of the truth of Christ’s teaching and must needs have been preceded by death, then we may ask, What need was there that the death should have been so shameful and the antecedent sufferings so cruel? No! None of those attempts to escape from acknowledging the sacrificial and atoning purpose of Christ’s death can stand examination. When will men learn that one aspect only of the Redeemer’s atoning work can never exhaust its meaning? And yet Christian men have striven, have excommunicated, and have been excommunicated because of their devotion to one view of the death of Christ, as if it included all the truth. We must learn that His redeeming work was many-sided, that we cannot thoroughly comprehend that infinite depth of divine wisdom displayed in it, which even the angels desire to look into. Certainly one of the most prominent views Scripture gives us of these sufferings of Jesus is that of their expiatory nature. “He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” “He was delivered for our offences.” “This cup is the New Testament in My blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sin.” This truth is written prominently in the history of Calvary. And is it not this view of the Saviour’s sufferings that hath brought deepest peace and truest joy to His followers and to repentant sinners in all the Christian ages? “Behold the man!”—the spiritual Adam, representative of humanity; the God man who, in oneness with men, willingly submitted to endure their woes, and by His sacrifice of Himself brought in for them eternal salvation, having magnified the eternal law and borne for man the effects of sin, pain and sorrow, shame and agony, the hiding of the Father’s face, death and the grave that they might have life. “Behold,” therefore, in this suffering man “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.”
[7] To those without, i.e. to those to whom belief in it is of vital importance.
IV. We behold here the Judge of quick and dead.—Behold in this afflicted man the Judge of quick and dead. “Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.” “And, behold, I am coming quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be.” “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” Pilate on his judgment seat and the chief priests and rulers in the Sanhedrin imagined that they were the judges on that memorable occasion. But how blinded men are. In reality they were being judged, and their Judge stood before them in the form of that meek, afflicted man. Latter-day Pilates and rulers might well take this truth to heart! And what is our attitude in view of His promise, “I am coming quickly”? Would it be that of Wesley, who, when asked, “Suppose you were summoned to meet the eternal Judge at twelve o’clock to-day, what would you do?” replied, “I should do what I am doing now.”
Lessons.—“Behold the man,” and let the view of that unspeakable love of His move your hearts to lively gratitude and self-denying service. Has it not been well said, that often men show more gratitude toward the friend from whom they have received one benefit than to the God from whom they received all? “God spared not His own Son.” “Even Christ pleased not Himself.” And how do His professed followers often show their love and gratitude? By a languid attendance at divine ordinances, by the giving of a perhaps grudging dole for the Work of Christ’s kingdom; there, it may be, their tribute of gratitude begins and ends. Let our conscience speak to us as we view this scene on Gabbatha! Some of you may have read the story of the manner in which Count Zinzendorf was finally led to found the Moravian Church. He was one day walking through the picture gallery at Düsseldorf revolving various projects in his thought. He was a good man, a true disciple, but had not yet risen to the full consecration of his noble work. He was that day suddenly arrested before a notable Ecce Homo—a picture of the Redeemer with the crown of thorns on His bleeding head. The artist’s legend was, “All this have I done for thee: what hast thou done for Me?” The picture sermon went home. Zinzendorf there and then entreated the Lord to grant him “the fellowship of His sufferings,” and the result was the founding of Unitas Fratrum, the United Brethren, the most missionary Church in the world. It is the want of faith and love that keeps men from a full consecration. May we have faith to realise more fully the wonder of that love; and may that love constrain us to do our Father’s will and finish His work, following our Redeemer!
HOMILETIC NOTES
John 19:1. The punishment of scourging.—The fact that among the Romans there was a twofold scourging—the one which served for torture (quæstio per tormenta) or for punishment, the other as preparatory to execution (comp. Sepp, 509)—may enlighten us upon the difficulty which has arisen between the narratives of the first two Evangelists and that of St. John, in reference to the scourging of Jesus. We may beforehand, for instance, suppose without difficulty that Pilate allowed the same scourging which was at first intended as torture or as punishment, to satisfy the thirst for revenge of the Jews, to pass subsequently, when the execution was decided on, as its introduction. Thus the Evangelists might apprehend this scourging according to its different aspects. John regarded it according to the original motives under which Pilate had arranged it, and Luke also brings out this reference strongly (Luke 23:16). Matthew and Mark, on the other hand, represent the scourging, in its world-historical importance, as preparatory to, and the beginning of, the sufferings of the cross of Christ. Thence it is plain, moreover, that they take it away from its original connection, and place it at the close of the sufferings of Christ before Pilate’s tribunal. Nay, even the apparent differences between the specifications of time of John and of Mark respectively, become set aside by this observation. To suppose a twofold scourging, as Ebrard does (433), is not allowable, for this reason, that the act of scourging, of which the first Evangelist speaks, perfectly resembles that described by John, and referred to by Luke in its issue in the history of the crowning with thorns.—J. P. Lange.
John 19:7. The clearness of our Lord’s claim, to be the Son of God.—If indeed, in His dealings with the multitude, our Lord had been really misunderstood, He had a last opportunity of explaining Himself when He was arraigned before the Sanhedrin. Nothing is more certain than that, whatever was the dominant motive that prompted our Lord’s apprehension, the Sanhedrin condemned Him because He claimed divinity. The members of the court stated this before Pilate. “We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.” Their language would have been meaningless if they had understood by the “Son of God” nothing more than the ethical or theocratic sonship of their own ancient kings and saints. If the Jews held Christ to be a false Messiah, a false prophet, a blasphemer, it was because He claimed literal divinity. True, the Messiah was to have been divine. But the Jews had secularised the Messianic promises; and the Sanhedrin held Jesus Christ to be worthy of death under the terms of the Mosaic law, as expressed in Leviticus 24:16 and Deuteronomy 13:5. After the witnesses had delivered their various and inconsistent testimonies, the high priest arose and said, “I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy” (Matthew 26:63-65). The blasphemy did not consist, either in the assumption of the title Son of man, or in the claim to be Messiah, or even, excepting indirectly, in that which, by the terms of Daniel’s prophecy, was involved in Messiahship, namely, the commission to judge the world. It was the further claim to be the Son of God, not in any moral or theocratic, but in the natural sense, at which the high priest and his coadjutors professed to be so deeply shocked. The Jews felt, as our Lord intended, that the Son of man in Daniel’s prophecy could not but be divine; they knew what He meant by appropriating such words as applicable to Himself. Just as one body of Jews had endeavoured to destroy Jesus when He called God His Father in such sense as to claim divinity (John 5:17-18); and another when He contrasted His eternal being with the fleeting life of Abraham in a distant past (John 8:58-59); and another when He termed Himself Son of God, and associated Himself with His Father as being dynamically and so substantially one (John 10:30-31; John 10:39); just as they murmured at His pretension to have “come down from heaven” (John 6:42), and detected blasphemy in His authoritative remission of sins (Matthew 9:3),—so when, before His judges, He admitted that He claimed to be the Son of God, all further discussion was at an end. The high priest exclaimed, “Ye have heard His blasphemy”; and they all condemned Him to be guilty of death. And a very accomplished Jew of our own day, M. Salvador, has shown that this question of our Lord’s divinity was the real point at issue at that momentous trial. He maintains that a Jew had no logical alternative to belief in the Godhead of Jesus Christ except the imperative duty of putting Him to death.—H. P. Liddon.
ILLUSTRATIONS
John 19:5. “Behold the man!”—From the brief and very pregnant form of the words, it might perhaps be concluded that a better feeling had overcome [Pilate’s] worldliness in this expression: the latter feeling would have probably been uttered in a more declamatory manner. The exclamation of the judge has been with reason regarded by the Church as an involuntary prophecy of this moment of suffering, extorted from his feeling by the power of Christ’s appearance. His first conscious feeling is connected with the most unconscious by a series of links. “Behold the man!” It is as if Pilate would exclaim, There He is—the poor man—a spectacle for compassion; as if in this deepest misery the Man first of all appeared to us again in His full human form, and awakened our entire human feeling. The Roman knew not in what measure he prophesied. According to his conscious purpose, however, he wished, doubtless, by his words to preach sympathy and compassion to the high priests and their attendants, by the sensible effects of Christ’s appearance. But the heathen man of the world preached humanity in vain to the Jewish hierarchs. As soon as they saw the man appear in the crown of thorns, they became deeply irritated, and cried, “Crucify, crucify Him!” The sorrowing Messiah is to the Greeks foolishness—to the Jews an offence: this moment proves this. The heathenish mind, in its disposition to worship fortune, and to count misfortune a sin, or even as a curse, cannot at all perceive the power in the idea of triumphant and redeeming sorrow: therefore it is laughable to it; and the representation of this idea seems to be involved in a foolish fanaticism, which deserves compassion. But the Jewish mind is able to perceive so much of the truth of that idea, and of its confirmation in Christ, that the momentary appearance of it results in offending and agitating it in the strongest manner in its ardent but darkened worldliness. Therefore Jesus, in the present pomp in which He appeared as the jest of the heathen world, and in Him the idea of the King of the Jews served for a mockery to the heathen world—became to them more odious than ever. It is extremely characteristic that immediately a frightful paroxysm of rage was developed in them at this view of Jesus—a hurricane which carried them altogether into the position of the heathens, without their being conscious of it, seeing that they now themselves dictated for the Lord the heathen punishment of the cross in the cry and roar, “Crucify, crucify Him!” This was the second degree of rejection wherewith the Jews delivered their Messiah to Pilate.… The Jewish hierarchy is the most deeply guilty; next to that, the people of the promise, which is here changed by its own agency into a people of the curse. It cannot, indeed, be asserted that here it was, in the main, the same voices which cried out the “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” against Jesus which a few days before hailed Him with the hosanna. There the best of the people appeared in the foreground, here the worst; and only a medley of slavish and wavering minds would find themselves here again among the rabble of the high council, who had then attached themselves to the royal priestly people of the Messiah. But where in this case were the better ones who had shouted hosanna? Thrice resounded the great liturgy of death spoken by the Jews on the temple-mountain against the Messiah, “Crucify, crucify Him!” There was heard no contradiction. Thus had the elected people fulfilled against itself the doom of self-rejection. Moreover, even the heathen world had doomed itself. Greek civilisation and Roman justice had become, in the person of Pilate, the servants of the Jewish fanaticism which was hostile to Christ. The mighty worldly pomp, the nursery of civic right, had become a slavish executioner of a degraded priestly caste, and of an inquisition hostile to humanity. The entire old world accomplished the judgment of self-rejection in sealing the doom of the Prince of the new world, the inheritor of its blessing. The rejection of Jesus was actually declared when Pilate released to the Jews their Barabbas. The spirit of Barabbas, the seditious man and the murderer, became thenceforth the gloomy genius of the political life of the people. This is proved by the history of the Jewish war. But whilst he was set free in triumph, Jesus was once more stripped of the soldier’s cloak and dressed in His own clothes, and was hurried away to the place of execution. Certainly this condemnation and leading to death of Jesus resulted, moreover, in the redemption and release of still another Barabbas, namely, of fallen man in general, as having committed sedition against God and murder against its brethren, and thereupon is fallen into the heavy bondage of sin. Christ goes away to release the prisoners who long for freedom.—J. P. Lange