I. The Roman proconsul looks with a strange mixture of awe and surprise at the poor weary prisoner, and asks, "Art Thoua king?" His wife's dream had warned him that there was something uncommon about this man, and he was more than willing to set Him free, for he could find no fault in Him. Pilate's relations with Rome, however, made him afraid to risk a tumult, and so, yielding to the popular clamour which demanded His death, and which threatened to swell into a riot, Pilate delivered Jesus unto them. That was his answer to the awful question of the text.
II. The question which Pilate asked, and which he answered so fatally, is a question which we have, every one of us, still to answer. It is far more awful for us than it was for Pilate. We have to answer it with a full knowledge of what Jesus was and is. We have to answer it aided by the light of centuries streaming upon that Divine Face. So long as Christ is popular, so long as being with Him means going on safely with a rejoicing, happy multitude, there is no doubt or difficulty as to what we will do with Christ; we will gladly follow Him. But there come awful moments in every experience the Passion Week of every life when the Christ stands pleading before your soul. A wild, frenzied mob of passions, prejudices, indulgences, sins, raise their murderous clamour, and demand that we shall give Him up that we shall take into our favour some other popular idol and each of us has then to answer the question, "What shall I do then with Jesus?" We try to escape it; we endeavour to postpone it as Pilate did, by general discussions about abstract truth. Then we soothe ourselves with the thought that the words which once moved us were exaggerated; thiscannot be the Christ; until some great moment of trial comes, and the earth and all that we thought solid and durable in life quakes beneath us, and a darkness, perhaps the darkness of death falls upon us; and then old sins, old decisions for evil, come forth from the graves of memory, and appear unto us, and in the agony of our souls we cry, as the terrible conviction then comes upon us: "Truly, this was the Son of God!"
T. T. Shore, The Life of the World to Come,p. 127.
Jesus Christ is on His trial again before the research and culture of the nineteenth century. The controversies which once raged round His miracles have now gathered about His Person. For acute thinkers saw it was useless to deny the supernatural, so long as Jesus Christ Himself, the great central miracle in history, passed unchallenged. And now, in this age, thoughtful man must, sooner or later, ask himself the question which Pilate put to the Jews: "What shall I do then with Jesus, which is called Christ?" And from the motley crowd of Jews and Gentiles, of friends or foes, grouped round that calm majestic figure, come the three chief answers that the human heart can give.
I. The answer of rejection. The fickle crowd cried, "Let Him be crucified." It was the cry of prejudice, of thoughtlessness, of conscious guilt. That cry finds an echo today. It is couched in less offensive language. It is clothed in the garb of poetry and philosophy, of the highest culture; the form is changed, the spirit is unaltered. It is still the answer of rejection: "Away with Him!"
II. From Pilate comes the answer of indifference. He represented the Roman society of his age, which had lost faith in religion and morality, and yet was troubled by dreams; which was at once sceptical and superstitious; whose creed had been summed up by one of its own writers in a notable saying: "There is no certainty save that there is nothing certain, and that there is nothing more wretched or more proud than man" a nerveless, hopeless, sorrowful creed, the parent of apathy, cynicism, and unrest. Pilate is a picture of that vain and shallow indifference which is too weak to believe in the truth, and yet too fearful to deny it altogether.
III. There were some in that crowd insignificant in number, in wealth, in influence often, alas! untrue to their own convictions who could give a very different answer to Pilate's question. One of them the previous night had acted as the spokesman of his brethren, when he said: "Lord, I will follow Thee to prison and to death." They were brave words, the language of a faithful and loving heart forgotten and broken at the first blush of trial, but nobly fulfilled in after years; and they are the answer of faith.
F. J. Chavasse, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,March 2nd, 1882.
Note:
I. The title given to Jesus in this question: "Jesus which is called Christ." How came Pilate by the knowledge of the descriptive and official title here used "Christ"? Christ never once occurs in the language of the Jewish clerics addressed to Him, as reported in these Chapter s. "Christ" is not a Roman word, and it represents no idea that belongs to the Roman religion. Perhaps it was to Him only a sound; but it was a sound that had been sufficiently repeated in his hearing to get fixed in his memory, and to be regarded as connected with the name of Jesus.
II. The embarrassment that prompted the utterance of this question. When we try to trace what led up to it, our conclusion is, that it began to darkle in his heart long before it came on his lip, in fact, we seem to see it working with silent but gathering strength through all the stages of the trial. The defeat of Pilate's attempt to find a substitute for Jesus had brought him to the last extremity. It was the custom of the Romans, at the feasts, to release a prisoner doomed to die, the people being allowed the right to name him. Pilate wished them to consider Jesus as the sentenced prisoner, but to release Him, and to take in His place a certain infamous criminal called Barabbas. This woke a furious cry of resentment. Then the question came out. Silent until now, at last it found language. His tortuous policy had no other contrivance at command, he lost himself, and did the most pitiable thing a judge can do, that is, he asked the advice of the prosecutors. In a burst of desperation he said, "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?"
III. Regard this as a present question What shall you do to Him which is called Christ? will you be neutral? This is what Pilate tried to be. He would take, as he imagined, no part, one way or the other. He had no strong feeling in either direction, no earnestness of any kind, no animus against the accused and none against the accusers: he would only lift a protest, just to satisfy his conscience and save his honour; but would not make a strong stand on either side, and he would simply and fairly keep neutral. We know not a few who are like him. When we think of him, and of those who tread in his steps, two scenes rise before our imagination. The first scene is that of Jesus before the bar of Pilate. Pilate is neutral. The other is that of Pilate at the bar of Jesus. Hell is due; despair is due; sin has to be paid for; Jesus alone is the one constituted Saviour, and now Jesus is neutral. This is a vision: may it never be a reality.
C. Stanford, The Evening of Our Lord's Ministry,p. 256.
Christ before Pilate Pilate before Christ.
I. Let us try to account for the hesitation of Pilate to give up the Lord, and then for his final yielding to the clamour of the people. Why all this reluctance on his part to send Jesus to the cross? He was not usually so scrupulous. Wherefore, then, this unwonted squeamishness of conscience? It was the result of a combination of particulars, each of which had a special force of its own, and the aggregate of which so wrought on his mind that he was brought thereby to a stand. There was (1) the peculiar character of the prisoner; (2) the singular message of his wife; (3) the fatality that there seemed about the case. He had tried to roll it over on Herod, but that wily monarch sent the prisoner back upon his hands. The deeper he went into the case he discovered only the more reason for resisting the importunity of the Jews, and however he looked at it his plain duty was to set the prisoner free. Why, then, again we ask, was his perplexity? The answer is suggested by the taunt of the Jews, "If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend." He foresaw that if he resisted the will of the rulers he would make them his enemies, and so provoke them to complain of him to the Emperor, who would then institute an inquiry into his administration of his office, and that he was not prepared to face. His past misdeeds had put him virtually into the power of those who were now so eager for the condemnation of the Christ. His guilty conscience made him a coward at the very time when most of all he wanted to be brave.
II. The question of the text is pre-eminently the question of the present age. All the controversies of our times, social, philosophical, and theological, lead up to, and find their ultimate hinge in, the answer to this inquiry, "Who is this Jesus Christ?" Those in the age who have the spirit and disposition of Pilate will anew reject Him; but those who are sincere and earnest in their inquiries will come ultimately out into the light; for "if any man be willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God."
III. And what is true of the age, as a whole, is true also of every individual to whom the Gospel is proclaimed. For each of us this is the question of questions, "What shall I do with Jesus, which is called Christ?" You cannot evade the decision, but be sure that you look at the Christ before you give Him up.
W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds,p. 37.
References: Matthew 27:22. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 96; J. Fraser, University Sermons,p. 1; H. W. Beecher, Sermons(1870), p. 233; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 115. Spurgeon, Three Hundred Outlines from the New Testament,p. 31; New Manual of Sunday-school Addresses,p. 75.Matthew 27:23-26. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 204.