John 18:33
Are you
the King of the Jews? (John 18:33, ESV)
Pilate asked Jesus this question
because Pilate was the Roman governor of the province of Judaea. Caesar was
Pilate’s king, and part of Pilate’s job was to make sure that nothing threatened
the rule of Caesar over the region.
Pilate asked, “Are you the King of
the Jews,” and Jesus responded, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did
others say it to you about me?” (John 18:34 ESV) Of course, Pilate did not come up with this on his
own. The chief priests and leaders of the Jewish nation had made this charge
against Jesus. They wanted to kill Jesus, and to kill Him with the power of the
state, they needed a legal reason. So their charge was, “We found this man
misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying
that he himself is Christ, a king.” (Luke 23:2 ESV)
Do you see what they said? “We
found this man misleading our nation...”
Many voices continue to say the
same thing in different ways.
Some say the Bible is full of
myths, and some say we cannot know what Jesus taught. Almost no serious scholar
of ancient history agrees with such statements. The evidence for Jesus’ life
and teaching is solid, and it is plentiful.
Some say Jesus is “misleading our
nation” by denying what He taught or changing the meaning of what He said.
Let me try to give you an example.
I have heard an argument stated different
ways, but with the same general premise. It goes something like this. “Jesus
loves everybody. He taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Therefore, He
forgives everybody and everybody will be saved in the end.” Or, some will say, “Jesus loves me and wants
me to be happy. And besides, I am not sure that what I am doing is so bad. You
do not understand, but Jesus does.” With such reasoning, the clear teaching of
Jesus is laid aside.
I admit, on the surface, this does
not appear to be the same thing. It is not as direct as the Jewish leaders
were. However, if the issue is pushed, many people reject what Jesus said
because they think it misleads people. You will notice, I am equating changing
what He said with rejecting what He said.
The statement that the chief
priests and national leaders found misleading was Jesus saying He Himself is
Christ, a king. That Jesus is Christ and King is correct. It is not misleading.
For Jesus to have presented Himself as not the Christ and King would have been
misleading.
At the end of his account of
Jesus’ ministry, John says:
Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not
written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his
name. (John 20:30-31 ESV)
From what is written in John’s
Gospel, I want to take a look at a few of the things that Jesus said about
Himself.
First, I want to look at John 6.
In John 6, Jesus got into a conflict with followers and opponents alike over
the issue of His kingdom.
It all started when He fed a crowd
of over 5,000 men plus women and children. Starting with just five barley
loaves and two small fish, Jesus thanked God for the food and began
distributing it to the people. When everybody had eaten their fill, they
gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers. John 6:14-15 tells us:
When
the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the
Prophet who is to come into the world!" Perceiving then that they were
about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to
the mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15 ESV)
The crowd was ready to force Him
to be their king.
How strange! When Pilate asked
Jesus more about Him being a king John tells us they had the following
exchange.
Then
Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You
say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have
come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
listens to my voice." (John 18:37 ESV)
Jesus basically tells Pilate that
He is a King, but when the crowd wanted to make Him king, Jesus prevented them
by slipping away. At that time, Jesus told them who He is. He said:
I am
the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes
in me shall never thirst. (John 6:35 ESV)
In this statement, Jesus declares
who He is. He says, “I am the bread of
life.”
With this statement, Jesus caused
many of His disciples to stop following him. We see this in John 6:66.
A lot of discussion took place
before they deserted Jesus, but at the heart of the issue was this statement of
Jesus that He is the bread of life. Jesus explained it like this:
Truly,
truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.
Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread
that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the
living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will
live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh. (John 6:47-51 ESV)
He spoke as no one else could, and
although He spoke the truth, they accused Him of misleading the nation. Jesus
said, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
This statement indicates the kind of King Jesus is. He gave His life for those
He rules.
This statement takes us to another
place where Jesus declares who He is. In John 10: He says:
After the incident with the bread
and fish, conflict continued to grow between the Jewish leaders and Jesus. The dispute
centered on who Jesus was/is. Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind. The
man never saw anything in his life until Jesus opened his eyes. This was an act
of God. However, some of the Pharisees said:
In their minds, Jesus broke God’s
command to keep the Sabbath day holy by healing the blind man on the Sabbath.
They asked the blind man what he thought, and he said:
Why, this
is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my
eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper
of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has
it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were
not from God, he could do nothing. (John 9:30-33 ESV)
For his clarity and insight, they
excommunicated him. Jesus heard that they had kicked him out, so he found him
and said:
"Do
you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir,
that I may believe in him?" Jesus said to him, "You have seen him,
and it is he who is speaking to you." He said, "Lord, I
believe," and he worshiped him. Jesus said, "For judgment I came into
this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become
blind." (John 9:35-39 ESV)
The Pharisees heard this and
realized that Jesus was saying they were blind. They were supposed to be the
shepherds of Israel, but they were blind to the truth. Jesus demonstrated who
He was by feeding the vast crowd and by healing the blind man, but they were
blind to the truth. These were just two of the many things Jesus did to
demonstrate who He was. John says of Him:
Now
there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be
written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would
be written. (John
21:25 ESV)
The many things that Jesus did
were to help them see. In telling them they were blind, Jesus was trying to
help them see. The only thing that He did not do was force them to believe.
When the conflict between Jesus
and the Jewish leaders came to a head, Jesus prepared His disciples for what
was about to happen. He told them He was going to be crucified, but He would
rise from the dead on the third day. Jesus explained that He would go away, but
they knew the way to where He was going. Jesus’ disciple, Thomas, dared to ask
what Jesus meant, and Jesus said:
I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me. (John
14:6 ESV)
Do you see what has happened here?
Three times Jesus has said, “I
am.”
1.
I am the bread of
life.
2.
I am the good
shepherd.
3.
I am the way, and
the truth, and the life.
These statements came after Jesus
had given conclusive evidence of who He was. John records other “I am”
statements Jesus made, all of them backed up by the works Jesus did. These
three are representative of what Jesus said about Himself and are used to lead
us to a conclusion.
We are each in a position like
Pilate was.
Easter has put us in this
position. We have to decide if the charges the Jews brought against Jesus are
true or not.
I watched a debate between John
Lennox and Peter Atkins. John Lennox said that the resurrection of Jesus was
strong evidence for his Christian faith. Peter Atkins said that this was
laughable and completely ridiculous because dead people do not rise from the
dead. And, this is the point. The historical evidence and the testimony of the
eyewitnesses all say that Jesus rose from the dead.
Jesus has done everything but
force people to believe. And now, we have a choice to make. We can agree with
the leaders of the Jewish people and say that this Jesus stuff is just
misleading the people. Or, we can do like Pilate and see through the jealousy
and lies of the Jewish people but crucify Jesus because to do otherwise would
have meant losing his political position.
The tomb is empty. The promise of
Jesus’ return is hard upon us. Jesus has said, “I am the way, and the truth,
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If we ignore Jesus’ statement, we
crucify Him in our hearts and act like Jesus is still in the tomb. But this is
the definition of insanity because it ignores or is out of touch with reality.
On the other hand, if we believe
that God has raised Him from the dead, we do the work of God. Jesus said:
As we celebrate the resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ, we proclaim that He is risen. We affirm our faith in
Him who God has sent, and we do the work of God.