For or Against?

If we had only the accounts in the four gospels from which to form an opinion about Pontius Pilate, we might find ourselves with a measure of sympathy for his plight. After all, he didn’t invite a crazed mob of angry Jews to show up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, threatening the peace, his person and his reputation. He didn’t ask to be accused of public disloyalty to Caesar. He didn’t ask for the job of judging Jesus.

He certainly doesn’t come across as hostile to the Lord personally. I’m quite sure he would much rather have been snugly tucked into his bed than making a life-or-death decision in a situation he didn’t understand.

Matthew tells us Jesus greatly amazed him and that the governor persistently tried to steer the Jewish mob into just about any resolution other than a sentence of crucifixion. Mark has Pilate asking, “Why? What evil has he done?” John has him declare Jesus thrice “not guilty”. The gospels make it abundantly evident crucifying our Lord Jesus was very far from Pilate’s preferred course of action.

Thing is, he did it anyway.

The Kings of the Earth

For that reason and that reason alone, the believers who gathered in Acts 4 to pray numbered Pilate among the enemies of their Lord and Savior. “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus … both Herod and Pontius Pilate.” Pilate was not just a weak man, a pawn, a reluctant tool of the bitter, envious Jewish religious leadership. No, the disciples considered him an enemy. They grouped him with the ranting and railing “kings of the earth” prophetically described in Psalm 2, men who take their stand against the Lord and his Anointed saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart.”

Were those early followers of Christ wrong in appropriating David’s words to describe a man who was just trying to avoid a riot? I don’t think so. At least if they were, the Lord did not see fit to correct their error. Moreover, God added his enthusiastic Amen to their prayer: “The place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” That seems a strange way to issue a mild correction to the misreading of an awkward and unavoidable situation.

No, I take it they were spot-on in their assessment of Pilate. Was he weak? Yes. Cowardly? Yes. Reluctant? Surely. Impressed with our Lord? Most definitely. Yet without his craven capitulation and failure of character, our Savior would never have been crucified. Pilate made himself an enemy to both the Lord Jesus and his Father.

Wow. Would you want to be in that position?

On the Fence

Remember the words of our Lord concerning taking sides. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Jesus was the great divider of men. He came to bring not peace but a sword, and with the sword that came out of his mouth, he split the whole world into two categories, with no blurring of lines, no crossing of boundaries and no convenient intersection where two sets overlap as they might in a math problem. You could not be on the fence about Jesus. You had to take your stand.

Nicodemus eventually did that, didn’t he. He came by night to talk to the Lord in John 3, surely for fear of the Jews. In John 7, he couldn’t help himself from challenging their determination to arrest Jesus with a gentle but rhetorical reminder that they were operating outside the Law they claimed to revere. “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” But that was as far as he took it. Like Pilate, he was weighing the cost of taking our Lord’s side. In that moment, it was still too great for him.

Oddly, that was not the case in John 19. Our last glimpse of Nicodemus is a man carrying seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes to join Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus. Forget the cost, which I’m sure was all but prohibitive, giving evidence that identifying as a follower of Jesus and giving his Lord an appropriate burial was his highest priority. I don’t know if you’ve lifted and lugged around seventy-five pounds recently, but I can assure you it isn’t possible to do discreetly. In doing so, he declared his allegiance at a time when the Lord’s closest disciples were all in hiding. In the end, Nicodemus picked a side.

Taking Sides

Pilate did too. His words said, “Not guilty” and “King of the Jews.” His actions said, “Guilty” and “Criminal”. Where the Lord Jesus is concerned, good intentions are never enough. Even closet discipleship will not get the job done. “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

There came a time when I too was confronted with the claims of Christ. Like Pilate, I didn’t ask for the job of passing judgment on him. Like Pilate, I would rather have just put off dealing with that for another day, or have simply changed the subject.

Too bad. Like Pilate, I didn’t get to pass on the question. Neither will anyone else.

Let us therefore go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. There’s really no other good option. Closet disciples have no assurance of salvation. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.