Ecce Homo (Behold the Man!)

Finally, in a last ditch effort to appeal to the Jew’s pity, Pilate says, “Behold the man,” which became the Latin idiom for the suffering Messiah, Ecce Homo. “The man,” not just any man, but “the man,” Christ was like no other man, and yet like all men. And it is only as a man that he could stand instead of man as his representative and bear his sin as his substitute. And it is in this form that God became knowable and known (Jn 1:17-18, 2 Cor 4:6, Eph 4:13, 1 Jn 1:1-3). Ecce Homo captures the mystery of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, which says that God, in the person of the Son, became a human being, fully and completely, for us and for our salvation, without in any way ceasing to be God. This is the great presupposition of all Christian knowledge, and eternal life.