Behold the Man!

Transcripts of the segment on Christ as Blameless

Caught up in these events is this man Pilate. Pilate is the embodiment of Imperial Rome in the region. Embracing, as it did, most of the then-known world, Rome represents humanity as a whole in its official institutions. And three times, in the record, Pilate (in chapters 18 and 19) says three times publicly, officially in his role as the governor and the Roman appointee, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” And to understand the importance of that, we remind ourselves again today, as we come to chapter 19, that Pilate is acting as the legitimate authority in the state, just as the Sanhedrin was the legitimate religious authority within Judaism. Pilate is the legitimate secular authority within the Empire. And so, if you want to think of it as a moment this evening, here we have his own nation, the Jews, against him; here we have the Roman authorities representing the world, as they knew it, against him. Here we see the whole world, both the secular authority and the holy nation both opposed to God’s Christ. Psalm 2 comes to mind. The nations have gathered together against the Lord and against His Anointed, that is against the Lord’s Christ. And what we have the Son of God doing, here in this chapter, is putting himself at the mercy of the nations, the very people he has made.