John 18:28-38 Jesus' trial part III

John 18:28-38 The priests and soldiers led Jesus to the Praetorium. (The Praetorium was simply the governor's palace.) They did not want to enter because they would be defiled so Pilate accommodated them by coming outside to meet them. Perhaps it never occurred to them that setting up a mock trial to have an innocent man condemned to death on false charges would defile them far more than mere contact with a gentile building. The initial discussion about the charges against Jesus are not very enlightening. The Jews' initial complaint was that He was an evildoer. (Greek kakopolos, literally an evil-doer). A bizarre characterization of Jesus. With so general a statement, Pilate could not judge Him under Roman law. The Jews indicated that they sought the death penalty, which required Roman approval. Only Luke records that the accusation the Jews brought to the Romans was that Jesus misled the Jews, forbade His followers to pay taxes to Caesar, and called Himself a King. (Luke 23:2) This is ironic given Jesus' being the truth, and that He specifically on one occasion (Matthew 22:17-21) told his listeners to render unto Caesar the coin of the realm, specifically to pay taxes, and also had Peter go fishing to find a coin to pay the taxes in the mouth of a fish, when asked about whether His disciples payed the two-drachma-tax (Matthew 17:24-27). Perhaps Pilate was aware of this, or perhaps his primary concern was Roman authority being undermined, because the only question that he asked Jesus that is recorded (John 18:33) is whether He was the king of the Jews.

          Jesus does not kowtow or fall into a defendant mode of talking. He speaks to Pilate as though they are on terms of equals, and amazingly Pilate does not rebuke Him for it. Pilate's response is actually fairly reasonable. He asks Jesus what He had done to cause His own nation and chief priests to deliver Him to the Romans for judgment. Jesus' response is from a broader perspective. His kingdom (which He had talked about at length during His ministry) was not of this world. (Greek kosmou toutou, not belonging to the earth, world, universe, world-system). Whether or not it mattered to Pilate, Jesus was explaining a key point about the kingdom of God. Pilate probably had not heard the principles that Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount. Clearly, how God intends to rule mankind is not through a government of people who use force to establish control, or who violently seize control. The whole Bible is about the kingdom of God and, in some sense, it is the whole story of mankind.

•    God created the universe and Adam and mankind to rule it on His behalf, and to represent Him and His authority to it and everything it contains, as the Kingdom of God.

•    Adam rebelled and attempted to run the world based on His own, without accepting God's directions.

•    Adam's self-sufficiency was doomed to failure.

•    God selected others to represent Him to the world, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David. They presented God to those around Him but were unsuccessful in permanently establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.

•    God selected the nation of Israel to be His people, to establish His kingdom on earth.

•    Israel rebelled and refused to obey God.

•    God sent prophets to Israel, who promised that one day He would establish His kingdom on the earth through a descendant of David.

•    Jesus came to the earth as God incarnate, to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and fulfilled the promises to Israel.

•    Jesus went about Judea and the gentile regions nearby, doing good, healing the sick, casting out demons, performing attesting signs, and teaching about the Kingdom of God.

•    Jesus always did what the Father told Him to do, and did nothing on His own initiative.

•    Jesus taught his listeners what the kingdom of God is and how people live in it.

The rest of the story of the kingdom of God, not yet unfolded at that point:

•    Jesus would be arrested, tried, and crucified, died, and was buried, shedding His blood for the atonement of sins for whoever believes in Him.

•    Jesus would rise from the dead on the third day, and after forty days of appearing in a physical body to His followers, ascended into heaven.

•    Jesus would send the Holy Spirit from heaven to His followers to empower them to do everything He had commanded them.

•    Jesus would establish the church to exercise the authority of shepherding on earth until His return.

•    Jesus will return physically and literally to the earth to establish His kingdom on the earth for eternity, and it will be glorious.

•    At the final judgment, Jesus will establish the right once and for all.

•    Every individual is invited to make Jesus king, to receive forgiveness of sins through faith in His atoning sacrifice, to know and walk with Him and serve Him, doing the things that He says to do, in building His kingdom, representing Him, proclaiming His kingdom to every person and nation, and exercising authority on His behalf, both now and for eternity.

•    Jesus promised that all who make Him king and obey all that He commanded them would have attesting miraculous signs follow them, and that He would be with them until this present age comes to an end and His eternal kingdom is established.

          Pilate's principle concern was whether Jesus represented a threat to Rome's rule or his authority as governor. Jesus' answer was ambiguous enough in his mind that it probably didn't settle the matter, but he apparently didn't immediately accept the accusations of the chief priests.   Jesus did, after all, state that He was a king. But then He immediately linked His presence to the truth. He had earlier said that He was truth incarnate. Here He says that He came to testify to the truth and that everyone who is of the truth hears His voice. In response to this, Pilate uttered the famous philosophical question, "What is truth?"

          Here we could go into a philosophical discussion about what is truth. For most people this is not an issue. Truth is saying what corresponds to reality. If you ask a child if they did something, they either tell the truth, or they lie. There is no philosophical discussion about whether the truth exists, or what it consists of, or how you prove it. They might get away with a lie, but they know it, and sooner or later a parent usually finds out as well. But from the viewpoint of worldly philosophy, there have been as many definitions of truth as there have been schools of philosophy. Partly this is because different philosophical schools have defined truth at different layers, such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so forth.  Theories include correspondence, coherence, constructivist, consensus, pragmatic, performative, and redundancy.  It didn't matter to Pilate because what he lived by was power. He wasn't really asking a philosophical or theological question when he asked "what is truth"? Most likely he was expressing the opinion of the powerful that truth doesn't really matter because people in positions of authority make pragmatic decisions based on circumstances and their own priorities. For Jesus to bring truth up was irrelevant.