Calvary Road Baptist Church
“WHAT DEATH HE SHOULD DIE”
John 18.28-32
Have you thought much about the Lord Jesus Christ? Most people give only passing thought to Him, knowing some things about Him without pondering the implications of His doing, His dying, and His conquest of death. Still fewer people focus their attention on Him during stressful times, taking no note that who your mind is fixed on you tend to imitate. This is reflected in Hebrews 12.2:
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”
“Throughout the New Testament the apostles appealed to two areas of the life of Jesus of Nazareth to establish his Messiahship. One was the resurrection and the other was fulfilled messianic prophecy. The Old Testament, written over a one-thousand year period, contains nearly three hundred references to the coming Messiah. All of these were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and they establish a solid confirmation of his credentials as the Messiah.”[1]
Being only three weeks past Easter Sunday, I have delivered several messages from God’s Word establishing the historical and Biblical proof of Christ’s resurrection. In this message, I will make mention of fulfilled messianic prophecy regarding the highly unusual manner of His death, predicted as it was many centuries before its fulfillment.
My text is John 18.28-32. Please find that passage and stand for the reading of God’s Word:
28 Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.
29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?
30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.
31 Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death:
32 That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.
John’s Gospel provides much more detail of the narrative than the other Gospel accounts. Matthew and Mark are silent in this regard, while Luke’s Gospel devotes only one verse to the events mentioned in these five verses written by John.[2] There was an excellent and practical reason for this.
Remember that not only was John the youngest of the apostles, too young to serve as a witness in any court had anyone fear a later investigation, but he was also possibly related in some way to the high priest’s family. John 18.15 reads,
“And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest.”
Thus, young John was an eyewitness to the illegal and unjust proceedings undertaken against the Lord Jesus, and he observed everything that took place from a unique perspective. He observed firsthand the Lord’s seizure by the Roman soldiers and Temple guards late at night in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Judas Iscariot pointed Him out to betray Him, betraying Him with a kiss.[3]
He also stood by during the three trials conducted throughout the night to the break of day, first, in the home of Annas and subsequently in the house of Caiaphas. Further, there is little doubt John stood amid the old Jewish men of the Sanhedrin who populated the audience standing before Pilate and the Lord Jesus at the Praetorium.
Yes, John was among the apostles who initially fled the scene when the hundreds of Roman soldiers and dozens of Temple guards took the Savior into custody. But when he and Peter followed the Lord as He was taken to Annas’ home, while Peter remained near the perimeter, John entered the court of the former high priest, taking advantage of the chief priests’ familiarity with him.
With these things in mind concerning young John’s perspective as an eyewitness of the events that unfolded early in the morning on the day of our Lord’s death, let us consider the five verses in turn, written more than a half-century after the events recorded took place.
Verse 28:
“Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.”
Consider the four phrases characterized by the pronouns; “Then led they,” “and they themselves,” “lest they,” “that they might eat the passover.” The four pronouns “they” and the one “themselves” referred to that group of old men who comprised the religious establishment of the Jewish people, the Jewish Sanhedrin, along with the 500 to 600 Roman soldiers who remained on the scene, with an all but ignored young lad in the midst of them, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old. But he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of God bore him a half-century later to write a flawless and accurate account of what happened.
How could the irony unfolding before him have escaped the lad? Those old men were careful not to enter the Roman judgment hall. Why not? They shuddered at the thought of being ceremonially defiled before the Passover meal. Yet they were blind to the contradiction of having conspired, plotted, schemed, and connived, not to mention lied, to arrange the crucifixion of an innocent man. And not just an innocent man, but a sinless man![4]
Verse 29:
“Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?”
The Lord Jesus Christ was delivered to Pontius Pilate for a trial for violating Roman law. This followed His arrest the night before in the Garden of Gethsemane and three trials by the former high priest, Annas, and the current high priest, Caiaphas. What an actor Pilate was. “What accusation bring ye against this man?” As if he didn’t already know. Question. Would he have granted the chief priests a cohort of Roman soldiers numbering 500 to 600 without knowing precisely why such a large force was needed?[5] Also, did he not benefit from a sophisticated intelligence network of paid informants that kept him apprised of all the goings on in the Jewish religious hierarchy? Thus, his question here is a formality and a pretense of compliance with the Roman rule of law. Pontius Pilate imagined he both knew what was transpiring and had a measure of control of the events, just as the Jewish religious leaders imagined they had a firm grip on events. However, each of them was subject to the plan and purpose of Almighty God.
Records indicate Pilate was appointed to his position by the Roman emperor Tiberius in 26 AD and held the office for about ten years. So, he is about seven years into his term as Roman governor. He owed his position to the powerful commander of the elite praetorian guard in Rome, a man named Sejanus, who died in 31 AD, some two years before these events were unfolding. Therefore, with his primary political backer no longer alive, Pilate’s position in the Imperial Roman hierarchy was considerably weakened at the time of our Lord’s trial, around 33 AD.[6] Thus, some of Pilate’s conduct is easier to understand in light of his more politically vulnerable position, a vulnerability the Jewish religious leaders would have been keenly aware of and no doubt made use of.
Notice how the verse begins, “Pilate then went out unto them.” This suggests that Pilate was not anxiously waiting for the prisoner or the Jewish Sanhedrin's arrival, though he certainly knew they were coming. Not only had all of these events been arranged, but he likely received updates from messengers dispatched by Roman tribunes as the prisoner's locations changed throughout the night. Here is a plausible list of the messages Pilate might have received throughout the night:
“Subject now in custody in the garden known as Gethsemane.”
“Subject now at the home of Annas.”
“Subject now at the home of Caiaphas.”
“Subject now being brought to the praetorium.”
And you can tell who outranks whom by who does the waiting on whom. That is almost universal in most cultures, though it seems lost on a younger generation not appropriately raised to honor those older or who outrank them by showing up on time. Pilate went out to those old men because he had kept them waiting until after their arrival. That is, after all, how status-conscious people of all cultures throughout history have done it. The subordinates wait for their elders or those who wield more power; they do not insult them by arriving late to an arranged meeting. The Jews were a conquered people, their territory occupied by the Imperial Roman army. Therefore, it would have been insulting to have kept Pilate waiting, and was fitting that Pilate kept the Sanhedrin waiting, even if for a short time.
Having appropriately demonstrated to the Romans and Jews in attendance who was the wielder of military might and political power, Imperial Roman power, by making his audience wait for him to join them, Pilate then asked,
“What accusation bring ye against this man?”
Before considering his question, reflect with me what we know Pilate already knows. The night before, he had authorized a cohort of Roman soldiers to accompany the Temple guards and several Jewish civilians to search for and take into custody this troublesome Jewish man from Galilee. A commander does not dispatch hundreds of soldiers to do something without knowing precisely what it is they are doing, and why. Pilate’s knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ was guaranteed to be extensive, with intelligence summaries of people and events submitted to him regularly.
To illustrate. There would be no reason why the Roman centurion whose servant was healed by the Lord, Matthew 8.5-13 and Luke 7.2-10, would not have reported his good news with delight up the chain of command. Pilate would have known of this from the centurion’s commander. Also, there can be no doubt that the Romans received reports from the publicans they employed and bought information from. And do not think Annas and Caiaphas did not feed intelligence to Pilate when it suited their purposes. Do you imagine the Roman governor was not informed about this fellow who fed 5,000 men with five loaves and two fishes and then fed another 4,000?[7] So, when Pilate asked that question, he worded it with formal intentionality, using the Greek word kategoria for a legal accusation in matters of law.[8] This was the opening of the trial by a Roman authority figure and a directive for the presiding official to present formal charges. The trial has begun.
Verse 30:
“They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.”
Three things stand out in this verse:
First, notice that the chief priests did not provide Pilate’s requested information. The Roman governor, the legal officer presiding over the trial, asked for the charges leveled against the Lord Jesus Christ. However, the accusers did not respond by identifying the charges against the accused. Do you not find that interesting? Why would they do that? Why would the Lord’s accusers react to a request for formal charges by not providing formal charges? Could it be they had no formal charges of wrongdoing under Roman law?
Next, notice that the chief priests resorted to name-calling. Those old religious leaders called the Lord Jesus Christ a malefactor, the Greek word kakopoiá½¹s.[9] By doing this, they slandered Him. In the previous trials at the homes of Annas and Caiaphas, the Lord had asked what wrongdoing He was charged with, without response.[10] In essence, Pilate asked, “What is the charge?” And they responded by saying, “He does bad things!” Really? He does bad things? That’s pretty subjective. Different people have differing opinions about what are bad things, do they not? Name-calling is a tactic known as an ad hominem attack,[11] and is most frequently resorted to when opponents are on the offensive and have nothing of substance to accuse their adversary of. You attack the individual’s personality when you cannot attack the person’s conduct.
Finally, notice that we have what is called a second-class conditional sentence, which is a contrary to fact condition:[12]
“If he were not a malefactor,”
which He was not,
“we would not have delivered him up unto thee.”
The implication here? The chief priests had delivered an innocent man to Pilate.
The Jewish religious leaders wanted Pilate to take their uncorroborated word that the Lord Jesus was a bad man, a lawbreaker, and a danger to the established order. But there is little doubt that Pilate had seen the Lord’s triumphal entry with his own eyes and heard the throngs of people praising the Savior as He entered Jerusalem on a donkey colt less than a week earlier. He only had to look out a window of the Antonia Fortress to see the city gate the Lord Jesus rode through. And did he not have spies throughout the city? He knew the Lord Jesus was no immediate threat to the Romans or to public order. Our Lord incited no riots. But He was a threat to the established religious order. Pilate likely recognized that.
Verse 31:
“Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.”
We know it is early on Friday before the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. For one thing, the Jewish Sanhedrin had to wait until the sun had risen to officially convene their official trial and convict the Lord Jesus Christ, Mark 15.1. We also know it is early morning because of the Roman preference for tending to official business and requirements as soon after sunrise as possible. This comports with John’s remark in verse 28,
“and it was early.”
The arrival of the Roman cohort might have surprised Pontius Pilate a bit. Not that they were so early or that there were so many soldiers. After all, Pilate had dispatched the Roman soldiers. What might have surprised him a bit was the arrival of the Sanhedrin with them and their prisoner. Almost seventy old Jewish priests and influencers might have been more than Pilate expected. All the more reason to keep them waiting after their arrival and announcement, to remind those despised Jewish men who was in charge, who, of course, equally hated the Roman governor. After enough time had passed to remind the old men of their relative position on the power hierarchy pyramid, Pilate stepped from his private quarters into the judgment hall. Verse 29 reads,
“Pilate then went out unto them.”
That Pilate knew of the chief priest’s problem with Jesus of Nazareth cannot be disputed since he had dispatched many soldiers the night before to help the Jews manage their developing crisis. But it may have surprised him to see the condition the Savior was in, standing before him, bloodied and bruised by those oh-so-refined Jewish men. They laid hands on one of their own. Perhaps the situation was a somewhat more serious concern to the Jewish religious leaders than Pilate had been led to believe. Were the Jewish religious leaders guilty of less than full disclosure to Pilate? Possibly.
Thus, it might not have been cleverness or cuteness that prompted Pilate to ask,
“What accusation bring ye against this man?”
He could very well not have known much more than an awareness that the Jews needed help with a troublemaker, “Can you help us out with a show of force?” That they dodged his straightforward question by responding somewhat evasively might have miffed him, especially in front of his audience of Roman underlings:
“They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.”
That might explain his response:
“Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.”
They brought a prisoner to him, a man they had beaten up. Using the appropriate legal terminology, Pilate asked them what the charge was against the prisoner. Pilate is now wearing his legal official hat by asking that question, invoking a technical legal term. But, in response, the Jewish men present did not give him a straight answer to his direct question. So, what does the Roman governor do? He reminds them that he is not to be toyed with. How dare they respond to his question by hum-hawing around and insinuating that he should trust them? Trusting anyone was not a highly developed Roman trait, especially trusting the despised Jewish men who gave him so much money under the table in the form of bribes for his protection of their rackets. If Pilate had, by this time, discerned that the chief priests had Christ’s execution on their minds, perhaps he decided to remind them that presuming to know what he was going to do without negotiating with him what they wanted him to do was not how he wanted to wield his official Roman authority. Tossing the problem they brought to him back to them, the apostle recorded their grudging response to Pilate:
“The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.”
There! They admitted it. They said it out loud. Translated “lawful,” á¼”xestin means right, authorized, permitted, or proper.[13] They admitted their legal inability to deal with the problem as they wanted it to be dealt with.
Verse 32:
“That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.”
In this verse, the Apostle John editorialized his historical account of the events unfolding by pointing out to his readers that a prediction was being fulfilled. This is because the Jewish method of administering capital punishment and the Roman method of administering capital punishment were very different.
The Jewish method of executing a convicted criminal guilty of a capital crime was death by stoning. The Roman method of executing a convicted criminal guilty of a capital crime was crucifixion, a far more horrible, painful, and drawn-out form of execution, sometimes lasting days of agony.
Recall what is found in John 12.32-33, where Jesus said,
32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
33 This he said, signifying what death he should die.
You might remember, from Deuteronomy 21.22-23, the passage about being put to death and then being hung from a tree:
22 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:
23 His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
Under the Mosaic Law, a guilty person might be stoned to death, with his dead body then hung from a tree. But the Romans hung someone from a tree, in this case a cross, to end that person’s life, with the body then left hanging on the tree. That a Jewish Sabbath was approaching at sundown necessitated taking the bodies down for burial so that no bodies were hanging on a Sabbath.
It might also come to your mind what was written in John 3.14, where we read,
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”
Red-letter editions of the Bible suggest these were words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ. However, since there are no first- or second-person pronouns and verbs in John 3.13-21, it is likely that this passage is John’s theological reflection on the conversation the Lord Jesus Christ had with Nicodemus a half-century earlier.[14] I mention that only to suggest that John 3.14 might not have been a prediction made by the Lord but a reflection written by the Apostle almost six decades later when he wrote the fourth Gospel account. It is still inspired and true, but John’s comments rather than the Lord Jesus Christ’s words. The red ink guys are not infallible.
The Lord predicted the manner of His execution in John 12.32-33 to link His death to Deuteronomy 21.22-23, a prophecy written more than fourteen centuries earlier.[15] There are only two kinds of belief systems known to man: belief systems that are not based on the fulfillment of ancient predictions and belief systems that are based on the fulfillment of ancient predictions. Marxism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, and all the rest are belief systems that do not rest on the fulfillment of predictions made centuries earlier. The Christian faith, on the other hand, does. And it is the only belief system that does. This prophetic fulfillment is one of some three hundred found in the Bible, each unique to the Christian faith!
There can be no atheists until there are first theists. There can be no antichrists without there first being the Christ. There can be no counterfeit religious faiths without a genuine religious faith.
After all, criminal counterfeiters do not print counterfeit one hundred fifty dollar bills or seventy-five dollar bills. No. They print counterfeit one hundred dollar bills and copies of the genuine, with the existence of the counterfeits being proof of the existence of the genuine, the real, the authentic.
I have presented to you evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ’s death by crucifixion, predicted almost 1,500 years before He was born, was fulfilled. That proof shows He is genuine. He is real. He is Israel’s Messiah. He is the Savior sent from God, and you reject Him at your peril.
__________
[1] Josh D. McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), page 164.
[2] Luke 23.2
[3] Luke 22.48
[4] John 8.7; Hebrews 4.15; 9.28
[5] The word speira refers to a Roman cohort that numbered 1,000 at full strength, though ordinarily numbering 500-600.
[6] Andreas J. Köstenberger, John - ECNT, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), pages 524-525.
[7] Matthew 14.21; 15.38; 16.9-10; Mark 6.44; 8.9, 19-20
[8] Rogers, Jr., Cleon L. and Rogers III, Cleon L., The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key To The Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1998), page 223.
[9] Bauer, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), page 501.
[10] John 18.23
[11] Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat And More, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985), page 22.
[12] Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1950), page 109.
[13] Lidija Novakovic, John 11-21: A Handbook On The Greek Text - BHGNT, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2020), page 237.
[14] Lidija Novakovic, John 1-10: A Handbook On The Greek Text - BHGNT, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2020), page 84.
[15] Edward Reese, The Reese Chronological Bible, (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1977), page 318.
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