John 18:35-36
“Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?’ Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’”
Perhaps the gravest, and most common mistake made by Christians is the underestimation of God’s power over against the power of the world. The Psalmist says:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;
he puts the deeps in storehouses.
This is the Jesus that stands before Pilate, humbly submitting to questions, accusations and slander. The absurdity of this whole encounter is the true divine comedy. By the word of His mouth, Jesus could incinerate all that He surveys and yet He stands meekly before Rome’s representative. It’s incumbent upon us to always remember this when the world appears so strong and mighty, arrogant in its evil and in bold contempt for the things of God. Jesus restrained His power for the sake of our redemption and, likewise, God still holds back His divine wrath from the world for the sake of the elect.
We imagine a toddler sauntering up to the heavyweight champion and picking a fight and yet even this is a poor image of the world judging the living God. And yet, despite the comic insanity of the world picking a fight with the Almighty, there is a terrible truth before Pilate and before us. Notice well Jesus’ warning. He’s not saying that He is powerless and because of the circumstances there’s nothing to be done. There is no “Oh well…this is the way it is.” Our Lord is not a stoic; He is absolutely sovereign and nothing happens that has not the divine seal of His approval. And He’s not saying that He has no power over earth. Jesus says in effect, “My kingdom isn’t derived from this world and its systems. My kingdom is of divine, heavenly origin and I will usher in the kingdom of God through the redemptive plan, not worldly politics and war.”
Carnal man can’t grasp this and often, it’s sad to say, Christians don’t perceive it either. Jesus consents to the cross because it pleases God to break the power of sin – and death – in just this way. To crush an enemy in battle is a sign of strength. To rise from the dead is a sign of divinity. The one implies mastery of a foe; the other declares mastery over everything. Jesus knows what’s going to happen. Pilate will tear down the temple of His body and Jesus will raise it up again. This is power! This is our hope. More still: it is also the sign of doom and judgement on all who don’t believe. Buddha is dead. Muhammed is dead. Confucius, Lao Tzu, Caesar…they have all perished and so will we likewise perish if we don’t believe. Jesus has risen. This meekness and restraint He shows before Pilate is like that of the lion calm before the challenges of the mouse. Our God needs no armies to fight His battles. Death and the grave cannot hold Him.
Would you serve Rome today? How about Babylon? Maybe the former Soviet Union or Imperial Japan? Ah, you see these are all rotting in the memories of yesterday – all left to the post-mortem autopsies of the students of history. To claim allegiance to them is preposterous. But we claim allegiance to the risen Lord. This is the choice before all men everywhere and at every time. Do you serve the dead and dying or do you serve the eternal God? Search the pages of history. This thing called the Way in the book of Acts, that we call Christianity today, could have been easily stamped out by the Jews and Romans if they had simply produced the head of Jesus, held it up in the air and said, “See! You backwater, uneducated hicks! Here’s the noggin of your supposed savior. You rubes and dopes. Go back to your sacrifices and temples or your Gentile gods. This Jesus you say is risen is here.”
Ah, but alas, the tomb was empty. This is why the Jewish leaders wanted Pilate to have guards at the tomb in the first place. They were worried about this sort of thing. But their worry is our hope. As Christians we know that those armies of angels Jesus spoke of are coming…yes, they’re coming soon. More important to us, though, in our every day life, is that Jesus didn’t need to fight Pilate’s Roman war machine. He triumphed over death so that we wouldn’t live in futility and despair. If Jesus was still in the tomb all of our pains would ultimately have the better of us. In the end, if Jesus hadn’t risen, our cancers, our losses, our defeats, and sins would ruin and kill us. So what if Jesus had beaten the Romans and then died. This is what the Pharisees wanted – earthly deliverance. This is what many want today while invoking the name of Christ. They want this world with heaven thrown in. But if Jesus had conquered Rome and not death what would that have done? What would we have today but another story of a Napoleon or a Patton? Christianity, the religion of Jesus Christ, is alone in that it assures sinners of the deliverance from the tomb. It is not about earthly kingdoms, earthly pride and, therefore, earthly wars. No – it’s about the kingdom of God and the age to come.
Right now the world looks to the evident powers. They see Washington; they see armies; they see Wall Street and corporations. This is the power they see. This is the kingdom they see. The kingdom of heaven isn’t these decaying, temporal, imperfect things and we should be as calm as Jesus was before Pilate when the world threatens.
Our King has risen.
He is undefeated.
This should cause us to rejoice in hope and gratitude just as it should send the unconverted into fits of worry because all of this is passing away and eventually we will all face the grave, then judgment.
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