John 18:22-23
When He had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered him, “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?”
When we love God with all our mind we must, consequently, be lovers of the truth. That which is evil must hate the truth because the truth exposes it. To not love the truth is to be opposed to God because God is truth. Pay careful attention: God isn’t just truthful, He is truth. This is important for us to meditate upon in our age because our theology is so often enervated and enfeebled. Whatever God says is true because He said it. Created man doesn’t have the right to stand in judgement of God’s character or words. We are not God. When He speaks we do not determine the veracity of his proclamations – such is an abominable misjudgment brought upon us by years of false doctrine. God speaks authoritatively and truthfully because He is God. Let us not make the error of thinking that Jesus is saying that the truth could judge Him and that any man has a right to sit in a jury trying Him. No. That’s the very root of the problem. That’s the very inception of the sin that brought down the human race in the garden. He has come to redeem us because man first thought that God’s Word could be questioned.
Man is not fit to judge what is good and evil independent of God. We can only think His thoughts after Him. It’s in this light that we should hear His words to the servant that struck Him that day.
Oh, and to have the audacity to strike the living Word!
I’ve often succumbed to the temptation and wondered what rung of hell awaited this wretched man. He was guilty, after all, of assaulting Jesus Christ. He struck the very God that created all things. What a scene and what a sin!
Yet, there is something else working in this passage of John’s gospel and, again, it’s the mistake of a man acting with the world’s wisdom and values over against Heaven’s. The officer sees insolence in Jesus’ reply and, frankly, he’s not far off the mark. Jesus has chastised the high priest and, in a way, called him a hypocrite. “You know what I’ve been saying,” Jesus basically explains. “Your question is silly, even absurd.”
Well, you can be assured that no one answered the high priest this way. For any Jew to utter boldly and defiantly to the high priest was unthinkable in that day. So, the officer, who was entrusted to maintain the order and proper attitude of the proceedings, is immediately angered at Jesus’ reply. “Who are you to lecture the high priest?”
Ah, but there is the issue of our Lord’s reply to this violence done to Him.
A while back a popular TV reporter sat down for an interview with the President of the United States, now former President, Barack Obama, and asked him rather frankly about some scandals facing his administration. When the reporter thought the President was obfuscating, he pressed the issue. For doing this, he was criticized by others in the press for not showing enough respect for the President. Upon hearing this critique, the reporter replied that our country has a President, not a king.
Well, Jesus is the King of Kings and yet he allowed this entire sham to continue. It isn’t the world’s way, be sure. Such humility that our Lord displayed should forever be before us when we encounter hostility and mistreatment from the world. Jesus doesn’t lose His temper as I’m sure many of us would have given the circumstances. Instead, he offers quite an interesting rebuke – not with force, but with careful logic.
His comments after the physical attack calls the whole proceeding into question when we look at them carefully. He’s checking the premises of the officer. If He was speaking falsehood, call Him out on it but since a physical attack was the answer, Jesus points out, it’s clear that the priests don’t have a logical case from which to work. Indeed, the initiation of force for a comment like this, rather than a logical retort of their own, shows the bankruptcy of the whole endeavor.
Moreover, we get the distinct impression from Jesus’ reply that He’s calling their whole motive into question. To paraphrase the great movie line by Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup, “…you can’t handle the truth.” But it isn’t just this – it’s more like, “…you don’t strike me for the honor of the high priest, but because I’ve exposed his lack of honor.” This is the case of all men opposed to God. They rise up in violence, ridicule, or oppression when the truth threatens to expose them. They have no other choice but to resort to force to protect their errors.
Our application is that we should remind ourselves anew everyday that our Lord endured this treatment, not for some abstract stoicism, but for His unyielding love of us! Think on this: almighty God submitted to the fists of sinners, the judgment of mockers and scoffers, the scorn of the elite, and, at last, to crucifixion, for you and me so that we would be saved. Oh, my! What a glorious truth that dashes to pieces the haunts of despair we encounter in this world. Won’t the Lord who who endured all for us also deliver us from our trials? Isn’t this great a God worthy to be trusted with our lives and homes and jobs?
Second, there comes a day when the Lord will come again and He will not be judged as He was here (submitting for our sake!). It’s given unto men once to die (Hebrews 9:27) and then we must face the holy judge of all. The fist that struck Jesus belonged to no worse a sinner than you and me. Now is the day of salvation, the era of grace. So, let us take this time to rejoice in all that mercy and tell others about it – tell them about a God so great that He endured even this for the love of sinners.
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