In this season of Lent, we will be working through the final chapters of John’s gospel, looking at the events before, during and after Jesus’ death. The first verse of John 19 takes us straight into the events that take place just before Jesus is crucified, as Pilate took Jesus and flogged him (John 19:1).
(A) BEFORE THE CROSS: THE SPECTACLE AND THE SENTENCE OF THE GUILTY (JOHN 19:1-16)
These events that occur before Jesus’ death lead us from a legal and political situation into the death of Jesus. Most of the time, we forget that so much happened before the cross – that he was betrayed by his disciple, Judas, at the Last Supper, that he was taken to the Jewish religious leaders, and here, he stood before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who struggled to judge Jesus. Pilate was in this position because only the Romans had the authority to crucify a man; he did not want to kill Jesus.
Pilate had Jesus badly flogged and humiliated simply to satisfy the anger of the Jews. This was also why Pilate had Jesus dressed in a purple robe and a crown of thorns and allowed the Jews to worship him as a false king (John 19:2). But Pilate himself found no guilt in Jesus (John 19:4) and in saying “Take him yourselves and crucify him” (John 19:6), he was trying to pass the responsibility of this judgement on to the Jews. He did not want the inconvenience of the guilt that would befall him should he sentence Jesus against his conscience.
The Jews, however, were not having it. They pointed to a law in Lev 24:13-16, in which God commanded that “whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him.” They claimed that based on this law, Jesus ought to die because he was claiming to be the Son of God. But instead of stoning him as a congregation, they wanted Pilate to do it. The Jews wanted Pilate to bear the whole responsibility of killing Jesus. In the gospels, we see that it was not uncommon for the religious leaders to pick and choose the laws they wanted to obey, and to apply them fast and loose. They hardly applied the laws fully to the degree that they were commanded. They wanted Jesus condemned, but they did not want to be responsible for it.
On hearing their response, Pilate became even more afraid (John 19:8). He had been sucked into a turf war and did not want innocent blood on his hands, so he decided to confront Jesus himself. He tried to get some background information on Jesus, who gave him no answer (John 19:9).
Pilate’s encounter with Jesus here was far from what he expected. He did not expect this man to be complicit in his own death by refusing to respond. Standing face to face with Jesus, he felt the need to underscore his own authority (John 19:10).
And Jesus’ answer is stunning. With his face covered in blood, thorns piercing into his skull, his body bruised and battered, he stood silent before Pilate and had the gall to tell him the reality of his authority. In his response to Pilate (John 19:11), Jesus says two things that should make us sit up:
Pilate had no authority over Jesus unless it had been given to him from above. Pilate’s authority was not inherent but derived. He was just a governor who had received authority from Caesar. Pilate had no power of his own. This wasn’t just crazy courage; it was true. This was a statement about who Jesus actually is. No one there was in charge but God.
The people who had just delivered Jesus over to Pilate were more guilty than Pilate was. Just a few verses earlier, the Jews had tried to push the responsibility of condemning Jesus to Pilate. John had made this point clear in John 18:30-32. But here, Jesus tells Pilate that they are, in fact, more guilty; they had committed the greater sin.
We see that at no point in this exchange did Jesus surrender authority. He was in sovereign control over his life and death.
From then on, Pilate sought to release Jesus (John 19:12), but the Jews pushed him further, saying that Pilate was obligated to defend Caesar’s authority as king. When he heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat himself on the judgement seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, or Gabbatha in Aramaic. Now, in this public spot, at the sixth hour (which is about noon), in the heat of the day, Pilate was about to make the final declaration. He was ready to pronounce his judgement (John 19:13-14).
Shockingly, he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” and again in the following verse, he asked “Shall I crucify your King?” (John 19:15). In defiance, the chief priests answered, “we have no king but Caesar”, and so Pilate delivered Jesus over to them to be crucified (John 19:16). In the face of this public desire and pressure, he had “no choice” but to give Jesus over.
In laying out this big, public drama of politics and legal rights, John wants us to understand that Jesus was being crucified on legal grounds that were illegal. The only reason a person could have been crucified was that they were legally condemned, by the law, to die this way. Yet John made a spectacle of the illegality of this legal condemnation. He wanted us to understand the incredible amount of emotional frustration in the events that lead to Jesus’ crucifixion. He wanted to convey how wrong, how unfair and just how offensive it was, that a righteous man would be condemned in the eyes of the authorities, the very people responsible for upholding and executing justice. They all saw the righteousness of this innocent man, but they caved in to politics and condemned him.
As we read this, our hearts should rightly be saying, “No, no, you shouldn’t be crucifying him. You should set him free.”
In many ways, we experience frustration in our lives. When we look at the world today or at this Covid-19 situation, chances are, we’ve been worried and haven’t had the time to acknowledge our frustration, sadness, and anger. We feel that so many things are going wrong, and that things shouldn’t be this way.
Yet this frustration of daily life is just a tiny fraction of the frustration we should feel upon seeing the most righteous man find not vindication but condemnation before the authorities. Jesus was being delivered over for crucifixion – nothing is more wrong than this. This sense of frustration should wreck us.
(B) ON THE CROSS: THE SHAME, SONSHIP AND SUFFERING OF THE KING (JOHN 19:17-30)
John recorded the physical setting in which Jesus was crucified in incredible detail. In John 19:17-18, he tells us that Jesus went out, bearing his own cross, to a place call The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. We also know that he was crucified between two others. We tend to pass over these descriptions when we read the text. But know that John captured these events in such detail because he was describing the scene in plain terms from his memory, exactly the way he remembered it.
Then, John zoomed in on a particular controversy (John 19:19-22). Pilate had written an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” This sign had no ambiguity about who this Jesus is (his name, his place of origin) and his kingship. The whole debate in the last 18 verses surrounding the kingship of Jesus comes to a climax here, where Pilate acknowledged and confirmed that this Jesus was indeed the King of the Jews, and this was hoisted upon the Jews, who took offense at it.
Moreover, John wanted us to understand that this King came for the Jews, but not just for the Jews. The sign proclaiming Jesus’ kingship was written in Aramaic (the commercial language of the day, so the Jews and everyone there could read it), in Latin (so the Romans could read it), and in Greek (so the Greeks, too, could read it). Here we hear echoes of John 1:11, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” and of Paul’s writing in Romans 11, where salvation came to the Gentiles when the Jews rejected Jesus. John was careful to weave these theological themes together in presenting to us this King.
John then went on to describe two groups of people with different encounters with Jesus at the cross (John 19:23-27). The first is the group of soldiers who take his garments and divide them among themselves. Then, they casted lots for the tunic, which was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. When we read Scripture with this kind of specific detail, we ought to slow down. In discovering the one-piece tunic and deciding to cast lots for it, the soldiers were unknowingly fulfilling Scripture in Psalm 22:18.
This should make us pause and think: At any one point in time, God is doing a thousand things we can’t see. The God, who is before time and space, and works out His plans and purposes long before things happen, is intervening in real time to bring His purposes to pass. The fulfilment of Scripture here should make us stand in awe of the God who is eternal and is working in ways we don’t understand.
Have you spent time thinking about what God is doing right now in your life and in this Covid-19 situation? Could it be that the things going on in our lives are much greater than we realise, and because they are part of His greater plan, they could be much better than we realise?
The second group who encounters Jesus as the cross is the women John names in John 19:25. To our horror, we realise that all these events happened in full view of Jesus’ mother. Standing at the foot of the cross were his mother, his aunt, and Mary Magdalene – all women who loved Jesus. As he hung on the cross, he not only suffered well, but in that moment, he had the presence of mind to think of his mother and her future. He gave the responsibility of caring for her to “the disciple”. What a faithful, loving son – he thought about whom he was leaving behind in his death.
Most biblical scholars agree that “the disciple” here refers to John himself. What would it have felt like to be John in those moments, to hear from the cross your master handing you the responsibility of caring for his own mother? In a small way, Jesus was laying out the way God’s people are to relate to and care for one another. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life” (Luke 18:29-30). Even in this moment, Jesus’ priorities were clear. His sonship was there at the cross. Things were not out of God’s hands, and neither are our relationships today out of His hands. Even at the cross, he had a plan and a purpose.
John 19:28-30 lays out the moments of Jesus’ death. The accounts of the cross differ across the four Gospels, as the different writers present the events in slightly different terms. Here, John highlights an exchange involving sour wine. What was he trying to communicate?
Firstly, we know that Jesus died only when he knew that everything had been fulfilled, and he only had to do one last thing to complete it, that is, to say “I thirst”. He knew that the sin of man was atoned for and the wrath of God was satisfied by his sacrifice on the cross, and with that, he was ready to die. As that sponge-soaked sour wine was pressed up to this mouth, he received that final drink and said, “It is finished”. Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Psalm 69 shows us the whole sweep of what he was fulfilling. Even on his death bed, Jesus was thinking about Scripture and fulfilling it.
Here are two things we must take away from this encounter with Jesus:
Jesus was not so swallowed up by his situation that he gave up control. The entire act shows that Jesus was in control, that he alone brought his death to completion. At no point did he ever give up any control, sovereignty, or power, even when he gave up his life. There was never a moment that caught him off-guard. There was never a moment that things were out of his hand. This should be a huge encouragement for us.
On one hand, Jesus was in complete control. On the other, he still suffered through it regardless. He did not come off the cross. This is a balance we must understand about the cross, and we must carry this balance into our suffering. God is in control, but that doesn’t mean we are exempt from suffering.
On the cross, we see Jesus’ shame as he is humiliated. We see his priority of sonship, his suffering with Scripture running through his mind, his sovereignty, and his willingness to suffer through it all. The words of 1 Peter 2:18-25 explain how the cross applies to us. If we endure suffering for doing good, it is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this we have been called, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we might follow in his steps. In his suffering he did not sin. The cross is a picture of salvation and redemption, and it is a model for how we are to live.
This does not mean that we are to endure difficult or abusive relationships. It means that when we choose to live for Jesus, things just aren’t going to go the way we want it to go. Following Jesus isn’t going to profit us in this life. It also means that for the sake of Christ, we might have to sacrifice things that mean so much to us. But in those moments, we count it joy, because we get to stand with Jesus at the cross.
How are we to suffer through this season for Christ’s sake? What does it look like for us right now to endure discomfort, opposition, scorn, and mockery for His name? The cross must be at the centre of our lives and the way we think about our lives. We have to walk the cross-shaped road. And when we do that, we have great comfort, knowing who we are following – the One who bore his own cross and suffered for us.
Knowing that all these things were fulfilled, Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
(C) AFTER THE CROSS: THE SOVEREIGNTY, SERVANTS AND SILENCE OF THE MASTER (JOHN 19:31-42)
John then tells us two truths about the corpses of the crucified (John 19:31-37). Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that they bodies would not remain on the crosses that Sabbath, the Jews wanted to accelerate their deaths and have the bodies taken away.
To understand the actions that follow, we need to understand how crucified people die. When a person is crucified, he is hung by his hands and feet, with his weight pulling him down. With every breath, he has to pull himself up to breathe until he runs out of strength. Then he dies of asphyxiation.
The first truth: The soldiers, then, in trying to accelerate their suffocation, broke the legs of the criminals crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Jesus’ death without broken bones was the fulfilment of Numbers 9:12 and Exodus 12:46. Jesus was that perfect Passover Lamb: unblemished, without spot, and without broken bones.
The second truth: As the soldiers wanted to confirm Jesus’ death, the only way to do it was to pierce him in his side, and in doing so, blood and water gushed out. This fulfilled Scripture in Zechariah 12:10. John was again laying out the nature in which Jesus’ death fulfilled Scripture, showing us God’s sovereignty in all the events of history.
In John 19:38-42, after the death of Jesus, two characters enter the scene. The first of whom is Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus who, for fear of the Jews, secretly requested to take Jesus’ body away. The second is Nicodemus, who had earlier approached Jesus by night (John 3). He came bringing seventy-five pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes to embalm Jesus’ body.
These two men, out of reverence of this holy man, came with their gifts. They took Jesus’ body and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, so that Jesus was buried properly, as per the custom of the Jews. They treated him rightly until his death. Every single bit of Jesus’ life fulfilled the Jewish law, even in his death.
Now, there was a new tomb in a garden nearby, and because it was the Sabbath, they laid him there. And it was done. Now it was time to grieve.
At this point, it is tempting for us to rush off into the events of the resurrection – we know what’s next. But between John 19:42 and John 20:1, there was a period of rest. It is finished. It is done. Everything is paused. This is a good place for us to stop in the season of Lent and of COVID-19. We pause, lament, grieve, and express our frustrations to God.
With the disciples, can we feel the sense of sorrow – maybe we feel this way right now – as we recognise that the world isn’t what it ought to be? We’re still in our sins. Fallenness is everywhere. Like these two men, perhaps we want to reverence Jesus, but honestly right now, we feel defeated. Let’s stop and just be silent. While we look at the cross with eyes of victory, forgiveness and hope, we do so, too, with eyes of lamenting for our sins and those of others. Lamentations 3 expresses our sense of frustration even as we’re trying to hope.
In reading the whole of John 19, we looked at the events before, during and after the horrifying spectacle of the death of Jesus. We saw the hypocrisy and evil that led him to the cross, the humiliation and his priorities as he suffered and bore the sins of the world, and having done all that was necessary for the forgiveness of sins, how he gave up his spirit in fulfilment of Scripture. Then, we saw how his body was treated in reverence. And now, we stand in the silence of his death.
In this season of Lent, while we have the time to stay at home or spend more time in quiet reflection, God may be giving us a different spiritual mood in reading this text, to see the fallenness of the world and of our own lives, then to grieve the death of Jesus. Although we know that the worst of our sins go with him there, today, let us feel the weight of our sin and pause for a moment, and lament.
