Reflective Bible Study

As we continue moving through John’s gospel and focusing in on the events John tells us led up to Jesus being crucified, we come to a fascinating point in this story. In our last episode, we focused in on a subtle shift in wording that takes Jesus’ supposed innocence and shifts it to assumed guilt. However, I suspect that Pilate does not realize this shift in his presentation, because in our passage for this episode, we again see Pilate try to free Jesus.

It is interesting, because the only thing keeping Pilate from declaring Jesus as free is fear of a riot. This detail is powerful because on the surface, it seems as though everyone wants the same thing. However, Pilate can see through the hostility and he understands that the thing everyone wants in this setting, which is peace, can only come through the death of an innocent Man.

I wonder if Pilate could sense that Jesus was different from other people brought before him. Our last episode hints at a very unique conversation Pilate had with Jesus that would definitely make Jesus stand out as different. Our passage for this episode adds another twist into this event, and this twist comes when the religious leaders ultimately let slip their real charge against Jesus.

Let’s read what happened. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 19, and we will read it using the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 1, John tells us that:

¹ Then Pilate took Jesus and had him whipped. ² The soldiers twisted thorns together to make a crown. They put it on Jesus’ head. Then they put a purple robe on him. ³ They went up to him again and again. They kept saying, “We honor you, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

⁴ Once more Pilate came out. He said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing Jesus out to you. I want to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” ⁵ Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Then Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

⁶ As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. I myself find no basis for a charge against him.”

⁷ The Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law. That law says he must die. He claimed to be the Son of God.”

⁸ When Pilate heard that, he was even more afraid. ⁹ He went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus. But Jesus did not answer him. ¹⁰ “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you understand? I have the power to set you free or to nail you to a cross.”

¹¹ Jesus answered, “You were given power from heaven. If you weren’t, you would have no power over me. So the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

¹² From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free. But the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are not Caesar’s friend! Anyone who claims to be a king is against Caesar!”

¹³ When Pilate heard that, he brought Jesus out. Pilate sat down on the judge’s seat. It was at a place called the Stone Walkway. In the Aramaic language it was called Gabbatha. ¹⁴ It was about noon on Preparation Day in Passover Week.

“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.

¹⁵ But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Should I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

¹⁶ Finally, Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be nailed to a cross.

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.

In this final portion of Jesus’ trial and condemnation, two statements stood out to me.

The first statement is when Pilate pulls Jesus back into the palace and questions Him again. Jesus is silent, but when Pilate claims to have the power to release Jesus or to kill Him, Jesus tells Pilate in verse 11, “You were given power from heaven. If you weren’t, you would have no power over me. So the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Jesus shifts the focus off of Pilate and off of Himself. While acknowledging that Pilate does have power, Jesus shifts the focus onto the power that Pilate has being given to him from an outside source, and ultimately while it was Rome who put Pilate where he was, there was no doubt that God, or at least the Roman gods, had favored Pilate over the other governor options.

Unlike any other person who would have been brought before Pilate, Jesus seems to understand and accept why He is there more than the religious leaders understand why they are demanding His crucifixion. I suspect this bothered Pilate a little, because everything about Jesus was fascinating and not punishable by death.

However, it is interesting that while Pilate says He has the power to free Jesus, everything in this passage frames Pilate as trying to free Jesus and ultimately failing. Jesus rightly concluded that those who brought Him to Pilate were guilty of a greater sin.

The second statement that stood out to me was the religious leaders’ last statement in this passage and this trial. When given the choice to acknowledge who their king was, these leaders could have said God, which should have been their answer. However, instead, they give public allegiance to Caesar in verse 15 saying, “We have no king but Caesar.”

The greatest sin these religious leaders make isn’t crucifying the Messiah that God sent to them. Their greatest sin is rejecting the God they claimed to serve and replacing Him with a human emperor. Either these religious leaders are openly lying to Pilate, which wouldn’t be hard to believe, or they truly had rejected God as their King in favor of Caesar.

Looking at the actions and attitude of these religious leaders suggests that they had rejected God because they rejected Jesus. In bringing Jesus to trial and pushing for His death, these representatives of God had broken multiple laws of God, including laws against lying, laws against cheating, and laws against killing. In order to sentence Jesus to death, these leaders had to abandon all of God’s laws to bring Jesus to justice. These leaders justify their actions by claiming they are following God’s law when Moses told them that anyone who claims to be God must be put to death.

However, Moses didn’t frame this law this way. The law in question is related to blasphemy, and blasphemy is speaking out against God, or belittling God in some way. In the religious leaders’ minds, a human claiming to be God ultimately cheapens God, and this would fall under the category of blasphemy. However, nothing in this law stops God from stepping into history as a human.

Looking at Jesus’ life, everything He did pointed people to God, and everything Jesus did uplifted the perception of God those in the first century had. If people had the impression that the Old Testament God was mean, hostile, and looking for reasons to punish sinners, Jesus came to change this impression by showing us a more accurate picture of God’s love. Jesus’ life did not cheapen God in any way, and because of this, Jesus’ life was not guilty of blasphemy.

The religious leaders reject Jesus on some minor technicalities, and on Jesus not fitting their stereotypical picture of who the Messiah would be. These religious leaders openly side with Caesar against God’s Messiah showing everyone just how far they had fallen from God’s ultimate plan for their lives.

However, Jesus chose the cross. Nothing in this passage hints at Jesus wanting or desiring freedom. While Pilate tries to free Jesus because he understands Jesus is innocent, Jesus willingly walked the path of torture and death because it ultimately shows us how far God was willing to go to demonstrate His love for us.

God loves you and God loves me. Jesus died on the cross because He wants us to know just how much God loves us. When faced with God’s standard, we deserve death. However, through Jesus, God paid our debt, and He now offers us a new life with Him!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. Choose to accept Jesus’ gift and declare your allegiance to God over any and every other ideology present in today’s world. When faced with a choice, choose the path of love, the path of forgiveness, the path that values life, and the path brings glory to God.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through a personal relationship with God built on the foundation of prayer and Bible study, discover how much God loves you and how much He was willing to go through to be able to bring you home with Him!

But until that happens, and as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

A couple of podcast episodes ago, we looked at Jesus warning Peter about his upcoming denial and Peter strongly refuting this as a possibility. However, in our last episode, we saw how Jesus’ prediction came true regarding all the disciples abandoning Jesus, and in this episode, we turn our attention onto Peter, and how he fulfilled a prediction he did not want to fulfill. As you may have already guessed, we will be focusing in on Peter’s time in the courtyard while Jesus is being tried and condemned to death.

Let’s read about what happened, and discover some things we can learn about this event. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 14, and we will read it from the New American Standard Bible. Before starting to read in verse 66, it is worth noting that a few verses earlier, specifically in verse 54, Mark tells us that Peter followed behind the mob at a distance and ultimately made his way into the courtyard outside of where Jesus was on trial. Starting in verse 66, Mark tells us that:

⁶⁶ As Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came, ⁶⁷ and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Nazarene.” ⁶⁸ But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out onto the porch. ⁶⁹ The servant-girl saw him, and began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” ⁷⁰ But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too.” ⁷¹ But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” ⁷² Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he began to weep.

In this short, seven-verse passage, we see Peter fulfill the prediction that he did not want to fulfill. In these verses, Peter denied Jesus the three times Jesus had predicted.

However, the third denial stood out to me as I read it this time. Mark describes Peter’s third denial in verse 71 saying, “But he began to curse and swear, ‘I do not know this man you are talking about!’”

This third denial stands out in my mind because it kind of sounds like Peter is saying he has no idea who Jesus is. However, the only way Peter’s denial makes sense is if he had ignored every news story over the past two years prior to this, especially through the news channels in Galilee, which is where Jesus spent a lot of His time. News about Jesus had even reached Greece, since earlier that week, some Greeks had traveled to Jerusalem to see Jesus.

In my own mind, a much more plausible denial for Peter would have been one that acknowledged that he knew about Jesus, but that he had simply been too busy to pay much attention to him.

However, reading about Peter’s denial in Mark’s gospel, where some scholars believe Mark wrote this gospel from Peter’s perspective, it is interesting to not see anything written or recorded about Peter’s redemption. In contrast, John’s gospel both includes Peter’s denial of Jesus, and a challenging conversation Jesus has with Peter following Jesus’ resurrection that ends with a second invitation to follow Jesus.

One possible explanation is that Mark’s gospel has a very abrupt ending. Depending on the manuscripts and research that has happened, there are two possible endings for Mark’s gospel, but both are a little suspect for a number of reasons. This is why many Bibles today will include a longer and shorter conclusion to Mark’s gospel. However, there is evidence to suggest that neither of these endings is really the original ending of Mark’s gospel. One theory is that the real ending to Mark’s gospel was lost very early on, and some well meaning scholars in the early centuries after the New Testament wrote an ending to help Mark’s gospel have a good conclusion similar to Matthew, Luke, and John.

I am not a scholar, and I don’t have enough information or evidence to weigh in on these claims and theories, but I can say that each theory sounds reasonable. However, I find it powerful that at the close of this passage, as the rooster crows and Peter remembers Jesus’ prediction, it breaks Peter’s heart and Peter begins to weep.

Mark describes Peter’s big failure and how Peter, while confidently asserting that he would never deny Jesus, ultimately denies Jesus just like Jesus had predicted would happen. However, this failure marks a death in Peter that is only clear in hindsight. While Jesus faced the cross and physical death, Peter’s death was a death of self and a death of ego.

After his big failure, Peter had no room to brag about how good of a disciple he was. Prior to this, Peter had the reputation for being the star disciple in Jesus’ inner circle of followers. Everything is set for Peter to be Jesus’ right hand man ahead of the remaining disciples, using terms from our human perspective.

However, after Peter had failed Jesus in a bigger way than any of the other disciples – even after Jesus had warned and predicted that it would happen, Peter’s self-sufficient character breaks and dies, and he has no room to boast or brag about his accomplishments. Instead, from this point forward, Peter becomes humble and teachable, and when given the opportunity to be re-invited by Jesus, Peter steps up and accepts the invitation, proclaiming what Jesus has done for Him as someone who failed Jesus.

In our own lives, we can give up when we fail, or we can let the failure redefine who we are. When we fail God, we should let our ego die with our failure and step back up proclaiming an amazing God who forgives our sins and who accepts us back when we don’t deserve it. Peter’s gospel message and experience is similar to all of our experiences: While we fail God, God isn’t willing to give up on us!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I regularly challenge you to do, continue seeking God first in your life and choose to proclaim what He has done for us – especially what He has done when we don’t deserve it. While we have failed God more times than we may be willing to admit, He is willing to accept us back when we let our egos die with our failure. When repenting and asking for forgiveness, remember what Jesus did for us and let Jesus’ life and His sacrifice change our hearts and minds and let God’s truth transform our lives.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Choose to spend time praying and studying to grow personally closer to God and to fall in love with Him like He has fallen in love with you. Discover in the pages of the Bible, a God who gives up everything for you and me, even when we have failed Him and don’t deserve forgiveness!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or ignore where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!