05.18. XVIII. THE WICKED TAKEN IN THEIR OWN NET.

XVIII. THE WICKED TAKEN IN THEIR OWN NET.

PONTIUS PILATE DEALING WITH THE JEWS. John 19:13-37 THE fatal tragedy in which Pilate bears so sad a part, has what we might almost call an after-piece, in his subsequent intercourse with those to whom at last he has made up his mind to give way. Altogether, it is, if I may say so, a strange game throughout that we see carried on between Pilate and the Jews, between the half awakened conscientiousness of the governor and the unscrupulous ferocity of the Pharisees. They are well matched in this trial of strength or skill. They are nearly balanced, mutually seeking to overbear or to overreach one another; and were it not that the subject of contention is so solemn, and the issue so serious, a discerning by-stander might almost smile as he looks on. At first the Pharisees have greatly the best of it. Their remorseless and unrelenting bigotry gives them an advantage over the vacillating Roman, who, however irreligious, has still some sense of honour and some feelings of compassion. Accordingly they press hard upon him. They drive him from one point of defence to another. They carry in succession the several outposts at which he would gladly rally and make a stand. They beat up his refuges and lurking-places, where he vainly tries to evade them, till at last they shut him up in a corner, and he is fain to capitulate, or rather surrender at discretion. But now it is his turn to make reprisals upon them. He has his revenge; he has the satisfaction of a certain kind of retaliation. And if they insolently exult in having made a tool of him, he may at least enjoy, if he can, the triumph of seeing them also sufficiently degraded; for at a certain stage the parts are reversed. These Jews, however hardened and hackneyed in their trade of hypocrisy, have yet, as well as Pilate, their tender point, at which they may be made to feel sore. They, too, have their scruples not quite so honest or generous as those of Pilate, but as sensitive when touched or trenched upon; and Pilate, their newally and confederate, having as little sympathy with their scruples as they had with his, has now the upper hand, and may, if he pleases, gratify himself by tantalizing and tormenting them.

It may not be unprofitable to mark an instance or two of this strange and sad cross-fire illustrating the vulgar proverb of the biter bit; or, to use the more becoming scriptural phrase, "the wicked taken in their own snare, and falling into the pit they have themselves digged."

I. There is much meaning in the last appeal which Pilate addresses to the Jews, evidently after he has made up his own mind, and apparently for the purpose of drawing them on to commit themselves more deeply than they might intend or wish: " And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.

Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:14-15).

It is the day before the Sabbath, and it is getting far on towards noon. Much time has already been lost through Pilate’s long hesitation; and even now, when the hours are slipping by, he seems to be still trifling with them. Else why this new solemnity of bringing Jesus out, and presenting him to them as their king? and why this idle repetition of the appeal to them, "Shall I crucify your king?" Why waste words and put off the business of the day? As it is, the day is already too far spent. The Sabbath will be upon them before the work is done, and Jesus may escape somehow after all For though they have no scruples about ridding themselves of a preacher of righteousness, and of the righteousness which he preaches nay, though they think that in this way they are doing God service by no means will they, for all the world, have the thing done on the Sabbath. They had thought that they were safe from any such risk. They set about their task betimes in the morning. They summoned their own council at the high priest’s house while it was yet dark; and they came early enough thereafter to the governor’s palace. And if it had not been for the most unexpected obstacle which they met with there, tin’ whole affair might have been already over, and they might now be decently and devoutly composing their minds for the coming day of rest. For certainly they never dreamed of any conscientious difficulty in the quarter to which they applied. They never imagined that a Roman judge could have any feeling in such a matter, or that it would cost him a second thought to dispose of it, or let them dispose of it, as they chose.

Much to their surprise and annoyance, they have been kept waiting all the forenoon, while Pilate has been conferring with Jesus, consulting Herod, and debating with himself. And now, when after much ado they have prevailed with him and got his sanction, it is barely possible to avoid encroaching on the Sabbath. And even yet Pilate seems to be manoeuvring and managing to gain time, coming slowly to the point, keeping Jesus still in his hands, repeating his idle and tedious appeals, renewing his formal and solemn protests, and shrinking from the last decisive step. In this irritating suspense they lose patience, they lose temper. Their usual cautious cunning deserts them.

They let out more and more of their bitter hatred to Jesus: " Away with him, away with him, crucify him!’ Nor is this alL They are provoked to go farther in their avowal and asseveration of compliance with the Roman government than in a less hasty moment they would have ventured to do: " We have no king but Caesar;" ’We not only give up this pretender to the throne, but we renounce all claim at any time to independence. Not only is this man not our king, but never in any sense are we to have any king but Caesar. Not even our Messiah when he does come, as this Jesus professes to be our Messiah already come, not even the true Messiah is to be our king. Were these Jews seriously and soberly prepared to make this broad avowal in a calmer hour? Were they ready thus absolutely, unequivocally, and without restriction or reservation, to pledge themselves to Borne, to deny not only this Jesus as their Messiah, but the very hope of a Messiah altogether, to give a foreign tyranny so unlimited a hold over them, and abandon all their fondly cherished hopes of national glory, liberty, and power?

No; but they had a purpose to serve. They were on the point of being baulked in a favourite scheme on which their heart was set. They were approaching the very verge of what they most punctiliously accounted sacred. They must, at all events, have Jesus crucified; and they must have him crucified in such time as not to interfere with the Sabbath.

Ah, Pilate! thou art already well-nigh even with these Pharisees who have so hardly pressed thee. It may gratify thy most vindictive feelings, it might gratify the malice of the very fiend himself, to get this insight into the hearts of these men; to see them, as the trembling eagerness of their unholy passion contends with the miserable bondage of their superstitious formality, so simply betraying themselves, so rashly committing themselves to an extent far beyond all that in the first outset of this affair they could themselves have dreamed of. It is a triumph for hell itself, to see " the wicked snared in their own devices, and falling into the pit themselves have digged"

II. And their own vain and impotent remonstrance when the blunder of their extravagant concession strikes them by way of after-thought, and Pilate keeps them rigidly to the letter of their admission serves to bring out still more palpably the sort of by-play between the parties in this crime of crucifying the Lord: " And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written" (John 19:19-22). And he answered shrewdly. For by this time the rulers of the Jews seem to have recovered their recollection, and they find that their Roman friend, their newally in this confederacy against Jesus, has somewhat outwitted them. He has taken them at their word, and has them pledged much deeper than they, on a moment’s more deliberate reflection, can well consent to be pledged.

They would fain retrace their steps. They would retract or qualify what they have said; and at least contrive to have the case put not quite so strongly against them.

Hence they propose a change in the inscription. The title, as Pilate wrote it, intimated that, even if Jesus were the rightful and hereditary king of the Jews, he might justly be condemned, because, by their own acknowledgment, they could now have no king of their own no king but Caesar. They would have it modified so as to involve an admission that there might be a king of the Jews, and to declare merely that this Jesus was not that king. The crime of Jesus, as Pilate expressed it, was, that even if he were by right the king of the Jews, even allowing the soundness and legitimacy of his claim, he should have asserted that claim at all. His crime, as the Jews would now have it explained, was merely that his claim was false. They would now have him crucified as pretending to be their king. Pilate crucified him as actually being their king: thereby declaring, not only that one wrongfully usurping the title, but that even one having an undoubted personal right to it, if he ventured to avow and exercise it, might, on the ground of the allegiance which the Jews owed to the Roman emperor, be justly put to death. And this the Jews themselves had virtually allowed, " We have no king but Caesar." It was too late, therefore, for them now to attempt to draw back; Pilate had them committed. ’ " He said, I am king of the Jews" so now you would have the accusation run. He said! nay, it was yourselves who said it. You expressly admitted that, even if he were your king, you disowned him. For you gave him over to me, not on the ground of his claiming falsely to be your king, but on the broad general ground of your having no king but Caesar. By that admission you must be held bound, even though now you may seek to escape from some of its consequences that you did not formerly advert to. You told me I might crucify your king, because you had no king but Csesar.

You appealed to my fidelity as a deputy to Csesar: " If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend/’ And you will find me faithful at least to the full extent of your own most loyal and most dutiful acknowledgment. Has not Pilate the better of them here? And do not they, with their after-thoughts, make as poor and miserable a figure as Pilate with his scruples beforehand? They first sought to entrap him, and carry him along with them in a course in which they needed his concurrence; and now they find that, in their eager haste to accomplish this, they have themselves gone much farther than they meant to go in the way of denying and disavowing their own promised and expected Messiah.

Thus the wicked and the worldly become entangled in their own schemes, and put it in the power often of the weakest of their accomplices to unmask them. Thus you may be apt to pledge yourselves unwarily to the world.

Having still some religious profession, such as it is, you would not engage in what is altogether inconsistent with it. In your practical opposition to serious godliness, and in your approaches and applications to the ungodly, you would save, as far as possible, that measure of faith, or of formality, which even yet you hold to be essential, -just as these Jews, in their persecution of Jesus and their flattery of Caesar, would fain reserve their hope of such a Messiah and such a king as might suit their views. So you would persuade yourselves, and, it may be, others too, whom you wish to go along with you, that it is not religion itself that you are sacrificing in the course which you follow, but only some extravagant and unreasonable mode of it. But, unluckily, in courting others you may be apt to betray and to commit yourselves. And a shrewd man of the world may soon clearly enough perceive, that however you may pretend or profess to be merely giving up this or that form or fashion of religion, yon are really quite willing to give up religion altogether; that, in fact, you are prepared to do so, to go the full length of preferring the world to God; and that, not merely in reference to the claims which this or that particular power or principle might have over you, but in reference to the claims of any other power or principle whatsoever, besides himself, the prince of this world has really nothing to fear.

You may be desirous, on reflection, of keeping yourselves free, to render a certain kind of homage to some ideal lord, when he shall come to demand it. But meanwhile, and practically,* to all intents and purposes you are the subjects of Caesar alone; and the servant of Caesar is shrewd enough to perceive it. And will the world be slow to take advantage of what is thus let out, and to interpret in the largest sense your giving up of your own King, and your avowal of allegiance to its prince? You may attempt to explain, and limit, and modify; you may wish to make it appear that, after all, in the particular instance in question, it is not real godliness that you are compromising or conceding, but only what may sometimes, though too strictly, be called godliness, or what unwarrantably professes to be godliness, not the King of the Jews, but one who said he was the King of the Jews. But, alas! the spirit which you evince is the spirit of unreserved submission to the world and its prince. You too clearly show, by what you give up now, that, if required, you would give up all, that not only one saying that he is your king, but your king himself, if need be, would be sacrificed.

Nay, is it not in fact your King that you are sacrificing? Is it not godliness itself that you are compromising?

Then of what worth or avail is the vain qualification which you would now attach to your concession? Why make any reservation in favour of any religion, when all religion, or at least all its real and living spirit, is substantially gone? The Jews would have it written that he whom they crucified said he was their king; as if, had he been really their king, they would not so have treated him! But this shift could stand them in no stead. It was their King, after all, whom they crucified; and therefore Pilate did them no wrong when he answered, " What I have written I have written/’

III. There is still one other feature worthy of illustration in this record of the poor and pitiful position in which these Jewish persecutors of the Lord found themselves.

It is their final application to Pilate, as their victim hung upon the cross: " The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day, (for that Sabbath-day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away" (John 19:31).

Mark here the wretched superstition of these hypocrites, at the mercy as the} 7 are now of the very man, all whose better scruples they themselves have assailed and overcome! As evening draws on apace, and the Sabbath is about to begin, the Jews are again troubled by the thought of that holy day being desecrated; more especially as this Sabbath-day is a high day, a great festival, distinguished as* the principal Sabbath of the paschal feast. It must be observed, therefore, with peculiar solemnity; its rest must be undisturbed, and its sanctity unviolated. But here are three crosses at the city gate, a most unseemly profanation of the holy season. Here is a work of death going on, by which its repose is broken; for the punishment of the cross is lingering* and many hours may elapse before the sufferers are relieved from their horrid agony. What, then, is to be done? Some speedier mode of despatching them must be resorted to, in mercy, perhaps? to shorten the period of their excruciating pains? Nay, for that matter, they might have been left to hang as long as nature could sustain them. But the Sabbath must be kept holy! And who, it might be asked, who exposed it to the risk of desecration? who but these very Jews themselves, in their haste to shed innocent blood? ’ It is a dismal work. Let it be all got over, and let every trace of it be effaced, before the peaceful Sabbath eve sets in/ Ah! are your hearts misgiving you? Are your consciences smiting you? Do you secretly feel that fraud and murder are but sorry preparations for religious duty? Nay, no such suspicion disturbs your self-complacency but the Sabbath the Sabbath!

Blessed day! that such enormous and unblushing criminality should shelter itself under colour of respect and reverence for thee! that men, dead to every holy feeling, every kind affection, should pretend to know thy value, and to love and honour thee!

These Pharisees, were they men of like passions with their fellows, that, in the midst of a crisis so awful, they were wholly occupied with such punctilios? The heavens were darkened, the earth convulsed, the rocks riven, the vail of the temple rent in twain. He who hung upon the cross, meanwhile, patiently enduring anguish, insult, and outrage, was uttering mysterious words of sovereign and gracious consolation to his fellow-sufferer, of most pathetic complaint to his God! Yet none of these things moved the Pharisees. Their only care was to get the whole business over, and all the apparatus of torture and the dead bodies taken away, no matter where, before the hour of the opening Sabbath should come. And when it did come, they would compose themselves for a due observance of all their Sabbath ritual with serene, self-satisfied vsolemnity, as if nothing extraordinary had marked that preparation-day, as if they had not gazed on the agony of One with whose mysterious sufferings heaven and earth sympathized, and had not themselves uttered the fearful imprecation, " His blood be on us, and on our children."

Now, surely when these men thus anew applied to Pilate for such a purpose as this, they must have appeared to him in an aspect abundantly humiliating. Here again, they who pressed him so importunately are at his mercy, they who overbore with their clamour all his conscientious scruples, are now fain to come to him with certain scruples of their own. In the morning of this very day they seemed to be troubled with no tender feelings, to be above all the weaknesses of ordinary human nature, to have no fear no reverence no remorse. They were bold and reckless. They would shrink from nothing themselves. They had no allowance for any sensitiveness in others. They seemed to acknowledge no restraint of justice or of pity. Before the gratification of their passions, and the attainment of their ends of policy, they would make all things give way. And now these very men are in utter consternation at the very idea of even a hairbreadth deviation from the letter of a positive institution. The deed itself did not hurt their conscience; but that it should all be over in good time for their Sabbath devotions, this was a point of infinite moment to their peace I

Pilate, however, is more indulgent to them than they had been to him. They had shown little regard for his compunctions. They would not wait his time. They hurried him on without reflection, and made him consent to an act of wrong from which his soul all the while recoiled Fairly might he now have retorted upon them. Why should he accelerate or interfere with the ordinary course of justice for their accommodation? What has he to do with their Sabbath, or with the possibility of this execution encroaching on its sanctity? That is their concern alone. It was they who clamoured for it, and insisted on it al] the morning; and if it came too near the Sabbath, it was their own doing, and what was it to him? But the easy Koman is more good-natured than they might have expected to find him. He is willing to relieve them out of the difficulty in which they are involved. He has no wish to offend their religious feelings, by all means let the horrid work of death be shortened. Let the criminals be despatched at once. Their sufferings will be the less, and the consciences of these honest and religious Jews will be saved!

Thus with something like contempt Pilate must have heard and granted this request. He could scarcely give them credit for real sincerity in their religion. After all that he had seen of them, he could have no great opinion of their piety, however he might smile at their superstition, or hate their hypocrisy. What, indeed, could be the impression made upon this worldly prince by such ostentatious affectation of a regard for holy ordinances on the part of those who had so lately denied the Holy One and the Just, and demanded a murderer to be given to them? What could be the effect, but altogether to disparage in his eyes these holy ordinances themselves, and confirm him in the notion that all punctual observance of sacred duties, all scrupulous adherence to sacred laws, all godliness itself, in short, with its holy exercises and duties, was but a fond dream, or a vain pretence? Alas! how apt are the men of this world to turn to such account as this the inconsistencies of those who profess to be religious! How much encouragement do they derive in their own neglect of sacred things, from the apparent falsehood or infirmity of those who more devoutly regard them! How easy is it for a man, witnessing in those who themselves too plainly neglect, and who have no scruple in leading others to neglect, the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, witnessing in such characters not a little punctiliousness in the regular discharge of certain pious offices, how easy is it for such a man, and how natural, to rush at once to a conclusion, and indiscriminately to condemn, or to despise, alike the offices themselves and those who so discharge them! So it might have been with Pilate; and not without some considerable show of reason, or some plausible excuse, at least, if he had had these Jews alone to deal with. He might have justified himself, by their vile hypocrisy, in now at last dismissing for ever those serious thoughts which had, in all this dark business, been harassing and distracting him. He might have got rid of his uneasy misgivings, and settled down again into the peace and quietness of scornful or sceptical indifference. So it might have been, but that God in his wise providence having, it would seem, determined not to leave himself in this man’s soul without a witness, and not to leave him with any apology for his sin brought him, on this very same night, into contact with one that feared God after quite another fashion from these Jews. For so it was ordered, that scarcely had these Pharisees left his presence, these hypocrites, whose baseness might well occasion, and almost warrant, some emotions of indignation and disgust against all that they contaminated with their touch, scarcely had they left his presence, when a man of another stamp came in upon another errand. Joseph of Arimathea is introduced; a devout man, likely to place devotion in a better and truer light before this prince: " And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus" (John 19:38). This Joseph, too, as well as the chief priests, scrupulously and punctiliously respects the Sabbath. He too is in haste to have his work concluded ere the Sabbath sets in. But what is the work on which he is intent? Not such a work as they had on hand, but a work of faith and labour of love. They came to dishonour Jesus, by adding yet new outrages to all that they had already inflicted; he to honour him, by reverently consigning him to the tomb. They wanted him taken away and put aside ere the Sabbath should commence; but where, or how, they cared not. With what indignities he might be treated, how his bones might be scattered and left to bleach among the skulls from which the place got its name, what was all that to them, so as only they got through their customary Sabbath routine? Joseph, too, wishes the body of Jesus taken away before the Sabbath; but with what different treatment! with fragrant spices, and comely burial service, and the laying of it in a sepulchre wherein was never man yet laid (John 19:38-42).

Thus, to counteract in Pilate’s mind the impression which hard-hearted hypocrisy had made, there is presented to his view an instance of truest and tenderest devotion. Pilate had been struck with reverence and awe as he gazed on the Lord’s unspeakable majesty, and heard his words of gracious authority and truth; he had begun to think that this might be a divine person, and the thought had troubled him during the whole pleading by which he was at last persuaded or constrained to give him up. When he saw, however, this holy and heavenly being left alone in his dying hour, deserted, and apparently scorned, by all; when he saw, especially, that he was to be recklessly cast aside as a worthless thing by men who made a great profession of strictness in religion; when, in their usage of this Just One, he perceived the offensive and most repulsive union of bitter malice and base cruelty with the most imposing sanctity of mien and manners; what more natural than that he should relapse into a state of hardened, indifferent unconcern? as if all the things which had ever moved him to serious thought were to be regarded as little better than solemn mockery or imposition. But he is not thus to be given over. He is not to have such a plea or pretence for his unbelief as the conduct of these Jews might seem to furnish. He is to have a specimen of true piety as well as of its counterfeit. He is to know that there can be such a thing as an honestly religious man, a punctual observer of the Sabbath, and, at the same time, upright, merciful, compassionate, one who can testify his love to Jesus when all else forsake him, one giving such simple and affectionate proof of his real attachment as may well touch Pilate’s heart again, and go far to awaken once more his sentiments of reverence and awe.

Great, in this view, is the value of a single Joseph of Arimathea amid a crowd of frivolous or formal Pharisees.

Great the good that he may do, most precious the testimony which he may bear, and the example which he may show, by counteracting the unfavourable impressions which less consistent or less straightforward professors of religion leave on careless, and even on thoughtful minds; by reviving feelings of admiration or of love for the gospel, which the conduct of some of its disciples may have stifled or blunted; by appealing to the sympathies of men who, though not thoroughly religious themselves, can yet appreciate religious excellences and graces in others; by removing prejudices, and presenting the beauty of holiness in its own fair and honourable aspect, apart from the colourings which less hearty and ingenuous characters may manage to throw over it. Such a one may do much to keep alive salutary convictions, obviate misapprehensions, and conciliate favour; and if his testimony issues not in the conversion of those before whom it is exhibited, it serves at least to rescue the blessed gospel of Christ from those unworthy imputations under which the ungodly would fain seek to shelter their rejection of it. Pilate may still harden his heart and resist the striving of the Spirit of God with his conscience; but the fact is not without meaning and it has a solemn bearing on his state of mind and ultimate responsibility that, amid all that he saw of human wickedness and weakness in the close contact into which he was brought with those who called themselves the people of God, the first image certain to rise up in Pilate’s memory, whenever he retraced these scenes, must have been the venerable look and language of authority with which the Lord himself appealed to him; and his last recoUection must have been that of Joseph of Arimathea coming in to beseech him that he might take away the body of Jesus for an honourable burial.