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1. WHAT Pilate said to Christ, or what He replied to Pilate,
has to be considered and handled in the present discourse. For after
the words had been addressed to the Jews, "Take ye him, and judge
him according to your law," and the Jews had replied, "It is not
lawful for us to put any man to death, Pilate entered again into the
judgment hall, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art thou the
King of the Jews? And Jesus answered, Sayest thou this thing of
thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" The Lord indeed knew
both what He Himself asked, and what reply the other was to give;
but yet He wished it to be spoken, not for the sake of information to
Himself, but that what He wished us to know might be recorded in
Scripture. "Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation,
and the chief priests, have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou
done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my
kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I
should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from
hence." This is what the good Master wished us to know; but first
there had to be shown us the vain notion that men had regarding His
kingdom, whether Gentiles or Jews, from whom Pilate had heard it;
as if He ought to have been punished with death on the ground of
aspiring to an unlawful kingdom; or as those in the possession of royal
power usually manifest their ill-will to such as are yet to attain it,
as if, for example, precautions were to be used lest His kingdom
should prove adverse either to the Romans or to the Jews. But the
Lord was able to reply to the first question of the governor, when he
asked Him, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" with the words,
"My kingdom is not of this world," etc.; but by questioning him in
turn, whether he said this thing of himself, or heard it from others,
He wished by his answer to show that He had been charged with this as
a crime before him by the Jews: laying open to us the thoughts of
men, which were all known to Himself, that they are but vain;' and
now, after Pilate's answer, giving them, both Jews and Gentiles,
all the more reasonable and fitting a reply, "My kingdom is not of
this world." But had He made an immediate answer to Pilate's
question, His reply would have appeared to refer to the Gentiles
only, without including the Jews, as entertaining such an opinion
regarding Him. But now when Pilate replied, "Am I a Jew?
Thine own nation, and the chief priests, have delivered thee to
me;" he removed from himself the suspicion of being possibly supposed
to have spoken of his own accord, in saying that Jesus was the king of
the Jews, by showing that such a statement had been communicated to
him by the Jews. And then by saying, "What hast thou done?" he
made it sufficiently clear that this was charged against Him as a
crime: as if he had said, If thou deniest such kingly claims, what
hast thou done to cause thy being delivered unto me? As if there would
be no ground for wonder that one should be delivered up to a judge for
punishment, who proclaimed himself a king; but if no such assertion
were made, it became needful to inquire of Him, what else, if
anything, He had done, that He should thus deserve to be delivered
unto the judge.
2. Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, O circumcision;
hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I
interfere not with your government in this world, "My kingdom is not
of this world." Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw
Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was
announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of
including Christ in the fatal number, made more cruel by his fear than
by his anger: "My kingdom," He said, "is not of this world."
What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world;
come, believing, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear.
He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, "Yet have I
been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;" but that
hill of Zion is not of this world. For what is His kingdom, save
those who believe in Him, to whom He says, "Ye are not of the
world, even as I am not of the world"? And yet He wished them to
be in the world: on that very account saying of them to the Father,
"I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that
Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." Hence also He says not
here, "My kingdom is not" in this world; but, "is not of this
world." And when He proved this by saying, "If my kingdom were of
this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be
delivered to the Jews," He saith not, "But now is my kingdom
not" here, but, "is not from hence." For His kingdom is here
until the end of the world, having tares intermingled therewith until
the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the world, when the
reapers, that is to say, the angels, shall come and gather out of
His kingdom everything that offendeth; which certainly would not be
done, were it not that His kingdom is here. But still it is not from
hence; for it only sojourns as a stranger in the world: because He
says to His kingdom, "Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen
you out of the world." They were therefore of the world, so long as
they were not His kingdom, but belonged to the prince of this world.
Of the world therefore are all mankind, created indeed by the true
God, but generated from Adam as a vitiated and condemned stock; and
there are made into a kingdom no longer of the world, all from thence
that have been regenerated in Christ. For so did God rescue us from
the power of darkness, and translate us into the kingdom of the Son of
His love: and of this kingdom it is that He saith, "My kingdom is
not of this world;" or, "My kingdom is not from hence."
3. "Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus
answered, Thou sayest that I am a king." Not that He was afraid
to confess Himself a king, but "Thou sayest" has been so balanced
that He neither denies Himself to be a king (for He is a king whose
kingdom is not of this world), nor does He confess that He is such a
king as to warrant the supposition that His kingdom is of this world.
For as this was the very idea in Pilate's mind when he said,
'"Art thou a king then?" so the answer he got was, "Thou sayest
that I am a king." For it was said, "Thou sayest," as if it had
been said, Carnal thyself, thou sayest it carnally.
4. Thereafter He adds, "To this end was I born, and for this
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth." * * Whence it is evident that He here referred to His own
temporal nativity, when by becoming incarnate He came into the world,
and not to that which had no beginning, whereby He was God through
whom the Father created the world. For this, then, that is, on
this account, He declared that He was born, and to this end He came
into the world, to wit, by being born of the Virgin, that He might
bear witness unto the truth. But because all men have not faith, He
still further said, "Every one that is of the truth heareth my
voice." He heareth, that is to say, with the ears of the inward
man, or, in other words, He obeyeth my voice, which is equivalent
to saying, He believeth me. When Christ, therefore, beareth
witness unto the truth, He beareth witness, of course, unto
Himself; for from His own lips are the words, "I am the truth;"
as He said also in another place, "I bear witness of myself." But
when He said, "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice,"
He commendeth the grace whereby He calleth according to His own
purpose. Of which purpose the apostle says, "We know that all
things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are
called according to the purpose of God," to wit, the purpose of Him
that calleth, not of those who are called; which is put still. more
clearly in another place in this way, "Labor together in the gospel
according to the power of God, who saveth us and calleth us with His
holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own
purpose and grace." For if our thoughts turn to the nature wherein we
have been created, inasmuch as we were all created by the Truth, who
is there that is not of the truth? But it is not all to whom it is
given of the truth to hear, that is, to obey the truth, and to
believe in the truth; while in no case certainly is there any preceding
of merit, lest grace should cease to be grace. For had He said,
Every one that heareth my voice is of the truth, then it would be
supposed that he was declared to be of the truth because he conforms to
the truth; it is not this, however, that He says, but, "Every
one that is of the truth heareth my voice." And in this way he is not
of the truth simply because he heareth His voice; but only on this
account he heareth, because he is of the truth, that is, because this
is a gift bestowed on him of the truth. And what else is this, but
that by Christ's gracious bestowal he believeth on Christ?
5. "Pilate said unto Him, What is truth?" Nor did he wait to
hear the answer; but "when he had said this, he went out again unto
the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault. But ye have
a custom that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye
therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" I believe
when Pilate said, ''What is truth?" there immediately occurred to
his mind the custom of the Jews, according to which he was wont to
release unto them one at the passover; and therefore he did not wait to
hear Jesus' answer to his question, What is truth? to avoid delay
on recollecting the custom whereby He might be released unto them
during the passover a thing which it is clear he greatly desired. It
could not, however, be torn from his heart that Jesus was the King
of the Jews, but was fixed there, as in the superscription, by the
truth itself, whereof he had just inquired what it was. "But on
hearing this, they all cried again, saying, Not this man, but
Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." We blame you not, O
jews, for liberating the guilty during the passover, but for slaying
the innocent; and yet unless that were done, the true passover would
not take place. But a shadowy of the truth was retained by the erring
Jews, and by a marvellous dispensation of divine wisdom the truth of
that same shadow was fulfilled by deluded men; because in order that
the true passover might be kept, Christ was led as a sheep to the
sacrificial slaughter. Hence there follows the account of the
injurious treatment received by Christ at the hands of Pilate and his
cohort; but this must be taken up in another discourse.
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