PONTIUS PILATE, the procurator of the Emperor of Rome, tried to rid himself of the trial of Jesus. He knew what the Sanhedrin had brought in against Him, to wit: that Jesus had presented Himself as king. He understood, that, in case it should be proved, this would mean high treason, and would not be punishable otherwise than with death. But he did not interpret the appearance of Jesus with sufficient seriousness. Of resistance on the part of Jesus, of insurrection, of a conspiracy against the Emperor, there was no evidence. He saw in Jesus a fanatical zealot for the ancient national traditions. A subject of harmless fanaticism.
In no particular did Jesus impress him as a troublesome seeker after power. Pilate therefore dreaded to sentence Him. And yet … he must needs be careful. In the Empire at that time a dangerous system of espionage, fawning and sycophancy was abroad. As a matter of fact, Jesus had asserted that He was the King of the Jews. At least so it was said before the tribunal of the Sanhedrin. And when he himself had asked Jesus: “Art thou a King?” Jesus had in a most positive manner answered “Yes!”; even adding: “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world” (John 18:37). But … report of it might reach Rome … and if the Emperor were to learn that in a matter of high treason he had spared the guilty one … who knows, might this not cost him his high position, perchance his life? Therefore an opportunity of escape was welcome, and he found it in Herod.
Herod Antipas was at the time Tetrarch in Galilee and of the Trans-Jordanic. He was a son of the Infant-murderer of Bethlehem, who occurs in the Christmas narrative. After his death this Herod Antipas had been appointed Regent in Galilee, and under his rule and in his domain first John the Baptist and afterward Jesus appeared. He built himself a new capital in Tiberias, on the Lake of Genesareth, and there introduced all the wealth and dissipation of a semi-heathen city. His wife Herodias was his evil genius.
Thus Jesus really belonged to the jurisdiction of Herod. And as Herod at that moment was in Jerusalem as a guest of Rome’s procurator, it occurred to him, whether he might not rid himself of this inconvenient trial, by sending Jesus to Herod as his proper judge. He then would know what he might do.
So it happened.
“As soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time” (Luke 23: 7).
Herod was a descendant of Esau, and in Jesus the seed of Jacob stood before him.
Isaac already had prophecied to Esau, that a time would come, when he would bear rule over Jacob. “By thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother. Afterward it shall come to pass that thou shall rule over him” (Gen. 27: 40).
This prophecy was now fulfilled. The heroic race of the Maccabees, and of the Hasmoneans, had been dethroned by the Parthians, and the Romans had clothed Herod the great with the purple in the place of the ancient dynasty. That Herod, who still reigned when Jesus was born, was an Idumean; and Idumaer is the Latin name for an Edomite, and Edom was Esau.
Half true and half false was the mark of this race. Esau too was from Isaac, and therefore from Abraham, but the Edomites were the rejected side-branch.
And as was the case with their descent, so it was with respect to their faith. They were said to serve Jehovah, but they did this in their own way, and were heathen at heart.
The mother of our Herod was Malthake, a beauty from Samaria. One knows his wife Herodias from what she did to John Baptist, and from what she demanded of her daughter.
But yet, Herod’s conscience remained tender. Like all half-faith, Herod too was afraid, and was haunted by self-reproach. The whole movement, which in Galilee and in the Trans-Jordanic was connected with the name of Jesus, annoyed him, and left him no rest. The dreadful thought that Jesus might be John Baptist, who had risen from the dead, tormented him. Once he had tried to kill Jesus by assassins (Luke 13:31). And always he had tried to get a look at Jesus, that he might convince himself whether He were John or not. Possibly he had spoken to Pilate about this, when he had received him in courtly audience.
And now the chance was fair.
See, Pilate sends that Jesus as a prisoner to him.
And now he does not think of the trial, he forgets that he sits as judge. All he cares for is to sound Jesus, and see a sign worked by Him.
And when he sees that Jesus is an other person than John, and that Jesus does not let Himself be sounded, and does no sign, the anxiety of his conscience turns into wantonness.
With his officers and with the soldiers of the watch he makes game of Jesus; with ribald jests he ridicules Him; as a mockery of His pretended Kingship puts a purple robe about Him, and so sends Him back to Pilate. According to vs. 15 of Luke 17, with the message that he had found no fault in Him. On the contrary to him it seemed a case of jest, rather than one that called for serious consideration.
Thus on this dreadful day of His suffering, only a few, brief hours before His cruel death, Jesus was made the butt of pusillanimous play.
He who tries to understand something of the condition of Jesus’ soul during these tense hours of public mockery, feels, how it must have been a grief to Him.
He knew, He realized that that very afternoon, it would be death to Him. The character and behavior of Pilate was a transparent secret to Him. He felt more deeply still, that on that day, such as in tragic dreadfulness no day ever comes again, the lot of the whole world was to be decided. All the centuries of the past terminated in that single moment, and all the centuries which in the history of mankind were still to come, were to be dominated by the death upon the Cross of that terrible day. All the suffering of the world, from earliest days until latest, piteously focused itself in Jesus’ heart.
And when at such a pivotal moment only a legal decision, given solemnly as the seriousness of the case demanded, could harmoniously have ministered comfort to His heart, He had first been subjected to the wild fanaticism of the Sanhedrin; then He had been vexed by the irresoluteness of Pilate; and now He had been sent to be made sport of by Herod, the frivolous scoffer.
It was arrow after arrow shot into His sensitive heart. Injury upon injury. And always the high priests present, scornfully to rejoice when He was shamed and mocked, and with Jewish fanaticism vehemently to accuse Him.
And underneath all this stirred ever yet the old hatred of Edom against Israel, of Esau against Jacob, of the degenerate race against the people of the Lord.
New bitterness in the bitter cup, which He must drink to the dregs.
And also this bitter draught, submissive and meek, Jesus has drunk. “Father, not my will, thy will be done.”
And yet, how little does the church of Jesus enter into that radically-changing suffering of her Savior.
She has heard of it, she knows well that Jesus was also sent to Herod. But what else is this to her, except an episode scarcely worth the notice in the sorrowful drama.
Living the life, and the suffering of Jesus over again with Jesus, from the agony of soul in Gethsemane to the Eli Sabachthani upon Golgotha, has become foreign to her. The Cross is enough for her. With the sorrows and the afflictions of the several steps that led to the Cross, she has no fellow-feeling.
Does not love for Christ compel us, in thought and in the tension of sympathy, to drink after Him drop by drop that full cup of His suffering?
He who makes the Cross the only point of contact, stands at the cross so poor. There is but one emotion in his heart. The overwhelming emotion of the dying of the Son of God. But he loses the rich, the all-sided, continuously changing experience of step by step living over again, feeling with, and suffering with, Christ, all the bitter decease which He has accomplished at Jerusalem.
For him who does not appreciate this it would have been enough, if in the Gospels it had simply been recorded, that Jesus was arrested, sentenced and put to death.
But God did not so plan the passion-Gospel for you. On the Gospel-page He depicts the whole course of what took place; every particular of what Jesus had to battle through; you see drop by drop leak into the passion-cup; and how draught by draught that cup has been drained by Jesus.
Does it not behoove us then, with the life and the love of our soul to trace the steps of the conflict that was struggled through in Jesus’ soul?
Then only do you feel what Jesus did for you; at what price you have been redeemed.
So your love for Jesus obtains form, content, and multitudinousness of distinction.
So only with your love for Jesus in the suffering of the Son of man, are you truly rich.
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