Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1648
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, March 5, 1882
“When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just Person: see you to it. Then answered all thepeople, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” Matthew 27:24,25.
THE Crucifixion of Christ was the crowning sin of our race. In His death we shall find all the sins of mankind uniting in foul conspiracy. Envy and pride and hate are there, with covetousness, falsehood and blasphemy eager to rush on to cruelty, revenge, and murder! The devil awakened around the Seed of the woman the iniquities of us all—they compassed the Lord about, yes, they compassed Him about like bees. All the evils of human hearts of all ages were concentrated around the Cross, even as all the rivers run into the sea and as all the clouds empty themselves upon the earth, so did all the crimes of man gather to the slaying of the Son of God! It seemed as if Hell held a formal reception and all the various forms of sin came flocking to the rendezvous—army upon army they hastened to the battle!
As the vultures hasten to the body, so came the flocks of sins to make the Lord their prey. By all the assembled troops of sins there was consummated the foulest crime which the sun has ever beheld. By wicked hands they did crucify and slay the Savior of the world! We have been singing two hymns in which we took to ourselves a share of the guilt of our Lord’s death. We sang—
“Oh, the sharp pangs of smarting pain My dear Redeemer bore,
When knotty whips and rugged thorns His sacred body tore. But knotty whips and rugged thorns In vain do I accuse! In vain I blame the Roman bands And the more spiteful Jews!
‘Twas you, my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were! Each of my crimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear.”
And then after the same manner we sorrowfully asked a question and sang a penitential reply—
“My Jesus! Who with spit vile
Profaned Your sacred brow?
Or whose unpitying scourge has made
Your precious blood to flow?
‘Tis I have thus ungrateful been,
Yet, Jesus, pity take!
Oh, spare and pardon me, my Lord,
For Your sweet mercy’s sake!” Perhaps some of you hardly understand what you have been singing. But others of us have sincerely and intelligently pleaded guilty of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know that He not only suffered for our transgressions, but by our iniquities. This is not clear to a great many and I would not have them pretend that it is. They cannot see that they have anything to do with the matter of Jesus’ death and, therefore, they are not moved to repentance by hearing of it. Indeed, they imitate the example of Pilate in our text when he took water and washed his hands before the multitude and said, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person.”
The object of our present discourse will be to awaken slumbering consciences. Without going into any metaphysical questions as to whether such a man did or did not actually have a share in the particular action by which Jesus died, I shall show you that in many ways men practically commit a like crime and so prove that they have similar dispositions to those ancient Kill-Christ’s! Though they repudiate the Crucifixion, they repeat it, if not in form, yet in spirit. Though
Jesus is not here in flesh and blood, yet the cause of holiness and truth and His Divine Spirit are still among us and men act towards the Kingdom of Christ, which is set up among them, in the same way as the Jews and Romans acted towards the Incarnate God!
True, all men are not, alike, against Him, for the Lord spoke of some who have “the greater sin,” and few are as guilty as the traitor Judas, that son of perdition! But in every form of it the rejection of Christ is a great sin and it will be a great Gospel blessing if it is repented of after the fashion of the Prophet when he said, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.” I shall now take up the story of our Lord’s appearance before Pilate, from the moment of His being sent back to Herod to the time when He was delivered to the Jews to be led away for Crucifixion. And I shall try to exhibit, by this narrative, several ways in which men virtually put the Christ to death and, therefore, become partakers of the ancient transgression which was committed at Jerusalem.
I. First, there are some—and these are they who have the greater sin—who are DETERMINEDLY AND AVOWEDLY THE OPPONENTS OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. These are the men who are represented by the chief priests and elders of the Jews, who of old sought the Savior’s blood because they could not endure His teaching. Nothing else would satisfy them but that He should be removed from the earth, for He was a standing protest against their evil deeds. They hated Him because by His Light their wicked lives were reproved. These were the true murderers of Christ, who gloried in their shame and defied the punishment of it, crying, “His blood be on us, and on our children.”