Pilate, Who Condemned Him

Trapped by the Jewish leaders, Pontius Pilate asked the crowd, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ” (Matt. 27:22)? Today, Sinclair Ferguson considers the grave warning found in Pilate’s own answer to this question.

I want to begin the podcast today with a little quiz. I think you’ll get the answer easily enough. Here it is: Next to the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary, whose name is most frequently on the lips of Christians? Whose name is most frequently on the lips of Christians? It’s not Augustine, or Thomas Aquinas, or even Martin Luther, is it? No. Every day in some churches, and every Sunday in millions of churches, billions of Christians say the words: “I believe in Jesus Christ, His Son, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate”—the words of the Apostles Creed. Every Sunday, Pontius Pilate is remembered.

Media reporters love few things better than a trapped politician. Sometimes they try to trap them by the questions they ask. Sometimes they run stories about an entrapped politician until something or someone else is worth headline attention. The world seems to love trapped politicians but loves to despise them too. Pontius Pilate was the most famous trapped politician in human history.

He was governor of the Roman province of Judea for about ten years. That was by no means an easy posting. Jewish monotheism, like modern day genuine Christianity, can be a thorn in the flesh to a pluralistic society. People who believe that God has revealed Himself in space and time in very definite and particular ways and sovereignly instructs us in how to live for His glory and for our blessing—well, those people can be a real irritant. Indeed, as in many parts of the world today, and increasingly in the Western world, they’re actually regarded as being enemies of the state. They don’t fit in.

But somehow, Pontius Pilate was governing a territory occupied by Rome, inhabited by Abraham’s descendants in the very days of the Lord Jesus Christ, and tried to find some modus operandi that would keep the peace. Might was right. Sometimes he tried to use it sparingly, although he could be naively insensitive. But at other times, he used it to the full. Remember Luke 13:1, the occasion when some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices?

The one thing Pilate feared most, however, was not the Jews, but what they could do to his career. While there are legends about the rest of his life, including the possibility that he ended it badly at his own hand, there’s one thing of which we can be sure: outwitted by the cunning maneuvering of the religious leaders, Pontius Pilate tried to find a way out by asking a question: “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matt. 27:22).

Perhaps the very moment the words were out of his mouth, he realized that whatever answer the crowd gave, the only answer that mattered was his own. And so, a name that otherwise would probably have sunk into oblivion, even in the Roman Empire, is on many of our lips Sunday by Sunday: “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified.”

The Gospel writers tell Pilate’s story in a way that makes you realize why the Bible is likened to a mirror. You read about Pilate and you feel you’re watching scenes that reflect moments in your own life, moments that nothing can really prepare you for. You’re faced with a question that will determine what happens to you in the future. There’s no escape from it. It’s clear who Jesus really is, and the question is, What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?

There’s a passage in Hebrews 6 that Christians have sometimes found very difficult to understand, but I think it may be relevant here and, in some ways, Pilate’s experience sheds light on it. It tells us it’s impossible in the case of those who have been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who’ve shared in the Holy Spirit, tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the prayers of the age to come, if they fall away, they can’t restore themselves again to repentance since they’re crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.

I’m sure the author of Hebrews wasn’t thinking specifically about Pilate, although you could believe he might have been thinking about Judas Iscariot. But some of these things apply to Pilate, don’t they? He’d had conversation with the living Word of God and, in a sense, he actually was enlightened about His identity. He recognized He was the King of the Jews—at least, that’s what he wrote about Him and refused to change. In Jesus’ presence, he must have been able to taste the goodness and sense the powers of the age to come. But when push came to shove, he turned away. He fell away, and there was no way back.

Pilate is surely another warning to us to make sure we respond in faith to his own question, “What shall I do with Christ?” I hope what the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 6 is true for you: “Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.”