Church History: Pilate, after he had conferred with the chief priests at his door, entered into the hall, and called for Jesus to be brought in. He would not examine him in the crowd, where he might be disturbed by the noise, but ordered him to be brought into the hall; for he made no difficulty of going in among the Gentiles. He questioned him, with a design to ensnare him and to find out something which would be grounds for an accusation: "Are you the king of the Jews? The one who has been so much talked of and so long expected, Messiah the prince, is this you? Do you not pretend to be him? Pilate asked this with an air of scorn and contempt:
Christ answers this question with another; not for evasion, but as intimation to Pilate to consider what he did, and upon what grounds he went. "It is plain that you have no reason to say this for yourself." Pilate was bound by his office to take care of the interests of the Roman government, but he could not say that this was in any danger, or suffered any damage, from anything Jesus had ever said or done. He never appeared in worldly pomp, never assumed any secular power, never acted as a judge or divider; never were any traitorous principles or practices objected to him, nor anything that might give the least shadow of suspicion.
"If others say this about me, to incense you against me, you ought to consider who they are, and upon what principles they go, and whether those who represent me as an enemy to Cæsar are not really enemies themselves, and therefore use this only as a pretence to cover their malice, for, if so, the matter ought to be well weighed by a judge that would do justice." If Pilate had been as inquisitive as he ought to have been in this matter, he would have found that the true reason why the chief priests were outrageous against Jesus was because he did not set up a temporal kingdom in opposition to the Roman power; if he would have done this, and would have wrought miracles to bring the Jews out of the Roman bondage, as Moses did to bring them out of the Egyptian, they would have been so far from siding with the Romans against him that they would have made him their king, and have fought under him against the Romans; but, not answering this expectation of theirs, they charged that upon him of which they were themselves most notoriously guilty-disaffection to and design against the present government; and was such information as this fit to be tolerated?
Pilate resented Christ's answer, and becomes hostile toward him. Christ had asked him whether he spoke of himself. "No," Pilate replied, "am I a Jew? Do you suspect me to be a part of the plot against you? I know nothing of the Messiah, nor do I desire to know, and therefore I have no interest in the dispute about who is the Messiah and who is not; it is all alike to me." The Jews were, by many accounts, an honorable people; but, having corrupted the covenant of their God, so that a man of sense and honor considered it a scandal to be counted a Jew. Thus good names often suffer for the sake of the bad men that wear them. Thus Christ, in his religion, still suffers by those that are of his own nation, even the priests that profess a relationship to him, but do not live up to their profession. Christ had declined answering that question, Art thou the king of the Jews? And therefore Pilate puts another question to him more general, "What have you done? What provocation have you given to your own nation, and particularly the priests, to be so violent against you? Surely there cannot be all this smoke without some fire, what is it?"
Christ, in his next reply, gives a more full and direct answer to Pilate's former question, Art thou a king? explaining in what sense he was a king, but not such a king that” was in any way dangerous to the Roman government, not a secular king, for his interest was not supported by secular methods. Christ gave an account of the nature and constitution of his kingdom: “It is not of this world”. He gave evidence of the spiritual nature his kingdom produced. If he had designed an opposition to the government, he would have fought them with their own type of weapons, and would have repelled force with force of the same nature; but he did not take this course. His followers did not offer to fight; there was no uproar, no attempt to rescue him, though the town was now full of Galileans, his friends and countrymen, and they were generally armed; but the peaceable behavior of his disciples on this occasion was enough to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. He did not order them to fight; he forbade them, which was an evidence both that he did not depend upon worldly aids and also he did not dread worldly opposition, for he was very willing to be delivered to the Jews, as knowing that what would have been the destruction of any worldly kingdom would be the advancement and establishment of his; justly therefore does he conclude, “my kingdom is not of this world.
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