Jesus before Pilate

On the morning of his Passion, Christ is led before Pilate, the Roman governor who alone can pronounce a sentence of death. What follows is the drama of a troubled judge: the accused reveals himself a king, Pilate finds himself little by little judged, and, warned even by his wife, he ends by condemning against what he knows. Everything turns on a man who senses the truth without daring to receive it.

Are you the king of the Jews?

Pilate opens the questioning with the one thing that concerns him, a power rival to Rome: “Are you the king of the Jews?” John 18:33 Christ does not deny that he is a king; he corrects the idea at once. Pilate is looking for an agitator ready to stir up the people, and he has before him a king of another kind, whom none of his categories can grasp.

A kingdom not from here

“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought so that I should not be handed over; but now my kingdom is not from here.” John 18:36 The proof he gives is simple: no army rose to defend him, no sword prevented his arrest. Pressed to say whether he is a king, he confirms it and reveals on what his reign rests: “I came into the world to bear witness to the truth; everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” John 18:37 His reign is exercised not over lands, but over the hearts that take the side of truth. Pilate awaited a political rival, and he hears of a kingdom and a truth that exceed all a governor can judge.

What is truth?

At that word, Pilate lets fall a question that has remained famous: “What is truth?” John 18:38 Then he goes out without waiting for the answer. Truth stood before him, made man, and he turns away to go and deal with the case. It is the first sign of his drama: he asks the right question and refuses to receive the answer, because it would commit him. Yet he has grasped the essential, and he says it to the accusers: he finds in this man no ground for condemnation.

The dream and the fear

Pilate's trouble keeps growing. While he sits in judgement, his wife sends him a warning: “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for today I have suffered much in a dream because of him.” Matthew 27:19 A pagan woman calls Jesus “that righteous man”, and a dream troubles her enough to interrupt a trial. When Pilate then hears that the accused has made himself the Son of God, his fear redoubles: “When Pilate heard this word, he was the more afraid.” John 19:8 He comes back to question him about his origin, “Where are you from?” John 19:9, as a man who wonders whether he has before him more than a man. Christ keeps silent, and that silence astonishes him. These signs all warn him of one same thing: that he should not condemn this righteous man.

You would have no power

Before this silence, Pilate grows irritated and brandishes his authority: “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you, and the power to release you?” John 19:10 The answer reverses the ranks: “You would have no power over me, had it not been given you from above; therefore the one who hands me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” John 19:11 The judge holds his power only from God, and does not dispose of it as freely as he thinks. The accused, for his part, remains master of the hour: he hands himself over, no one wrests him away. And guilt is measured: the one who handed him over sins more, without Pilate being cleansed of it for all that.

Against his conscience

Everything urged Pilate to release this man: his own judgement, his wife's warning, his fear. Yet one threat is enough to make him yield: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.” John 19:12 Between the truth he has glimpsed and his place beside the emperor, he chooses the emperor. He has water brought and washes his hands, “I am innocent of this blood” Matthew 27:24, as if one could wash oneself of a sentence one pronounces oneself. His hesitation does not excuse him, it accuses him: he condemns not out of ignorance, but against what his conscience, his wife and his own fear were telling him. And the crowd obtains what it demands: “We have no king but Caesar.” John 19:15

In the end, Pilate holds firm on a single point, and it is on the truth he had fled. He has the charge written on the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews”, in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek. The title humiliates the leaders who forced his hand: it throws their “king” back at them, nailed to a gibbet. They demand that it be softened, that it be written only that he claimed to be king; Pilate refuses: “What I have written, I have written.” John 19:22 But to humiliate them, he had to proclaim him king: in the same words, his insult states what he had sensed without daring to receive it. And God makes use of it: the one who asked what truth is proclaims, to the three languages of the known world, that the condemned man is king.