Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadChrist In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 18. Chapter 18: Christ Being Negated Upon the Royal and Prophetic Mountain
TOPIC: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 18. Chapter 18: Christ Being Negated Upon the Royal and Prophetic Mountain
Other Subjects in this Topic:
C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
Christ Being Negated Upon the Royal and Prophetic Mountain
Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?
—Joh_18:38 a.
CHRIST while upon the kingly and prophetic mountain is either being defied or else — in the entirety of His official ministration — He is being negated. The flesh is always wavering between these two: between insult and negation. That this is true becomes plainly apparent also in Christ’s trial.
We have already noticed how Christ was being defied on His prophetic mountain while He was in the presence of Caiaphas. Today, in the presence of Pilate, He is to be negated while He is standing upon the mountain of all prophets and upon the mountain of all the kings of Israel.
Defiance and negation, we said. But do not think that we want to fix an antithesis between what Caiaphas, together with his insulting company, does and what Pilate accomplished by his personal negation. Essentially the “flesh” is always consistent. At bottom mockery and negation are one. Caiaphas had allowed the Lord Jesus Christ to be insulted upon the mountain of the prophets, but before the defiance took place there had been a complete ignoring and an absolute negation of His position upon that highest of all prophetic heights. We still remember, doubtless, that Caiaphas by demanding an oath of Christ seemed to be sinning against Him by the sin of negation. At the basis of Caiaphas’ emphatic request that Jesus swear an oath lay the assumption, we observed, that although He was fully informed of God and heavily laden, Jesus was standing outside of the sphere of serious relevance, and outside of the pale of God’s presence. In the case of Caiaphas also, therefore, the negation had preceded the defiance.
In Pilate the “flesh” takes this same course. We hear him asking: “What is truth?” Such a statement is an instance of negation. In making it, Pilate is placing Christ outside of the sphere of those who are to be taken seriously. Obviously if truth cannot be known anyhow, if the true knowledge of God is unattainable, then its chief “Prophet” is both the most amusing and the most piteous idler attending the world’s vanity fair. That is negation. But from negation Pilate and those with him pass on to defiance. The end of the matter is that the question, What is truth? inspires the other inquiry, What is justice? It is after Pilate has asked that second question that he gives Jesus up to death. Everyone knows what happened after that: Insult, a defiance of Christ upon the mountain of all kings. What follows is a mock-drama performed in disdain of a presumptuous king: a purple robe, a crown of thorns, a sponge of vinegar supported by a reed and manipulated by sneering soldiers.
This culmination, therefore, is just another confirmation of an immemorial truth. It is part and parcel of the sound content of our faith that Christ must always be condemned in advance by the “flesh,” that He must be rejected by those who are born of the flesh and not of the Spirit. As Paul has told us there is that old struggle between the “flesh” and the “Spirit.” Flesh cannot appropriate, is not even susceptible to, that which belongs to the Spirit of God.
Because this general law of perpetual conflict between flesh and Spirit is true, it must also assert itself definitely and emphatically in the trial of Christ. For in the trial the line of demarcation between flesh and Spirit is delineated as plainly as it is anywhere. It was not solely because of his fear of the Jews that Pilate at the very beginning of this terrible process of law goes awry in principle. No, it was not solely because of his fear of the Jews, nor because of personal indifference, or indolence, nor because of his erroneous conclusions about the nature and purpose of Christ’s kingship in the realm of truth—it was not solely because of these that Pilate yielded Jesus to the arbitrary will of the Jews. By the question, “What is truth?” he demonstrated that at bottom he was alien to the life of Christ Jesus, and alien to His office and to His spiritual life. He reached the point of negation, for the natural man cannot appropriate, cannot even receive, the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2).
Our text tells us that Christ, while standing before Pilate, testified of His kingdom. His was a kingdom of truth. In it power and truth cooperate. Each moves in the direction of the other. By virtue of the power of His kingship, Christ stands upon the mountain of the king. And by reason of His power in the realm of truth, Christ stands upon the mountain of the prophet. Christ caused the peaks of both mountains to come together as He spoke of His “kingdom” of “truth.” This has been His last word. He said that He had come to testify of the truth, and so to obtain subjects (those who “hear” his “voice”). As a king He wants to do nothing which would be opposed to the will of a prophet, or which would be taking place outside of either the will or the calling of a prophet. To this definite uniting of the kingship and of the proclamation of truth, to this merging of the mountain of the king and the mountain of the prophet, Pilate responds with a shrug of the shoulders, and with his dubious, “What is truth?”
Much has been written about the meaning of these words of Pilate. In an effort to trace the background out of which the question arose, one commentator says this, another that. The one claims that Pilate appears here as a sincere seeker for truth, as one who is eager to know what truth is and where it may be found, as one who, although seeking, has not yet found, and therefore now gives expression to his despair and to his repressed dissatisfaction. Others assert that Pilate’s statement is by no means to be taken as being as serious as that. He must be thought of, these aver, as the skeptic, as the indifferent and impatient governor who puts the question with a sneer and with a shrug of the shoulders. According to this view Pilate is nothing but a dispassionate, indifferent and proud Roman who wants nothing to do with this bother on the part of the Jews about what constitutes truth, and accordingly, nothing to do with the Nazarene’s passion for truth. It simply is not worth the trouble, and is at best very boring.
One observer, you see, looks for a profound philosophical background for Pilate’s question, as though this Roman were a philosopher, one who had drunk deep of every cup which the thinkers of his day had prepared. Another thinks that Pilate’s query was not at all prompted by a philosophical interest, and that he must be regarded simply as the haughty, practical, common-sense man of affairs who laughs any seeking for truth out of court as a sheer waste of time.
We think it unnecessary to choose one of these interpretations as the correct one. In order to make a just selection we should have to know more about Pilate than we do know. True, we get the impression that we can hardly speak of a profound ethical seriousness in connection with Pilate, be it in reference to his struggle for truth, or in reference to his eventual (conscious) denial of the possibility of finding the truth. Had he really been sincere in his seeking or in his denial, he would hardly have broken off the discussion as abruptly as he did, or as hastily have given the Jews his first impression.
As a matter of fact, then, we do not know just what the state of mind of Pilate is. Moreover, it is not necessary that we be exactly informed about Pilate’s philosophical background and about the nature of his intellectual conflicts. The question is not whether we can test the spirit of Pilate. The question is whether we can see Christ as He is being thrust into this sphere of absolute unbelief in which the “flesh” at bottom refuses to respond to and appropriate the “Spirit.”
From this point of view we see that Pilate and his “What is truth?” plainly point us to the severity of Christ’s suffering and to the absolute negation to which He is subjected.
Whether Pilate was a serious man or a light-hearted fool, a noble seeker after wisdom or a wolf, whether he puts the question after many years of tantalizing search, or as a disavowal of such seeking—all of these questions have no importance for us inasmuch as we definitely know the really significant thing; namely, that Christ was negated as He stood upon the mountain of His official career, upon the mountain of His theocratic kingship and of His messianic prophecy. Pilate negates the mountain and negates Him who is standing upon it. Hence he laughs, or weeps — what matter to us which? — about every person who claims to see a royal or a prophetic mountain, about everyone who undertakes to climb such a mountain of the messianic office, about everyone who would say that he had reached the top. Pilate and his question name any searching which proceeds upon the basis of having already found, sheer vanity. By proclaiming that, Pilate does injustice to a revelation which comes authoritatively from above, and which relates all of our new questions to the answer which God once gave. Irrespective of whether Pilate thinks of Christ as a flower growing in the garden of Israel or as a detrimental weed flourishing in the nursery of the world’s culture, it is perfectly plain that at bottom he is alien to the official essence of Christ, the Prophet and the King of God. Pilate overlooks Christ and overlooks even the idea of His office. According to Pilate, Christ’s office does not exist; it is a presumption and a vanity.
The conclusion is obvious now. If there is no such reality as truth, or if Christ has not given expression to it perfectly, Christ’s kingship in the realm of truth is a piece of folly, a mere fiction. Christ related His prophecy to His kingship, and His kingship to His prophecy. And that, according to Pilate, is His “bad luck.” A kingship which had loosened its firm grip on truth might have met with Pilate’s “tolerance,” especially in view of the “poor results” which that kingship had been able to “show” up to this time. Or, had Pilate tolerated it, in that case he might, because of the dangerous element which lurked or might lurk in it, have opposed it for the sake of Caesar. But a kingdom which glories in the maintenance of truth is so unreal to Pilate that it is no better than the maintenance of truth itself. “What is truth?” he asks and his question does injustice to our chief Prophet and eternal King. Hence it is inevitable that the second question, What is justice? follow the first.
There is, accordingly, a pathetic correspondence between the depth of insult and humiliation into which Christ is plunged by this secular judge and that other depth into which He was thrust by Caiaphas, the spiritual judge, when Caiaphas told Him: I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell me the truth. For, irrespective of how greatly Caiaphas’ cry I adjure thee may differ from Pilate’s shoulder-shrugging What is truth? the first represents to Christ the nadir of His trial before his spiritual judge, and the second the depth of His trial before the secular judge.
Now if we will but turn away from the “psychology” of Caiaphas and Pilate, and turn to the theology of Christ, in other words, if we will but stop studying the souls of Caiaphas and of Pilate and simply ask what Christ as our Surety and Mediator is suffering at this time, we will have eyes to see the awful parallelism logically constructed by God between the depth of Christ’s trial before the spiritual and before the secular judge.
When Caiaphas demanded that Christ take an oath, he was denying Christ’s abiding presence with God. His continuous tarrying, His unintermittent watching and praying upon the prophetic mountain—that Caiaphas denied. In short, the act of Caiaphas was an act of negation.
Now Pilate asks, What is truth? This question is also a denial of Christ’s continuous presence with God, of Christ’s constant tarrying, and watching and praying upon the mountain of the king and of the prophet. This again represents negation.
Yes, Caiaphas and Pilate are separate individuals, are quite different from each other. The one comes from the Orient, the other from the Occident. The first has his seat upon the mountain of Jerusalem; the second upon the peaks of Rome. The first wears the robe of a priest; the second a Roman toga. The one anoints his head with ointment taken from the temple; the other anoints his with perfumes taken from the palace. The first moves under the burden of learned folios; the second whets his sword, and discriminates between his pearls and his golden rings. The first simulates unusual earnestness, twists and bends himself into a thousand convolutions in an effort to arrive eventually at the point of rest—the point at which he can condemn Christ to death in terms of the most expedient plan. The other begins with perfect calm and with unruffled poise, and only later contorts himself into many convolutions, only later grows restive and tense, aggravating the burden of his life even to the point of death.
How complete the contrast between these two types. How far apart each stands from the other.
Nevertheless, in relation to Jesus Christ, both proceed from the principle of negation. That is the element they have in common. In the last analysis, the flesh is always the same, no matter where in the world it is found. Yes, the one may resemble God’s thunderstorm in his vehement attack upon Jesus and in his passion- fraught demand: Swear that Thou speakest the truth! And it may be that the other mutters but half audibly: Alack, man, what is truth, anyhow? Do stop talking. But both of these begin with negation, for the flesh is not susceptible to the things of the Spirit of God.
Caiaphas, for instance, proceeds upon the assumption that the Christ knows nothing about the consuming fire of truth. God and the consuming fire—these are simply not to be found in Jesus. He must be forcibly conducted to the throne of God in order to take a precious oath there. No, the consuming fire of truth cannot be found with Jesus.
And Pilate makes the same reply that Caiaphas makes in response to the claim which Jesus makes to the effect that he lives next to a consuming fire. Pilate asserts that there is no fire which consumes the world. In other words, he says that the consuming fire cannot be found in Jesus.
Says Caiaphas: You are not the Messiah; you are just an ordinary Jew. By means of the oath you must be “taught” that there is still something like an atmosphere of eternity left in the world.
Says Pilate, proceeding to the same point, but beginning at the opposite pole: You are not the Messiah, for it is folly to argue that there is such a thing as an atmosphere of eternity in which we human beings could possibly move and have our being; you are but an ordinary Jew; you are but one of these madding thousands.
Caiaphas says to Jesus: You are but a man of the plains, not of the heights. And Caiaphas confirms his statement by negating Christ’s revelation of Himself as One who stands upon the mountain of all prophecy and of the one great community of kings.
Caiaphas by demanding the oath asserts that Christ is standing outside of the pale of truth, forced upon him, and he blames Christ for being outside of it. Pilate declares that there is no such thing as the circle of the coercive truth of God. Come to your senses, he seems to be saying: cease wearying yourselves with what is beyond you and unreal to me.
But both of these persons overlook the Lord, both pass by Him on the other side. And, deep within His heart, the Lord knew that this was so. His being concealed was not concealed from Him. All of the profound depths of His suffering were known to Him; they were known to the Logos from eternity. He is the Stranger upon the earth. Again negation was emphatically proclaimed to His soul in order that He should obtain His reasons for the great affirmation of God and of His elect brethren solely from God and from Himself.
In this way, then, Pilate also placed Christ inside of the bootless struggle of human life, mechanical and purely utilitarian as it is. Pilate supposes that this kind of placement is a just one. He could not believe that Christ came to break the endless tedium of the vicious circle; Pilate simply could not believe that. He passed by Jesus on the other side.
In the very year in which this book is being written—1929— a congress of Jewish jurists has raised the question whether the time has not come to re-examine the trial of Jesus of Nazareth and to acknowledge, finally, perhaps, that the Sanhedrin did Him an injustice. The Jewish conscience, this group maintains, must pass In review once more the “case” of the Nazarene, and must do it this time without bias. And it is true that the same question might very well be raised by those who study Roman jurisprudence.
However, even though at any time the Jewish people, or any Jewish organization should openly acknowledge that Caiaphas had unnecessarily delivered up “Jesus,” the historical person, and that Pilate had done the same for no coercive reasons, even then Christ would continue to be regarded as an exile by this crooked world. Those who allow “Jesus” to go where He pleases in this world because He is not a dangerous character, or because He does the cause of truth no harm, or because in the depths of His longing heart He did not defile the oaths of Israel, pious and faithful to tradition as they were, but who, for the rest, do not acknowledge Christ as standing at the very top of the prophetic and royal mountain—those, we say, still deny Him. They deny and negate Him as He is in essence. This is an issue which is not conditioned by ideas which our own minds have worked out; it is a question of grasping the command which comes to us along the avenues of the God of revelation—a command which is ever exhorting us: Hear him, hear him. Christ does not want to argue with us about what truth is, what life is, and what God is. He wants to lay upon us with a most palpable authority His truth, and His life, and His God. The passionate qualities of the questions which Caiaphas puts as well as the dispassionate character of those which Pilate asks are irrelevant to the real essence of Christ inasmuch as they do not touch the real meaning of Christ as He is in His office. He Himself wishes to inform us fully by means of the significant content of His words, and thus to implant in us the tension of the kingdom of heaven. For the kingdom of heaven is one which does not allow itself to be put on a level with a kingdom whose power and significance are mundane in character.
We shall leave Pilate to his haughty supercilious inquiries, just as we left Caiaphas in his state of excitement. We shall go straight to Jesus and see how severely He is being humiliated. Now that Pilate has negated His royal and prophetic mountain in its entirety, the case of Jesus Christ cannot possibly be conducted along proper lines. Now it is the “fate” of Christ Jesus, now it is the necessity of our Surety and Saviour that He be appointed for death from the very beginning.
This He Himself felt. He felt it as deeply, as grievously, as is conceivable. Jesus had ever known this. But now He experienced that when Pilate put the question, What is truth? and turned his back to Him, everything was and would remain essentially ruined.
When He, a man of like passions with us, grievously experienced that nothing could be expected from this judge, He still confronted the severest task of all. He had to give Pilate every moment that was due him, and had to give God everything after a while that was God’s due. This was His sublime majesty: To see Pilate as one absolutely blind, as the plaything of his own fears, and nevertheless to honor God as the Father of spirits, who created the eye, and upon whom every eye must be directed; who sends out His Spirit so that everyone called a servant may be filled with that Spirit, and may constantly seek Him. This was a difficult seeking, this searching for God among the conspirators against Him. This was a hard day, this day in which He had to see His Father’s house of justice turned into a den of murderers, and to be unable to fashion a whip with His fingers. For His were the hands which had once fashioned a whip with which to sweep the temple clean.