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SUBJECT: 19. Chapter 19: Christ Being Silent Before Pilate
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C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N
Christ Being Silent Before Pilate
And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find no fault in this man.
—Joh_18:38 b.
And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.
—Luk_23:5.
And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he said nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him never a word; insomuch that the governor marveled greatly.
—Mat_27:12-14.
OUR preceding chapter closed with the remark that Christ, when He knew definitely that no justice could be expected from Pilate, stood before the difficult task of having to turn away from this judge, and to give His case into the hands of that God who judges justly, and who nevertheless—or shall we say in the language of faith therefore—opposes Jesus and proceeds to forsake Him.
Now, however, we must go on. This question forces itself upon us, and there is no escaping it: In what manner did Christ, in view of these circumstances, fulfill His calling over against His God? The answer to that question is as follows: Christ held His peace. He held his peace before Caiaphas first; now He stands mute before Pilate also.
When Pilate learned from Christ that His was a kingdom which aimed not at being a secular organization based upon force but at being the dwelling and the working place of truth, He immediately concluded with finality that this manacled Jew did not constitute an immediate threat to the state. Even though it were true—we refer you here to the conclusion of Chapter 17—that the eventual effects of the principles—whichever they might be, which this odd “king” was propagating might have a detrimental effect upon the state in the future,—still, these represented no acute danger for the present. After all, the millstones of “the truth” always do their grinding slowly. And Pilate did not care to look far beyond the present. This whole “case” was troublesome enough, and if he could be rid of it now, it would probably “wear off” in time. As a matter of fact, the procurator of Rome, especially one such as Pilate was, is a decadent manifestation; and living in a decadent time, Pilate troubled himself very little about the future of the empire. Yes, the whole thing would wear off in time. For the present this strange dreamer who always did His work in the full light of day could not be an immediate danger.
For that reason Pilate, who had turned away brusquely as he asked, “What is truth?” now rather impatiently turns to the Jews, and tells them his tentative conclusion: I find no fault in him.
By that Pilate did not mean to say with finality that he regarded Jesus as an innocent man. No, Pilate is not as incautious as that. By this reply he was merely stating that in his official investigation as a judge he had not yet been able to confirm any guilt. Pilate stays in safe territory; he makes only a negative declaration. He says that he has been unable to confirm their allegation of guilt. In response to the official charge of the Jewish plaintiffs which read “We have found,” Pilate postulates the equally formal temporary report: “I find.”
The discriminating ears of the tensely listening Jewish authorities observe quickly enough that, irrespective of how formally the tentative conclusion had been announced, it was merely an introductory opinion and that it was purely negative. They grasp the situation at once. They know that Pilate is unfavorably disposed towards their wishes, but they know also that he has not yet barred the door against them.
Immediately the Jewish chief priests and scribes rush in to take advantage of this definite position. They quickly thrust their foot into the opening of the door still standing ajar. No, no, the matter cannot be dispatched as readily as that. They mean to discuss it further with Pilate and begin that discussion at once.
In response to Pilate’s negative reply they submit a long list of formidable and positively phrased charges against Jesus. What, they say to Pilate, you say you are unable to confirm any guilt in Him. Can you actually think that He is no more than a harmless dreamer who, because of His theological approach to things, and because of His religious aspirations, and because of His prophesying of the truth, is impervious to questions pertaining to the Roman government and to the world empire? If so, we can inform you differently.
And they begin presenting the information.
In the confident hope that they can make this irresolute governor serve their own purposes, inasmuch as his policies had proved variable on other occasions, they now proceed to make more vehement accusations against Jesus than they had done at any time before this.
Of course, they persist in upholding their first charges, for they must continue to give these a political color. Had they suddenly introduced a set of new charges into the case, their evil design would have become obvious and they would have damaged their ‘‘chances” immeasurably. Hence, although they insist on the counts included in their first complaint, they now proceed to aggravate these charges with redoubled vehemence. We read that they now testify “many things” against Jesus. They bring in the “details”; they give the particulars. Perhaps they carry into the discussion a report of the event which had happened to Jesus about a week before when He had entered the city as a king. That they do everything in their power to make the alleged breach of law on the part of the Prophet of Nazarene as convincing as possible becomes apparent even from their choice of words. Very carefully they let the impression prevail that not only is there good reason for naming Jesus a threat to the state but that His movement is being supported by a mass-psychology which has succeeded in getting the people—as an Israelite, as a religious group—into its grip, and is threatening to electrify it.[1] Moreover the charge, phrased in general terms at first, to the effect that Jesus was leading the people astray is now intensified and made to assert that He “stirred up” the people. In this way, then, Pilate is asked anew to investigate the case. Surely, they advise, the safety of the state must not be endangered by any personal leniency.
As for Christ? When he is accused of these many serious sins against the Roman state and of these many attacks upon the peace of the citizenry, Pilate approaches Him and asks Him to explain Himself further.
[1] We observed in Chapter 11 that they first used the word ethnos and not the word laos in referring to “the people.” This time the word laos is indeed used. See Nebe, op. cit., p. 56.
But Jesus said not a word.
It seems that Pilate conducted Jesus out of doors, placed Him before the mixed company which had gathered in front of the praetorium, and asked Him to give detailed answers to all of the charges in the presence of the plaintiffs. At least he asks Jesus whether He does not now “hear how many things these witness against Him.”
But Jesus said not a word.
Why did He hold His peace? Many reply that Jesus maintained a silence because speaking had not availed Him anything anyhow. The most elaborate defensive speech would not have changed the attitude of the Jews at all or have affected the conclusion of Pilate in the least. And inasmuch as, according to human reckoning, no beneficial effect could possibly attend an apology, Jesus, according to this interpretation, thought it better to say nothing.
However, it is better not to accept this explanation of Jesus’ silence. In fact, the interpretation irritates us a little. Just what is implied in it? May we suppose that such deliberate and casual thoughts were being pondered in the heart of Jesus? Have we found it to be the rule for Christ that He does only those things which, according to human standards, can net Him some benefit? Surely, His whole life, all of His prophecy, everything he does and witnesses and teaches, represents a continuous opposition to the main stream, represents an endeavor, a striving after that which, humanly speaking, is impossible and foolish. Would the Christ who uttered the sermon on the mount, who made the demand that everything must be perfect as God in heaven is perfect binding for the whole world, who always opposed what people think is beneficial to what God thinks is necessary—would that Christ have ceased speaking because it would not have been profitable for Him to speak?
To put the question is to answer it. Precisely because a more elaborate amplification of details could have meant much and could have made the outcome of that Friday very different from what the outcome proved to be—precisely because of that, Jesus holds His peace. His hour has indeed come, the hour in which He is to die. Therefore He does not want to be kept from the cross by any speech which would be inspired by something else than His sense of office. Nor does He, now that His hour has come, want to postpone or avoid that cross by any such speech.
Who can deny that, viewed precisely from a human standpoint, anything He might say at this point about these new particulars would have achieved much for Christ and would have helped Him a great deal in directing the case so that He would not have to make the sacrifice, or at least not have to make it on this Friday?
Suppose we reflect upon it further. Let us suppose for a moment that Christ had indeed more or less elaborately responded to all of the details of the argument which was being vehemently brought against Him. What would have happened in that case? At the very least Christ could have succeeded in embarrassing Pilate. He could have forced His judge to make a more thorough, a more searching, investigation. Had Pilate ordered such an investigation, the official thoroughness of the reports telling of his jurisdiction over the case would affect these very favorably. In any case, Christ by speaking at this time, prompted by the abundance of the perfect knowledge which was His and by His infinite passion for truth, could have postponed the sentence. True, he did not have the right of a Roman citizen, and accordingly. He could not like Paul appeal to a higher tribunal. Nevertheless, postponement was possible to Him in any case.
As a matter of fact, we can safely say that this represents a temptation to Christ, a satanic temptation. A speech given according to human standards would have “ benefited” Him greatly at this time. Not that it would have altered the disposition of the Jewish accusers. But it certainly would have induced Pilate, the judge, to exercise extreme caution.
We referred just now to a satanic temptation. We did it for good reasons. For, had Jesus allowed Himself to be tempted into a response to the accusations raised by the Jews, and had He done this fully conscious of the main issue which He had Himself raised and which Pilate had neglected, He would thereby have committed sin against the kingdom of truth, of which He Himself is the head, the prince, the cornerstone, and of which He later is to be the sacrifice and foundation.
Two possibilities of transgression were open to Him on this occasion. He would have availed Himself of the first possibility to transgress if He had been silent about the good confession which He had to proclaim. But the second Adam did not fall into this sin, for He declared before Pilate that He was indeed the king of the realm of truth.
Meanwhile, a second sin, humanly speaking, lay at the door. We have in mind the possibility that Christ, even though He had named in so many words the main issue concerned in the matter, would be silent about that issue now, and in this way do injustice to its majesty by negating it, and by talking about side issues in the meanwhile.
Thanks to the genuine working of His sinless soul, Christ escapes from this second sin also. He who is accused of blaspheming majesty, did not blaspheme it; He did not defile the majesty of Caesar, nor the majesty of Himself. He did no evil thing to the world of secular authority; neither did He do injustice to His own kingdom. Least of all does He do injustice to Himself. The truth which gives being to His kingdom never wants to be negated. Christ may be in a condition of slavery, He may walk about in bonds, but He nevertheless asserts Himself as a king in His own realm of truth, refuses to be diverted to bypaths as long as the thoroughfares upon which He in His previous confession has placed Pilate and Himself are not being traversed but are being frivolously negated. What good does it do us, what right have we, yes, what right has even Christ Himself, to segregate any side issue from the main issue or any detail in the kingdom of truth from the general truth? Who gives the Son the right to discuss or to submit for discussion anything pertaining to His deeds, discourses, or teachings, before honest deliberation has been given to the essential, basic idea which underlies all those deeds, those discourses, and those teachings? Had Christ approved of a situation in which the basic ideas of the kingdom of His truth and of the truth of His kingdom had officially been negated, but in which the details of these kingdoms had officially been studied, He would have departed from the highway which God had appointed for Him. He would then have pursued that zigzag course, that road of enmity, which at the prompting of a private and perverse will, and by reason of stark blankness, wants to coerce Him to take every bypath from which it can gain some profit for the flesh. No, indeed; those who follow the desperado-diplomacy of the people who cannot sustain life in their own strength may follow such a source, but the majesty of the eternal King in the realm of truth is a different majesty. He wants to tell Pilate the whole truth, and to tell the Jews the whole truth, but He will not do this as long as these negate Him there. Besides, He cannot say anything except what is purposeful for the kingdom of truth in the eyes of God, for such purposiveness is the sole objective of the speaking Christ. No, He can say nothing more. He cannot, for anything Jesus says cannot be seen in its proper light until the light of revelation is shed upon it. And Pilate has no interest in even looking for that light.
Hence it was because of obedience to God that Christ kept silence before Pilate and now holds His peace before the Jews. His silence did not represent a failure to act. It was not a reaction, and still less a negative attack upon or revolution against anything, but it was sheer obedience. It was the fidelity of the Prophet to the One who sent Him. For He who sent Him told Him that He might not segregate a single spoken word or piece of work from the central word and from the whole task for which He had been sent into the world. Our Chief Prophet is so faithful not only to the content but also the method of His speaking and witnessing that He will not exchange a word with people who are willing to talk with Him about the objective “details” of His testimonies, teachings, and manifestations but are willing to do that only while overlooking the single, dominating, underlying idea of which all these details are an expression. Christ will remain faithful to the method which God has instituted in the kingdom of truth even though He must sacrifice His life for such fidelity.
Christ’s silence before Pilate, then, is a deed of extreme and powerful obedience. The prophet and king labors, and sweats, and apportions His speaking and His silence in such a way that the priest in Him can arrive at the definite sacrifice, the evening- sacrifice to be offered upon Good Friday. He did not avert His death by means of a cheap, a humanly “profitable” change in the schedule of His witnessing, but He accepted the burden of the sacrifice before His God by the very act of remaining faithful to the method of His prophetic testimony.
By doing this Christ threw off the tempter and preserved His kingdom of truth. He would not give away to false appearances for a moment, not even in respect to Himself.
Just suppose for a moment that Christ had not kept silence, but that He had spoken, and that He had answered punctually each of the questions which the Jews raised. Imagine besides that He by such an apology, which would indeed have been very easy for Him to make, had escaped from the sentence which He could indeed have averted by His words. What, then, would have been the status of Christ throughout the days in which He was still to live upon earth? Understand, we are speaking after a human fashion.
But one answer is possible to this question. Had Christ allowed Himself to be acquitted upon the basis of the fact that a prophet-of-truth did not represent a threat to the Roman empire, at least not a “threat” in Pilate’s and Caesar’s sense of that word, then Christ would have tolerated the lie, and would have made use of it to lengthen His days.
Remember that Christ most certainly represents a “threat” to the Roman empire and precisely in the sense in which Pilate and Caesar understand the word. He spells the disintegration of that world-kingdom, that kingdom of anti-Christian tendencies, that bestial kingdom in which the “Beast” of the Revelation of John has already in idea been conceived and out of which—according to apocalyptic prognosis—it will presently be born. True, Christ’s kingdom enters the world having no physical form and He Himself enters Jerusalem as a “poor and defenseless” king, but in His work and being lies a power which will cause Rome to crumble. The integration effected by the Spirit of Christ introduces a disintegration into the limbs of the Beast, that is, into the constitution of the sinful world. The regeneration which Christ works, in souls first and thereupon in the Church, in the ecumenical church, in the new world, has no choice but to battle against everything which lives solely by virtue of natural birth and which, besides, is permeated with sin and with human perversity. Even though Christ does not oppose an external, physical force to the kingdoms of the world, and even though He does not beat down the gate of a single world city, He does do something, for He works from within outward. He works a new life in human souls, an irresistible life. He weaves the pattern of a heavenly kingdom in human hearts. That heavenly kingdom writes its mottoes “in the clouds” not only, but in the hearts of men also. It takes its course throughout the whole world. True, it comes from heaven, but it nevertheless works its way down to the world and into the world in order to make all things in the world new. Indeed, the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, as He Himself has told us, but it nevertheless comes to this world.
You see, then, that Christ does represent a “threat” to Rome.
It is true that Christ’s kingdom is regarded by Pilate, practical or theoretical skeptic that he is, as a paradoxical whim; it may be that Jesus—Pilate is not sure—thinks of it as dangerous, but in any case it does not constitute a practical threat to the empire. What, pray, can such an abstract, invisible, Nazarene kingdom of truth avail against the actuality of Rome’s political organization and of Pilate’s praetorship? Nothing, of course.
But we who have heard His words coming from Christ’s own lips have a different view of their meaning.
We know that Christ’s kingdom, precisely because it comes to the world from above, has, not by revolution but by reformation, not by mere cultural forces but through regeneration by the Spirit of God, so altered the complexion of the world that the flesh, and the Beast, and such culture as puts itself in the service of sin, cannot have one moment of peace with it. The realm of Christ is not an “innocent,” paradoxical whim which can be apperceived only by one standing in the spiritual world and able to read the writing in the clouds. The kingdom of Christ makes its protests against and lays its claims upon every existing order which puts itself in the service of sin. The kingdom of Christ seeks a different mankind among visible mankind, and it makes binding upon the natural and historical order of the created world its own peculiar scheme of things. And precisely because it does these things, the visible effectuation of the kingdom of Christ will indeed eventually spell harm for any kingdom which is of the word. “Harm” that is, according to the logic of all flesh.
Knowing this, Christ did not want to plead for acquittal over against the charges of the Jews for one moment. Had Christ made such a plea, He would have lied.
The Jewish plaintiffs are telling lies themselves. They try to give Pilate the impression that Christ is fostering revolution, that He makes use of force, that is, of fire and the sword. For we must know that over against these suggestive lies stands the great truth that Christ comes only with reformation and with regeneration; that He comes with the Holy Ghost, and with the sword of the heart-vanquishing Word. Moreover, these plaintiffs lie when they say that Christ is opposed to Caesar; for, in the last analysis, He favors Caesar and favors everyone who is willing- to confess and seek that which is for his real good. And again, the Jews are telling a falsehood when they suggest to Pilate that Christ sets up Himself as the final end and goal of His unremitting verbal battle against the kingdom of the world. For the truth, we know, is that Christ has constantly been having His work proceed from God and that He will ever cause it to return to God.
Thus far then, the Jews have been making false statements about Christ.
Now Christ might have refuted all of these false charges. He might have made use of this overwhelming rebuttal-material and for the rest have been silent about the undeniable fact that in very truth He came to change the whole complexion of the world and to interpose into the history of the world, as that history had heretofore spent itself, a reign which should make all things new. But even if He had done only that, Christ would have gone through the world without interference on Rome’s part, it is true, but as a rejected exile of God. He would in that case have received a writ of acquittal from Pilate, but He would have been struck down by the lightning of God. Then He would not have become a king of the world but a beggar who had succeeded in getting from the hand of Rome a lease on a few more days of life, and one who had done this at the expense of the right of His God. Then the chief Prophet of the kingdom of truth would have stifled the prophecy of Daniel which had said that the stone of the Messiah should destroy the kingdoms of the world and utterly annihilate the titanic display of worldly power.
Now draw your own conclusion. Could Jesus have been a Saviour to us, and a King of the realm of truth if we knew of Him that before the Sanhedrin He had especially emphasized the prophecy of Daniel (recall His own statement about the Son of man) but that before Pilate He had subtly buried that same prophecy by His silence? No, our great Samson does not cut off His hair nor dally with His secrets. His statements express obedience. Now His silence expresses the same. His silence gives expression to a positive lordship; it is a sacrifice, it is an obedience; it asserts the validity of the whole of prophecy inasmuch as it refuses to accept every favor of Rome available to Him only at the expense of a forthright acknowledgment of the axiom He Himself pronounced: My kingdom is a kingdom of truth. My realm, He said, is a kingdom of truth. The accent on both terms is equally pronounced. Jesus does not want to accentuate the word truth so sharply that Pilate will forget to notice the word kingdom. My kingdom, says Christ, is not of this world, it is true, but most certainly is in this world. Whoever is of the truth hears my voice.
That, certainly, spells danger for the state.
For it is quite in line with these things that Constantine the Great caused an evil day to dawn upon the Roman empire, an “evil day,” that is, according to the Beast of Rome. Some have supposed that Christ wrote the command to rule upon the clouds for Constantine to read but all believe that Christ wrote that command upon his heart. Writing upon the clouds — that, Pilate, is a relatively harmless thing, but beware of Him who can write upon the tables of the heart!
Hence it cannot be doubted by those who accept what is written above as the truth that Christ both in what He said and in what He did not say does exactly the same thing, builds the same edifice of truth, gives expression to the same peculiar style before Pilate which He does and builds and expresses before Caiaphas.
Those who take no pains in thinking through these matters regard it a paradoxical thing that Christ should say first, “I came to bear witness to the truth,” and a few moments later should say not one word in testimony to that truth, but be silent and obstinately hold His peace.
We must not take exception only to that first group of people who — as we observed above — want to explain Jesus’ silence by reference to such human arguments as are designed to show that, after all, Christ failed to speak because no human benefit could possibly issue from anything He might say anyhow.
We must also take exception to another group who read the Bible, to those, in other words, who interpret Christ’s silence before Pilate as a departure from the line which He at first had drawn when He named it His calling and the purpose of His mission to bear witness to the truth.
Remember, it is not in spite of His calling but precisely because of that calling that Christ maintains a silence before Pilate. True, we sometimes think that “to bear witness” means simply to heap up words, and that “to give testimony” represents a kind of nervous repartee being carried on among the ready speakers and the silent ones of the world. But at bottom bearing witness to the truth means forcing subsidiary issues back to the main issue and things of the periphery back to the center. To refuse to say more may be a form of bearing witness to the truth and is that when we are asked to say things at the expense of the genuine method which God makes binding upon those who testify of Him. To bear witness to the truth is not the same as to exhaust the truth. Nor is it the same as to particularize the truth, and so to cut its garment into pieces. To bear witness to the truth means to follow Christ who proclaims His theme, which is all-inclusive, once and for all and who now forbids us to segregate a single detail, a single feature of that broad and inclusive preaching from the basic idea which lies contained within that theme.
Looking at the matter in this way, we too can ask — but in a sense quite different from that of those to whom we alluded above: What good would it have done Jesus to have spoken at this time? After all, His truth is not an aggregation of gnostic sayings or epithets which can be distributed on separate bits of paper, and so serve as a kind of daily almanac for those who choose to read. His truth is a principle of life, it is a power, it is a unity. Either we are inside of His truth or we are outside of it. We must be regenerated in principle; an overwhelming absorption must take possession of our whole personality; we must be completely filled with the theme which He has proclaimed; a thoroughgoing, an essential and radical renewal of eye and heart by the Spirit of truth Himself must take place in us. How, then, could it benefit Christ to “explain” His entry into Jerusalem as an activity which could hardly constitute a threat to Pilate’s status; how could it profit Him to lay His finger upon those paragraphs of the Roman corpus juris or, for that matter, even upon the text of Israel’s own prophets, in an effort to prove that He had transgressed not as much as a single rule of law? For we can see His entry into the city and all of His royal words and royal deeds in the proper light only if we have internally, that is if we have by an “internal calling,” listened to the one word of His absolute command and laid at His feet the summary call to the beneficences of His kingdom.
In this way, then, Christ did justice to His Father.
His Father is the God of truth. And to the truth Christ bore complete witness, both by His speaking and His silence.
He did justice to Pilate also. For Pilate, too, may not stumble upon the Christ unless the stumbling takes place because of his own fault. You remember that in Chapters 4 and 5 we spoke of the maschil of Christ which He left unexplained in His appearance before the Sanhedrin. If you remember that fact and also the reasons which induced us to say that Christ by an untimely explanation of His maschil would have caused the Sanhedrin to sin, and would have damaged His own kingdom, you will be able to understand how, to a certain extent, the same consideration holds in reference to the relationship in which Christ stands to Pilate. Suppose Christ had explained to Pilate in detail that His kingdom could become effectual only by means of death on the cross. Then Pilate could have escaped from the annoying responsibility of this case. In that case Pilate would virtually have been invited by Christ to appeal not to the revealed legal code which God in His general grace had permitted Rome to retain but to the hidden things of the Lord which God’s special grace had kept secret even from Israel. Then Christ would have played the game of destruction with His kingdom which, as we pointed out at the time, would have been the inevitable result of a premature explanation of Jesus’ maschil about His prophecy.
It is true that Christ’s kingship must achieve victory only by means of death. But that does not mean that Christ Himself is going to debase this kingship by inviting Pilate — so to say — to “take a chance” with the imprisoned Galilean, a chance, that is, designed to determine whether or not Jesus would actually arise from the dead in His royal power. For Pilate, too, the truth holds that this silent king has no room for experimentation in the closed circle of God’s holy justice and strict truth.
We will conclude, therefore, by taking a glance at the terrible harmony which obtains between the court-session of Caiaphas and that of Pilate. We stated in the preceding chapter that there was a nadir in the litigation of Caiaphas which corresponded to one in that of Pilate. It was the nadir in which both of the judges sank out of sight at the very beginning of the legal proceeding.
But to point out that correspondence is not to complete the parallelism. Next to those nadirs in which the human being on his part sinks from view stands a twofold zenith on which Christ, by virtue of His own strength and sovereignty, stands most gloriously. That zenith of the exalted Man of sorrows upon which He makes the whole court of Caiaphas converge consists of the fact that the silent Christ maintained His maschil and His parables.
He does the same thing in the court of Pilate. There, too, Jesus holds His peace. Now inasmuch as this second silence on the part of Christ represents a second silence over against the Jews, we need to say nothing more about it. We all feel that Christ persisted in the attitude which He had once and for all taken in reference to them, and that He still does not want to explain His maschil. As for Pilate, over against him, too, Christ maintains the great mystery of His being and of His work.
Such was the law of the transcendent revelation of the King in the realm of truth. He comes from above, and — He proclaims that He does. He works irresistibly into the life and being of what is found below, and — He proclaims that. He gave basic and honest expression to the transcendence of His being and of His work in all of His speaking. And He does the same in all of His silence. He does not allow a single one of His transcendent miracles to be cut out of His heart by letting as much as a single sliver or single shaving of the tree of knowledge be cut off from that tree itself.
And only by strictly insisting upon His transcendence in the coming of revelation was He able to preserve the immanence of the grace of revelation for us. The tree of life, that tree of grace, must continue to throw out its roots before our eyes, and to fasten them not in the soil of this earthly life, nor in the prepared field of our false reason, nor in the circumscribed area of the world’s vicious circle, but in that eternal soil which the infinite God of revelation has in His sovereign way prepared for the flourishing of His conquering truth.
So Christ prevented time from imbibing death from the troubled fountains of human reason. This is a manifestation of His immanent grace. Nevertheless He gave this world of the vicious circle an opportunity to seek and to find in our world those fountains of revealed truth which God has opened there, and an opportunity for it to drink life from these. This, too, is an instance of the immanent grace of that speaking and silent witness to revelation, Jesus Christ. We want to see Him, both as He is in His speaking and as He is in His silence, entirely true to Himself, to His God, and to His people. Speaking and silent, He is the one, the unmoved, whose work endures into eternity.
When Christ had kept silence, also before Pilate, God in heaven wrote in the books that He would grant His Son the complete judgment. The king of the realm of truth had not played with His crown for a single second. Hence He could in perfect earnestness now permit that crown to be wrenched from His head. A king who dallies with his crown will let it drop to the ground without any conceivable profit but he who forgoes playing with the crowns of kings, he who preserves sincerity both in speaking and in keeping silence is able to lose infinitely and forever; the loss will never harm him, for he has preserved himself in righteousness.
The silent Christ refused to accept the crown which was offered Him as a gift of worldly tolerance. When He refused, the intolerance of all the worlds came and struck His crown from His head. The blow was vehemently dealt, and God struck more vehemently than they all.
There He stood. It was night. He was forsaken. His was an uncrowned head.
But such was the law of truth. Thus did He remain king in the realm of truth. Whoever is of the truth hears His voice even though —· on this night — it sings a lamentation about the uncrowned head.