The Cross: King of the Jews

Why do men and women need the gospel? Because the human heart is like a pigsty. It’s dirty and nasty, full of filth. It smells rotten. Mud and waste fill every corner. Religion looks at that pigsty and says, “I can fix it.” It gets some wood and builds a nice shed and places it right over the pigsty. It picks out beautiful colors to paint the shed, plants flowers around the outside, and places a hand-carved “Welcome” sign over the door. It looks great at a glance, but when you open the door, the stench of pigs wallowing in their own filth leaks out. Religion only succeeds in changing the appearance, not the heart. Jesus takes a wrecking ball to the shed the religious leaders have built. He exposes their hearts, filthy and defiled. The gospel doesn’t deal in cosmetics. It gets dirty. It takes a shovel to the heart’s pigsty and starts digging out the muck of sin. It isn’t pleasant at first because exposed sin is ugly, but the gospel expels sin and transforms the heart.

We need our hearts changed. We don’t need our morals reformed or our behavior modified. If we attempt to change through religion, that is, through what we do—church attendance, charitable giving, disciplined living, strict moralism—we may succeed in putting a fresh coat of paint on our outsides, but inside our hearts will still be pigsties.

The filthy stench of their hearts is exposed in their statement claiming Caesar as their only king (19:15). They’re lying—outright, bald-faced lying. Earlier (ch. 8) they told Jesus they were enslaved to no one. They don’t view Caesar as their king. They don’t have a king! They’re more honest than they intend. They have no king because they’ve rejected the rule of God and the reign of his Son.

Back in chapter 19, verse 7, they said their law was the basis for Jesus’s death, but they don’t have just any law: they have God’s law. What is God’s law about? It’s about the coming King. It’s about Jesus. The law they use to condemn Jesus to death is written about the coming of Jesus. They have the gospel—the life-transforming message is theirs—and they treat it like a code of conduct. “Do this.” “Don’t do that.” “Paint the outside this color.” “Plant these flowers.” They ignore the life-giving gospel and embrace dead religion. It’s their chants of “Crucify! Crucify!” that eventually convince Pilate to deliver Jesus to be crucified (vv. 16-18). This all takes place during the Passover Festival (v. 14). On the day they celebrate their salvation from the king of Egypt, they kill their own King.

Three times in this passage Jesus responds to Pilate’s questions. His first response is to the question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (18:33). Jesus is a king, but his kingdom is not a threat to the Roman Empire. His kingdom is different from earthly kingdoms because it’s not from this world (18:36). Jesus is not saying his kingdom is disconnected from this world, as if this world doesn’t matter. He’s saying his kingdom is greater than this world. It’s beyond all world powers and includes more than the visible realm.

His kingdom has servants, but his servants operate much differently from the servants of earthly kingdoms. His servants could take up weapons to stop his crucifixion, but those are not his orders. His servants have different goals. Earthly servants seek to protect their king, but Jesus needs no protection. He protects his servants, not the other way around. His servants have different weapons. Earthly servants use swords and shields—in our day, guns and grenades—to do their king’s bidding. Jesus’s goals are not first physical. They’re spiritual. For him earthly weapons serve no purpose. One of the Reformers wrote,

Christ’s “kingdom” is spiritual and must be founded on the teaching and power of the Spirit. It must be built up in the same way, for neither human laws and edicts nor human punishments reach the conscience. . . . However, the depravity of “this world” causes Christ’s “kingdom” to be established more by the blood of martyrs than by force of arms. (Calvin, John, 418)

Understanding the difference between Jesus’s kingdom and earthly kingdoms forces us to look to his Word and not to this world for instructions on how to obey him. If his kingdom was an earthly kingdom, then we could observe other successful earthly kingdoms and operate based on their laws. But the unique nature of his kingdom calls for a unique source of instruction. We get our orders from the Word of the King himself.

Christians often feel out of step with the world around us because we are out of step with this world. We are citizens of a heavenly kingdom living among citizens of an earthly kingdom. As we follow our King, sometimes we’ll feel like we’re swimming upstream, against the current of our culture. We can’t give up and swim downstream, and we shouldn’t make it our goal to change the direction of the current. Instead, we trust God for strength to keep swimming and for opportunities to call others to join us.

Just as his kingdom is a different type of kingdom, Jesus is a different type of king (18:37-38). Jesus’s royalty rests in the uniqueness of his authority, as one who bears witness to the truth. The truth Jesus proclaims comes from God (8:40). Often truth is viewed as relative, as something that can be controlled. You can spin the truth to benefit your cause. But truth is fixed. It flows from the lips of God, who himself never changes. Jesus came to reveal God’s truth. We can’t spin it; we must submit to it. Truth is the instrument God uses to call men and women into his kingdom. Every person is born into slavery, held captive to sin, and deceived by Satan, the father of lies. His lies fill this world. His biggest lie is that we can find happiness apart from God. “If you can win his love, you’ll find happiness.” “If you’re successful at your job, you’ll find happiness.” “If you buy that boat, you’ll find happiness.” “If your family’s healthy, you’ll find happiness.” “If you’re invited into the inner circle, you’ll find happiness.” We’re like the Olympic sprinter from the movie Chariots of Fire. Before running the 100-meter dash, he laments, “Contentment! I’m 24 and I’ve never known it. I’m forever in pursuit, and I don’t even know what it is I’m chasing” (quoted in Keller, Counterfeit Gods, 73).

The world feeds us lie after lie, each bigger, bolder, and more outrageous than the last. Jesus speaks the truth. Those who respond to the truth are no longer slaves to the father of lies. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:32). Jesus doesn’t spread his kingdom through the sword but through the Word. He brings salvation not through military might but through a message of truth. The gospel message makes kingdom subjects. Christians, as kingdom citizens, serve one another by bringing one another back to the Word of God. We remind one another of what the King said, not common sense or worldly solutions. God promises to transfer rebels from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light through his Word, and through his Word we learn how to live as faithful subjects in his kingdom.

I find great hope in Jesus’s final response to Pilate (19:9-11). All human authority is granted by God. Pilate has no authority over this event—the trial and crucifixion—unless God hands it to him. In this moment we see the superiority of Jesus’s kingdom. The King of the Jews is about to die, but his kingdom will not be shaken. In human kingdoms, if you take out the king, you create turmoil and the kingdom becomes vulnerable to attack. But Jesus’s kingdom is not in danger of being overthrown. He is sovereign over the proceedings. His death will not make his kingdom more vulnerable; it makes his kingdom victorious. His death instituted the spiritual effects of his kingdom. We are liberated from captivity to sin, death, and Satan, and we are citizens in his kingdom. But his kingly reign will someday take a grander form. Jesus will not just rule spiritually; he will bring everything into subjection to himself. He will return and establish a never-ending kingdom governed in perfect righteousness. His kingdom has come but only in part. There will be a day when the King returns and every knee will bow and every tongue confess he is Lord.

The kingdom of Jesus is not a fantasy. It’s not a fairy tale. In fact, our fairy tales are human attempts to wrestle with a desire we all feel. We long for a day when a victorious king appears to right all wrongs, defeat our enemies, and dispense justice to the oppressed. Jesus didn’t come as a victorious king because we were the enemies. If he had come to dispense justice, we would have been destroyed. The first time he came as a humble King, laying down his life so we could be spared and brought into his kingdom. Next time he will come as the victorious King, establishing his eternal kingdom.

When we comprehend who Jesus is and commit ourselves to Jesus as King, our lives will change. We’ll see the world and our role in it differently. Our King has given us a mission, and we’ll die trying to accomplish it. We’ll live with a wartime mentality, using our time, energy, and resources to serve our King and carry out his orders. There’s a big difference between a peacetime and wartime mentality. It might be best illustrated by the ocean liner Queen Mary. The Queen Mary was built in 1937 to carry passengers between England and the United States. It was a gorgeous ship and featured the best amenities. It was in every sense a luxury liner. But when World War II started, there was little need for a luxury liner. The Queen Mary was retrofitted and used as a troop transport. Instead of first-class cabins and luxury staterooms, it now had barracks and a mess hall. Shuffleboard courts were replaced with antiaircraft guns. The luxury was stripped away because there was a war to be fought. Our King did not come in luxury, and he doesn’t call us to luxury. He calls us to carry out his mission. We go to the nations and tell them death is defeated, shame has surrendered, and Jesus is King.