Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants had fought that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from hence.
Jesus stands bound before Pilate, accused of claiming a throne. He does not deny that He is a King. He denies where His kingdom comes from, and He points to His followers' empty hands as the proof.
Jesus makes two denials here, and they are not the same. One is about the kind of kingdom it is. The other is about where its power comes from. Older translations end the verse "not from hence" — that is, "not from here." The writers below use that wording.
He also affirmed that His kingdom was neither "of this world," nor "from hence." It does not carry the character or stamp of this world. It does not draw its authority and power from this place. Of course His kingdom draws all its authority and power from Heaven, and it carries the heavenly character. But instead of saying this in a positive way, He put the matter in a negative light. That quietly condemned and rejected this world and this place. It was a bold statement to make in the presence of the man who represented the greatest existing earthly power.
A worldly king with a real claim would have had men fighting for him. Jesus stood there as a prisoner instead, and that settled it.
The Lord explains that His kingdom is not of this world. If it were, He would have made good His claims the way the world does. His presence as accused before Pilate was the proof of it. Jesus does not fail to confess openly that He is King, when Pilate asks Him. He will establish, later on, a power which nothing will be able to resist, but the time had not yet come.
Hours earlier one of His followers had tried to fight. Peter drew a sword in the garden and cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest.
Natural feeling, and a true love for his Master, prompted him to this act. But natural feeling is not always a safe guide. In this case it was not. God's work is not to be spread now by the sword. The Lord's kingdom is not "from hence," as He later told Pilate, so He did not ask His servants to fight for it. Long ago God's cause was advanced by the sword. The earthly people were concerned in that. Now there was the heavenly calling, and the kingdom of the heavens was not to be advanced by weapons of the flesh.
So what does this kingdom run on, if not force? One writer answers from what Jesus told Pilate next.
He came to bear witness to the truth: to tell out what God is, in a world blinded and blighted by the devil's lie. He was the truth Himself. That is surely what He meant when He said, "Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." His kingdom is truth, and there is no lie in it. To hear His voice means to obey the truth. To be in His kingdom means to be subject to Him. No one knows the truth who does not obey it.
Commentators press this verse hard on the believer's relation to the state. One notes that the moment Jesus refused to fight for was the best cause imaginable.
Never was there a more worthy, a more just cause to fight for than at that moment; but the Lord refuses it entirely on the ground of being a stranger in this world. If a Christian fights now it is to uphold the glory of the world that crucified his Lord; and it is a virtual denial of that word which tells us that our citizenship is in heaven.
Refusing to grasp at power is not the same as lawlessness. The same distance from the world's government produces careful obedience to it.
So in the meantime we should be all the more eager to submit to every human institution. That means not only the king as the highest authority, but also the governors he sends to deal justly with evildoers and to praise those who do well. Our proper interests are on high; but that is our duty for the Lord's sake.
The verse denies a source, not a future. Writers are careful that this saying is not turned into a claim that earth will never come under Christ's rule.
Does he mean to say that this world will not be made the kingdom of Christ? He knows this would be entirely contrary to Christian hope and faith. Then the question is its character, the source of its power. "It is not from hence": that I indeed believe.
One writer describes an offer the church accepted, and where it left her.
Satan, as it were, repeated the offer to the church, and she at length accepted it. In seeking the glory of the world, she has sought honour where Satan is the prince... By and by His kingdom will be from here. "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ." And when it passes into His hands, the reign of Christians will begin.
- Source, not size. The denial is about origin and character. This kingdom carries no stamp of this world. It draws no authority from it.
- Source shown by silence. A bound prisoner with no army was His own evidence — if the kingdom came from here, men would have been fighting for it.
- Source rules the weapons. Peter's sword was love using the wrong tool; the heavenly calling is not advanced by weapons of the flesh.
- Source defines the entry. It is a kingdom of truth, and you are in it by hearing His voice and submitting to Him.
- Source sets the timing. "Not from hence" does not mean "never here." The world will yet be His. Until then His people obey rulers instead of grasping at thrones.
Pilate therefore said to him, Thou art then a king? Jesus answered, Thou sayest [it], that I am a king. I have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice.
Pilate, the Roman governor, asks Jesus if He claims to be a king. Jesus answers by naming the reason He was born. His reply raises three questions: what kind of King is He, what did He come to do, and who can hear Him?
Pilate hears a claim to royalty. The Lord does not drop that claim — but He points to where His kingdom comes from.
Its source and character were of a new, heavenly kind, one to which the idea of armed warfare was completely foreign. He does not give up His claim as King of Israel — that always stands — but He rises into a higher region, and declares that He came for something more than to reign on earth.
So His kingship is real. But reigning was not what He came into the world to do.
The Lord's positive answer leaves Pilate with an uneasy conscience. In real fact He is a king, being born and coming into the world, not to reign, but to bear witness to the truth. Here is true moral kingly character shown in lowly grace and rejection before the time of His reigning as King of kings.
Jesus says two things about His coming, not one. He was born, and He came into the world. Writers weigh that second phrase.
To come into the world He must have existed before that coming. And so we have His Godhead stated just as simply. We have the "I" who was born, and the "I" who came — the "I" of Bethlehem, and the "I" who was before Abraham. Yet He was the One who stood in human form and in lowly grace before Pontius Pilate.
Another writer pictures the scene from the judge's side of the room:
Who ever heard a prisoner speak like this before his judge? The One who spoke was a man, for He was born. But He came into the world for a purpose. He does not now say that He was sent.
If He is a King who is not reigning yet, what is He doing here? His answer names a present ministry that Israel's refusal did not interrupt.
For a time the unbelief of His nation held back His possession of the kingdom. But He shows that God's purpose had not failed in this. He had come into the world for other present work than to take His throne in Zion.
This truth is not a theory. It has a content, and hearing it calls for obedience.
He came to bear witness to the truth: to tell out what God is, in a world blinded and blighted by the devil's lie. He was the truth Himself... His kingdom is truth, there is no lie in it, and to hear His voice means to obey the truth, and to be in His kingdom means to be subject to Him.
The last sentence goes straight to the man doing the questioning.
The Lord appeals to the conscience of Pilate. Was he one who had come under the convicting power of the truth? All such hear the voice of the Lord. Sad to say, Pilate shows that the voice of Jesus had never reached his conscience or touched his heart. His flippant reply is: "What is truth?"
So who does hear His voice? Those who have already received life from God.
Those who heard the voice of the Son of God had divine life in them. He who is the truth gave them that life, and that made them "of the truth." These wonderful words were lost on Pilate. He had not the divine capacity to receive them.
Of everything in the Lord's life, Paul chose this scene to hold up before Timothy.
He makes no reference to His glorious resurrection or ascension, nor to any of the miracles He did, though each of them bore such rich testimony to His power and grace. He takes special notice instead of His conduct before the judge.
And nothing anyone could see backed up what He said:
Jesus witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that He was a king, without any mark of royalty about Him. His confession seemed contradicted by His appearance.
- Born — He was born, so He is fully man. He came, so He existed before Bethlehem.
- King — He never drops the title. But His kingdom is of a heavenly kind, so no one fought for Him.
- Came — His work now was not to take a throne. It was to bear witness to the truth, and tell out what God is in a world living under a lie.
- Heard — those who are "of the truth" have already received life from God. They know His voice, and hearing it means obeying it.
- Followed — Paul points Timothy to this confession, not to the miracles. Jesus made it with nothing royal in sight to back it up.