Pilate therefore, having heard these words, led Jesus out and sat down upon [the] judgment-seat, at a place called Pavement, but in Hebrew Gabbatha;
The crowd has just warned Pilate that letting Jesus go would make him no friend of Caesar. This verse shows what that threat did: a governor who had three times found no fault now takes his official seat to pass sentence.
Pilate's own conscience had been pushing him toward release. What silenced it was not new evidence but a calculation about his career.
Conscience was clearly pressing him, so Pilate looks for some way to release the Lord. But the Jews are ready with another weapon. They tell him that such an act would show no friendship to Caesar... In fact, this meant nothing to the Jews themselves. But they gain their deceitful end by making Pilate afraid for his own position and his standing with Caesar. This overrides his conscience.
Pilate had toyed with the trial. Now the trial handles him, and his old question comes back in a new form:
"Pilate's playing with the situation," observes Lange, "is now past; now the situation plays with him. First he said — not asked — What is truth? Now his frightened heart, to which the emperor's favour is the supreme law of life, says, What is justice?"
Sitting down was not rest or ceremony. It was the legal act that announced a verdict was coming. John also gives a time for it, and his clock runs differently from Mark's:
When Pilate brought Jesus out to make his last appeal, he took his place in the judgment seat on the Pavement. That showed he was about to pass judgment in the case... The solution appears to be this. John, dealing with what happened before the Roman judge, uses the Roman reckoning, which was similar to ours. Mark reckons by Jewish custom. If this is so, all is simple. It was about 6 a.m. when Pilate's examination drew to a close, and about 9 a.m. when Jesus was crucified.
Some have asked who actually sat down, since the Greek word could in theory mean Pilate seated his prisoner there. The usage of the verb settles it:
Pilate now took his seat, it would seem for the first time. Some would treat ekathizen as "seated" — that is, "Jesus" — but nowhere else does this verb take an object.
The verse gives the place two names. Each one describes a different feature of the same spot.
A place attached to the judgement-hall, where the judge gave sentence, speakers made speeches, and so on... The floor of this place was no doubt made of mosaic stones, and that is why John 19:13 calls it the PAVEMENT. In Hebrew they called it GABBATHA, which means elevated, or a raised platform.
This kind of floor belonged to Roman authority, and travelled with it:
In later Greek to lithostroton meant mosaic work laid in the floors of buildings, public or private. Above all it named the platform where a Roman officer sat to carry out his office. Suetonius tells us that Julius Caesar made a habit of carrying such a mosaic with him on his campaigns.
At the judgment seat both sides show what they are. Their aims were opposite; their state was the same.
Pilate, though convinced of His innocence and impressed by His majesty and dignity, prefers the friendship of the world to the Son of God. So Jew and Gentile join together in crucifying the Lord of glory. As it has been said, "Pilate and the Jews were wholly opposed in their thoughts and wishes; but God was not in the thoughts of one more than the others."
One day the places will swap. The Man who stood before that platform will sit on the seat of judgment:
A Man will sit on the throne of judgment at the judgment seat of God. He is the Man whom men have despised and treated as nothing... What shame it will be for Pilate and Herod, before whom the Lord once stood. They will stand before the judgment seat of God and see on it the Man they let their soldiers mock and treat as nothing.
Yet none of this slipped out of God's hand. Pilate could go no further than God allowed:
But God was over all, and Pilate could do nothing that day except as permitted from above. God was not responsible for the black flood of hatred pouring out from the hearts of the Jews. Nor was He responsible for the lesser sin of the wavering judge, who was ready to stoop to any injustice to save his face. But He did make Himself responsible for the channel in which the sin of Jew and Gentile flowed.
- Pressure. The threat about Caesar's friendship changed no evidence. It made Pilate fear for his own position, and that fear silenced his conscience.
- Seat. Sitting down on the judgment seat announced that sentence was coming. By Roman reckoning it was about 6 a.m., three hours before the crucifixion.
- Place. "The Pavement" names the mosaic floor of a Roman court. "Gabbatha" names the raised platform it stood on. Two names, one spot.
- Verdict. There Jew and Gentile stood exposed together. They wanted opposite things, but God was in the thoughts of neither.
- Reversal. The Man judged on that platform will Himself sit as Judge. Those who condemned Him will stand before Him. Even their sin ran only in the channel God allowed.
(now it was [the] preparation of the passover; it was about the sixth hour;) and he says to the Jews, Behold your king!
Pilate has run out of ways to release Jesus, so he sits on the judgment platform and brings the prisoner out. John pauses to fix the day and the hour, then records the taunt the governor threw at the crowd.
Mark says Jesus was crucified at the third hour, yet here Pilate is still speaking at about the sixth. Commentators explain this by two ways of counting the day.
There is an apparent clash between the time given here and the time in Mark 15:25, which has caused much discussion. We cannot help asking, If He was crucified at the third hour, how is it that Pilate is said to deliver his sentence about the sixth hour? The solution seems to be that our writer, dealing with what happened before the Roman judge, uses the Roman reckoning, which was similar to ours, while Mark reckons by Jewish custom. If this is so, all is simple. It was about 6 a.m. when Pilate's examination drew to a close, and about 9 a.m. when Jesus was crucified. The "preparation of the Passover" was the 24 hours starting at 6 the evening before. Into that 24 hours were crowded the most tremendous events in time, or indeed in eternity.
Another writer ties the Roman clock to the date of John's Gospel.
It is generally accepted that John's gospel was the last book of Scripture written — say about thirty years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jews counted a day from about six one evening to about six the next. The Romans count from midnight to midnight, as we do now. If John wrote that late, and if the Jewish way had by then largely given way to the Roman way, all thought of a discrepancy in these passages of Scripture disappears.
The phrase does not mean a day spent getting ready for the feast.
The expression "the preparation" arose first from the custom of preparing food and so on for the sabbath day, and referred to the sixth day of the week. This particular preparation was that of the Passover — not a preparation for the Passover, but of the Passover. It was in fact the very day of the Passover, which began the previous evening.
The date was not an accident of the calendar.
If we turn now to John 19:14 we find a still more blessed explanation, one full of the deepest instruction for our hearts. You will notice it is not the preparation for the Passover, but of the Passover... For fifteen centuries the preparation day had pointed on to this day. Jesus, the Lamb of God, had presented Himself at this very Passover, when the Passover day fell on the day before the sabbath. Sadly, the Jews did not understand it.
Pilate's words are a jab at the men who have cornered him — and a jab he half suspects is accurate.
Pilate, irritated by his own defeat, speaks this way, "Behold your King," to irritate the Jews further, though he is himself afraid that his words are true.
The governor is protecting himself. God is doing something else through the same words.
At last, fearing to be accused of disloyalty to Caesar, he turns with contempt to the Jews, saying, "Behold your King" — acting, though unconsciously, under the hand of God, to bring out that memorable word from their lips, their condemnation and their calamity to this day: "We have no king but Caesar."
The same scene shows the worst in man and the best in God.
The last word of unbelief that had turned away from God passes their lips and closes Pilate's mouth... never such hatred and unrighteousness as on the world's part toward Him; never such love and righteousness as on God's part toward the world because of Him.
The crowd refused the King shown to them at the sixth hour. One writer looks ahead to the day this same Person appears again, on very different terms.
About the sixth hour on the day of the crucifixion Pilate brought Jesus out and said to the crowd in Jerusalem, "Behold your King!" (John 19:14). This provoked the violent cry, "Away with Him, crucify Him." The prophet sees the same wonderful Person, but coming in the splendour of Deity with a "strong hand." This will be good news indeed, after the painful display of sin and utter weakness on the part of men.
- Hour — John reports a Roman hearing by the Roman clock, about 6 a.m.; Mark uses the Jewish clock for the crucifixion at 9 a.m. Commentators treat the difference as two ways of telling time, not a contradiction.
- Day — It was the preparation of the Passover, the Passover day itself, starting at 6 the evening before. Those twenty-four hours held the most tremendous events in time, and in eternity.
- Lamb — Fifteen centuries of preparation days pointed to this one. On it the Lamb of God presented Himself at the feast that pictured Him.
- King — Pilate spoke to wound the crowd, half afraid his taunt was true. God used his mouth to draw out the words that condemned the nation.
- Return — The King they refused at the sixth hour will come again in the splendour of Deity. That will be good news indeed.
But they cried out, Take [him] away, take [him] away, crucify him. Pilate says to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.
The trial reaches its last word here. Pilate calls Jesus their King, and the chief priests name a foreign emperor instead. That one answer settles what the nation thinks of the One God sent.
Pilate aimed his contempt at the crowd, but a greater hand drew out their reply.
Pilate tried to get Him out of their fury. At last he was afraid of being accused of disloyalty to Caesar. So he turned to the Jews with contempt and said, "Behold your King." He did not know it, but he was acting under the hand of God. His words brought that memorable word out of their lips, their condemnation and their disaster right up to today: "We have no king but Caesar." They denied their Messiah. The fatal word, which called down the judgment of God, was now spoken; and Pilate hands Jesus over to them.
The strange thing is who said it. The chief priests chose Rome — and they did not even mean it.
They spoke the word that rejected Christ. Their loyalty to Rome was a lie. Their mad guilt was plain: they got rid of the Messiah and God Himself and all their faith and hope. The Jews hated being under Caesar. They admitted neither his right to rule nor their own sin, which was the reason he ruled over them. But they hated the Messiah more — not their idea of Him, but the reality according to God. They had not a thought or a feeling, not a word or a way or a purpose, in common with Jesus. This was because He brought God near to them in grace, and because He showed man in perfect dependence and obedience to God. Their will, with a bad conscience, rejected both.
Another writer reads their tone the same way — that they would say anything at that moment to get their King killed:
In cold, determined hypocrisy they answer that they have no king but Caesar. In fact they hated Caesar's rule, but they would not say this to Pilate: just now they would say anything to persuade Pilate to kill their King.
Pilate is not the innocent party. The verse catches the governor and the priests in the same net.
Pilate gives in to their shouting: "Away with him, away with him, crucify him!" The Jews see nothing in Him to make them want Him. Pilate is sure of His innocence and impressed by His majesty and dignity, yet he prefers the friendship of the world to the Son of God. So Jew and Gentile join in crucifying the Lord of glory. As someone has said, "Pilate and the Jews were wholly opposed in their thoughts and wishes; but God was not in the thoughts of one more than the others." These two verses sum up the wickedness of Jew and Gentile. The Jews seal their doom by rejecting their Messiah outright, for they say, "We have no king but Caesar." This is the Jews publicly turning away from God. The Gentile fails completely in government. He hands over to be crucified One in whom he has three times said there is no fault.
This rejection did not begin at the trial. One writer traces it back to the moment Jesus arrived:
So the King has come — the true King, the one everything waits for, the one everything still waits for: for He came only to be rejected... He is worshipped by those far away, but when He comes to His own, they have no heart for Him... There is only the announcement that He has come. At once we see what they later declare openly: they have "no king but Caesar." So there is nothing for it but to leave them to Caesar.
Pilate refused to change what he had written, and commentators see God's purpose in that refusal — and in what still lies ahead for Israel.
God, no doubt, had a purpose in all this. The nation of Israel refused to own their King then. But at Christ's second coming it will yet be their joy to know that they have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.
One writer sets the believer's confession against what the world chose.
What did the world do? It crucified the Saviour and threw Him out. They said, "We will not have this Man to reign over us." The believer says the opposite when he confesses the Lord Jesus: "I will have this Man to reign over me." In other words, he reverses the world's verdict. He takes issue with the world, goes straight against its choice, and like a living fish swims upstream.
- The claim. Pilate says "your King." The priests answer with Caesar — the fatal word that denied their Messiah and every hope they had.
- The lie. They hated Roman rule; they hated Christ more, because He brought God near in grace and exposed their will.
- The verdict. Priest and governor fail together. The nation publicly turns from God, and the governor condemns a man he three times called faultless.
- The consequence. They chose Caesar, so God left them to Caesar.
- The reversal. The nation will yet own Him at His coming, and every believer now says what they refused: this Man shall reign over me.
Then therefore he delivered him up to them, that he might be crucified; and they took Jesus and led him away.
Pilate has said three times that he finds no fault, yet here he hands Jesus over to be crucified. Everything turns on one word — delivered — and the writers ask who really gave Him up, and why.
The governor was never convinced of guilt. One writer traces the pressure that broke him.
Pilate loves this world. He has no sense of his need as a sinner, and no appreciation of the grace of Christ. So the argument of the Jews about his personal interests and worldly advantages sways him. He takes his place on the judgment seat. He makes one more feeble try to escape condemning One in Whom he had three times stated he could find no fault. Then he gives in to their shouting... Pilate is convinced of His innocence and impressed by His majesty and dignity, yet he prefers the friendship of the world to the Son of God.
The office he held makes the act worse. Rome's own representative used his judicial power to kill a man he had cleared.
No one ever abused this judicial authority more openly than Pilate, the representative of the Roman empire. He gave in weakly to the will of the Jews. He freed Barabbas the criminal, whom he should have executed for murder, and condemned Jesus the Benefactor to the cross.
Pilate and the Jews wanted opposite things. That difference matters far less than it looks.
Pilate and the Jews were completely opposed in their thoughts and wishes. But God was no more in the thoughts of the one than of the others. Each had his own way, but all were astray. Now they show themselves the open enemies of righteousness as well as of grace. They cannot see the clearest ways, marks, and proofs of God present in love to man, no matter how low He might come down. The cross of Christ shows up every person for what they are.
This one act ends two histories. Israel gives up its privileges and Gentile power ruins its own credit. The One they condemn stands alone as the only true and faithful person there.
The counsels of God are being fulfilled. Pilate's hands are stained with the blood of the Son of God. The Gentiles who held the authority are guilty of His death. The Jews abandon all the privileges that they had from God. And Jesus, with His innocence owned in court, stands alone in the place of truth and faithfulness. He gives Himself up — He might have escaped, as in the garden, or indeed at any moment — to fulfil the counsels of grace.
Because both sides are in it, the sentence reaches wider than Jerusalem.
It was no partial outbreak of human passion that caused the crucifixion. Satan is "the prince of this world," and the crucifixion showed him to be exactly that. He was able to unite Jew and Gentile, high and low, against the One in whom God was reconciling the world to Himself. Different motives might prompt the deed, and did. But however the motives differed, the deed belonged to all.
Pilate gave Jesus up. So, in another sense, did God — and the writers keep the two apart.
God was not responsible for the black flood of hatred pouring out of the hearts of the Jews. He was not responsible for the lesser sin of the wavering judge, who was ready to stoop to any injustice to save his face. But He did make Himself responsible for the channel in which the sin of Jew and Gentile flowed. He made the wrath of man to praise Him. The Lamb "truly was foreordained before the foundation of the world." God gave Him up by His own determined purpose and foreknowledge, and men with wicked hands crucified and killed Him (Acts 2:23). The sin of man was fulfilling the will of God.
They "took Jesus," and one writer calls this the moment when "the guilt of men reached its flood-tide" (J T Mawson). Yet John's account never lets the reader think the prisoner has lost control.
Our Lord's divine dignity marks John's account all the way through. He is Master of the whole situation; as He Himself had declared, He laid down His life of Himself. No one took it from Him. He had power to lay it down and He had power to take it again. All was done in obedience to the will of His Father.
- Delivered by self-interest — Pilate said three times that he found no fault. He gave Jesus up anyway, choosing the world's friendship over the Son of God.
- Delivered by hatred — the demand came from men who had no room for God in their thoughts. The cross showed up judge and accusers alike.
- Delivered by all — Jew and Gentile, high and low, acted from different motives but did one deed. The guilt belongs to the world, not to one nation.
- Delivered by God's purpose — God's own purpose gave Him up, yet men crucified Him with wicked hands. God shaped the channel; the sin was theirs.
- Delivered by Himself — He could have escaped at any moment. He gave Himself up, laid down His life, and went as Master of the scene, not its victim.
And he went out, bearing his cross, to the place called [place] of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha;
The trial is over, and the Lord walks out of the city carrying His own cross to a place named after a skull. John alone tells it that way, and both the name of the place and the direction of the walk carry meaning.
Other accounts describe Him being taken away by His enemies. John's wording puts the movement in the Lord Himself, and one writer reads this as deliberate on John's part.
When he describes the going out to Golgotha, he is the only witness who says, "He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull." The other records tell us His foes led Him out, and John tells us this too, for that was the height of their guilt. But He went out — that was the triumph of His love. He went out; do we not see the majesty of that lonely Man, with thorns on His head and a cross on His shoulders? He was not driven out or dragged out, but in obedience to His Father's command He went out to lay down His life and to take it again.
The same detail is read as a sign of who was actually directing events.
Notice it says, "He went out." He was in control from beginning to end; He was leading, even though He had to carry that awful cross on the road to the place of execution.
In Luke, Simon of Cyrene carries the cross behind Jesus. Commentators read this not as a clash with John, but as two stages of one journey.
Several features stand out in John's Gospel, fitting his theme. In general, we may say they suggest the divine dignity of our Lord... So we see Him bearing His own cross. This in no way contradicts the fact that they compelled Simon the Cyrenian to bear it after Him. From Mark we would judge that our Lord was bearing His own cross at the start of the journey to Golgotha. On the way they met Simon coming in from the country, took the cross from our Lord, and put it on him.
Some say the Lord collapsed under the weight. One writer rejects that, and gives Simon's part a different sense.
The Lord alone is spoken of here as bearing His cross. As they went, we read elsewhere that they made Simon carry it after Him (Luke 23:26). This had to be shown: in one sense believers are identified with Him in the bearing of His cross — not bearing God's judgment, but bearing the world's rejection. John however focuses all attention on the blessed Son of God Himself. Note too that nothing in the account suggests the weight of the cross was too much for the Lord, as some have said. That is only human imagination.
The name came from the shape of the rock. The picture it makes still matters.
The place got its name from the odd shape of the rock, but it is significant for all that! A skull speaks of the humbling end of all man's power and glory. In some living man it may once have held as brilliant and powerful a brain as ever existed; and it has come to this! The Son of God accepted the judgment of death as from man's hand. He went to bear it in a place that pictured the end of all man's glory.
He did not simply end up there.
First, He comes, bearing His cross, to Golgotha, the place of a skull — the place of the kingdom of death... For this the Lord sought it. Here His love to men brought Him. Only He could lift this burden from them, and for this He must come Himself under it.
The men who arranged this death were not the ones giving it its meaning.
The injustice of Pilate and the frenzied hatred of the Jews could not have brought the Lord of glory to Golgotha. "He went forth bearing His cross." He offered Himself without spot to God... That "hence" had been reached at last, and without hesitation or haste He went out bearing His cross.
The Lord died in an outside place. One writer turns that into a question for us.
He took the outside place, and His voice falls on our ear from there. Do we listen to it? Do we understand it? Should we not think more seriously about the place where Jesus died? Should we be content to reap the benefits of Christ's death, without seeking fellowship with Him in His rejection? God forbid! "Let us therefore go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach." There is immense power in these words.
- Out. John alone says He went out — not driven, not dragged, but moving under His Father's command to lay down His life.
- Out carrying. He bore His own cross. Simon carried it later on the road — no contradiction, but a picture of believers sharing His rejection, not His judgment.
- Out to a skull. Golgotha pictures the end of all human power and glory — the place where death reigns.
- Out in love. He sought that place; only He could lift the burden of death from men, so He came under it Himself.
- Out to Him. He took the outside place, so the call is to go out to Him there. We share His reproach, not just the benefits of His death.
where they crucified him, and with him two others, [one] on this side, and [one] on that, and Jesus in the middle.
John reports the crucifixion in one short line: a cross in the middle, a condemned man on either side. Commentators press three questions on it — why the centre place, why two criminals, and what that middle position means now and forever.
John gives the other two men no name and no story. Mawson sees that silence as deliberate, and reads the middle place as a preview of a greater one.
Other Gospels tell us about the "two others"; but it was not given to John to do so — he had eyes only for Jesus. The criminals were there, but they were incidental. Jesus was in the middle. He was the centre of that scene, the centre of man's scorn and hatred. In a day still future He will be the centre of God's throne, the object of God's infinite and eternal approval, and of the worship of a multitude that no one can count.
The line-up was planned. Mawson describes the search behind it.
That morning they searched the prison cells of Jerusalem for the most degraded criminals the city held. They led them out to die along with Jesus. These men had been guilty of appalling crimes. That is why they chose them to hang one on His right hand and the other on His left. That is why they put Him on the centre and highest cross. They meant to proclaim by their well-considered and malicious plan that He was the worst of the three. So they heaped shame on Him, adding the deepest insult to the deepest injury.
Kelly sees the robbers on either side as part of the insult, and the sign over the cross as God's answer to it.
They crucified Him there with unusual indignity, a robber on either hand, since a robber had been preferred to Him. Yet God took care that even there the inscription on the cross gave Him a fitting testimony, whatever Pilate's motive: the despised man of Nazareth was the Messiah.
Men meant it as degradation. Prophecy had announced it centuries earlier:
Another fulfilment of Scripture: "he was numbered with the transgressors" (Isaiah 53:12).
Friends dying beside Him could have blurred what His death accomplished. Mawson finds a mercy hidden in that cruel choice.
But I am glad that they took men like these, and not James and John, as His companions that day. In this the devil showed his lack of foresight, and here he was outwitted. Suppose they had crucified James and John, one on His right hand and the other on His left. Then people would have said that these two were helping Him to finish His work of redemption... These murderers who hung with Him could have no hand in the work He was doing. They were suffering for their own crimes; He, the sinless One, for yours and mine.
Mackintosh reads the two men beside Him as a picture of the whole human race, sorted by one test.
The two thieves represent the two great classes that divide mankind. This division runs from the days of Cain and Abel down to this very moment. God's Christ is the one great, all-deciding test in every case. Every shade of moral character, every level of society, every caste, class, sect and party the human family has ever split into, or ever will — all of it comes down to one crucial point: "In or out of Christ." The difference between the two thieves is simply the difference between the saved and the lost. It is the difference between the Church and the world — between the children of God and the children of God's great enemy.
The world's lowest place could not remove Him from the position that belongs to Him.
Christ was willing to humble Himself to that lowest point, obedient to God, even to death. What death? The death of the cross: the most shameful, painful, horrible way of execution that ever existed. Yet the Lord Jesus must always be the Centre, whether in heaven or on the earth; and so even on the cross He is in the centre. How great He is! Though in utter shame, He is great; that is how John always describes Him, in His greatness. Notice that it says, "He went out." He was in control from beginning to end.
- Centre by malice. They chose the highest, middle cross to say He was the worst of the three — a planned insult, not a coincidence.
- Centre by prophecy. Isaiah said He would be numbered with the transgressors. A robber on each side fulfilled it.
- Centre alone. The two beside Him suffered for their own crimes; nobody shared in the work He was doing.
- Centre as the dividing line. The two men beside Him stand for the two classes of humanity. One question separates them: in Christ or out of Christ.
- Centre forever. The One in the middle of man's scorn will be in the middle of God's throne, worshipped by a multitude no one can count.