In | Pilate’s Struggle

Some have suggested that Pilate’s internal struggle over sentencing Jesus may be instructive for our own spiritual lives. It’s easy to judge Pilate for condemning Jesus but his experience with Jesus may be more like our own than we’d like to admit. Carefully read John 18:28-40 and 19:1-16. When the crowd brings Jesus to Pilate to be interrogated they wait outside to avoid becoming unclean and disqualifying themselves from Passover. Pilate spends the rest of the scene walking back and forth between Jesus in his palace and Jesus’ accusers outside in the courtyard. He finds himself torn between Jesus and the crowd, between “light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the Kingdom of God and a kingdom of this world waiting on his terrace.” Dr. James L. Resseguie has suggested the above image to illustrate Pilate’s predicament.

Dr. Paul Duke suggests, “In Pilate’s shuttling back and forth (Matthew) portrays the human predicament in which one must choose between Jesus and the world.” Pilate’s decision is not so different than the one we’re faced with every day as we hear the voice of Jesus but also the noise of the crowd. It can be difficult to persist with unpopular values, or to choose a kingdom “not of this world” when the kingdoms of this world can be attractive and intimidating.

Sources: James L. Resseguie, The Strange Gospel: Narrative Design and Point of View in John, 2001, pp. 71-75; Paul D. Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel, 1985, p. 127.