I BELIEVE…HE SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, WAS CRUCIFIED, DEAD AND BURIED
John 19: 17-22
10/03/2011 © Dr. Ronald W. Scates
On this World Communion Sunday, I urge you to remember and keep in your prayers that one church of Jesus Christ that
stretches around the world and I encourage you to really pray for the persecuted church, those places where our brothers- and
sisters-in-Christ, this very day, are suffering and even dying for their uncompromising allegiance to Jesus as only Lord and Savior.
As Nelson mentioned in his prayer, recently many of us have been praying for Iranian pastor, Yusef Naderkhani . Just this past
week, as Nelson said, the Iranian Supreme Court passed a death sentence upon him because he refused to renounce the faith, that
later on in this service we’re going to stand and say together with Christians around the world, that faith expressed in the Apostles’
Creed. And on this World Communion Sunday, every Christian around the world, every Christian that’s ever lived, including Yusef
Naderkhani, gather with us at this Table.
What a privilege! What a unique privilege to dine, first of all with Jesus Christ and then with men and women like Yusef
Naderkhani, who are willing to suffer and even die rather than recant their faith in Jesus.
Suffer and die!
As we continue our sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed, we come now to that clause in the Creed where we stand with
Christians around the world and say that we believe Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. And that
word, ‘suffered’ should remind you and me that if we’re going to have a healthy faith, a mature vibrant faith in Jesus Christ, that’s
got to include a theology of suffering.
Our Lord Jesus, when He was here on this earth, was never exempted from suffering. And neither are any of His followers,
back in those days nor today and yet there’s this pervasive heretical myth that keeps floating around the church that goes like this:
If you just love Jesus enough, you won’t suffer. If you just pray hard and long enough, Jesus must heal you. If you just commit your
life more and more to Christ, then pain and problems fly out the window.
Really? Tell that to Yusef Naderkhani! Tell that to the Jesus that you and I meet this morning in the gospel of John. I invite you
to turn with me in your bibles and keep them open as we look this morning at verses 17 through 22 of John, chapter 19, and actually
we’re going to begin reading at the end of verse 16. And I invite you to pray with me before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it
and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
Now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word this morning, beginning to read at the end of verse 16 of John
19:
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called
Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and went with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the
Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the
Jews.”
Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
Join me again as we pray. And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word may they be taken to heart but as my words
should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Please be seated.
Who’s in charge here?
That’s the first question you and I must bring to this text before us this morning. At the end of verse 16, it says the soldiers
took charge of Jesus and in verse 17 they compel Him to carry His cross to his place of execution, with the delightful name of Skull
Mountain, and there they crucify Him—THE most humiliating form of Roman execution and then they pile degradation upon
degradation by bookending Jesus between two common thieves.
But who’s in charge here? The soldiers? Pilate? The Roman government? Who’s in charge of what’s going on? Is Jesus mere
victim? Is He just martyr?
For the last few years, Greg and I read a book together and every week we meet together and we discuss what we’re reading
and presently we’re reading this book, it’s entitled, “Praying Twice: the Music and Words of Congregational Song” by well-known
hymn writer, Brian Wren and he was formerly a professor of theological seminary in Atlanta, one of our PCUSA seminaries. And
Wren writes these words at one point in the book. He writes, “A loving God could not possibly be glad when Jesus suffers on the
cross because the will of God is just and good, though divine wisdom, no doubt, foresaw rejection and crucifixion as a likely or
probable outcome, it is not something God hoped would happen. It was human decisions that killed Jesus. The crucifixion is neither
God’s first design nor humanity’s last word.”
The only words I agree with, in what he wrote, is the last ones. “It’s not humanity’s last words” but what Brian Wren writes here
is in direct opposition to the Scriptures. And what we believe as Presbyterian-type Christians, when we stand with the world church
and proclaim the Apostles’ Creed. My friends, the Scriptures clearly, clearly, lays out that Jesus is the Lamb who was slain before
the foundation of the world. This means that Jesus is no passive victim. He is no mere martyr. In other words, it’s saying that God
foreordained what happened on Golgotha as a part of His Worldwide Plan for our salvation and the redemption of the entire world, a
plan foreordained before He ever spun the first atom of creation off His fingertips.
Jesus was not a passive victim. He willingly stepped into the role of fulfilling that plan. The Bible tells us that He set His face
like flint toward Jerusalem, knowing full-well what would happen to Him if He went there. It was no mere bravado when Jesus at His
trial before Pilate, said, “You know, I could speak a command and an army of angels would appear and rescue me.” But Jesus didn’t
do that. It was not a part of the plan and so, Jesus, instead, willingly voluntarily entered the plan, took up His cross and suffered,
died and was buried. That’s a part of the plan. He suffered for you and for me; that’s how much He loves us. And when you and I, in
our theology of suffering, we need to be really careful when we start talking about certain things being our cross to bear—illness,
job loss, tragedies that come into our lives; those are not our crosses to bear. Those are trials; those are trials that come our way.
You know, a cross, as we see here with Jesus, a cross is something that we voluntarily take up. We can take it up and we can put it
down anytime we want to. It’s something we choose. It’s something we enter into, we elect to do.
Yusef Naderkhani, it was not his choice to be tried for his faith before the Iranian Supreme Court. That was literally his trial. But
when he refused to recant his faith in Jesus, saying instead that he was willing to suffer and die rather than renounce his Lord; that
was the moment when he picked up his cross.
So we need to be careful with our language but whether we’re going through trial or taking up our cross, whatever it is that’s
causing pain and suffering in our lives, we need to remember that this above everything else, that God is sovereign (which means
He is always and fully in charge). We may not like what’s going on but He’s in charge. That old thing—“God allows what He hates to
accomplish what He loves.” So He’s in charge of everything. He is no mere passive victim here! It’s the plan of God unfolding out of
His love for you and me.
And what about this Pilate? What are we to do with this man? It’s interesting that out of all of the billions and billions and
billions of people that have ever walked this planet, only two people in history are spiritually famous enough to get their names
recorded forever in the Apostles’ Creed, names that spoken weekly, maybe daily, by millions and millions, billions of Christians,
over thousands of years, and will be spoken until Christ one day returns.
The first name we met last week. That was Mary. And now we bump into Pontius Pilate. You know, those two names in the
Apostles’ Creed ought to remind you and me that the Christian faith is not primarily about esoteric doctrines and theological
abstractions. But it’s first and foremost about real live people and real events that actually took place in time and space. In its very
essence, the Christian faith is an historic faith based on events and people that really lived and really happened.
Now historically, we just do not know very much about the beginning or the ending of the life of Pontius Pilate. There’s a bunch
of legends out there. One of them, and I’m sure it’s absolutely not true at all, claims that Pilate was a Scotsman. Seriously, it says
that his Roman ambassador father was sent to quell the Picts in an area of Scotland known as Perthsure and there he met up with a
Pict girl and the result was Pontius Pilate. Crazy! Some believe, based on the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus that Pilate actually
became a Christian later on in his life.
The Coptic and Syriac churches believe this and they have actually canonized Pontius Pilate. I hope they’re right! It would not
be unlike at all, our God of Totally Amazing Grace, to turn a Pilate into a Christian. He did it with the Apostle Paul. He did it with me.
You know, when we sing that hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”; every time we sing that hymn, I’m always
saying to myself, “Yep, sure was.” Jesus didn’t just suffer under Pontius Pilate, He suffered under Ron Scates. I’m as much a Christkiller as Pilate ever was.” And so, who is this Pilate?
Well, we do know a couple of things for sure about him. We know that he was the Roman pro-counsel of Palestine back in the
early 1st Century but that was about as big a two-bit Roman bureaucratic backwater job as you could get back in those days. We
know that Pilate put Jesus on trial. We know that Pilate acquitted Jesus by Roman law. But then he caved in to the Jewish leaders
and allowed Jesus to be unjustly executed.
Now if you pass the death sentence on someone, Roman law required the person in charge to post the charges and so Pilate,
thinking probably that Jesus is something like a Jewish joke, nevertheless becomes an unconscious prophet when he has a sign
made and then fastened to the cross, it says, “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS,”
Now I’m pretty convinced that Pilate has no idea what he’s doing. He’s doing that, not just to cover his tail but, he wants to
insult the Jews as well. But in doing so, he puts up prophecy. In doing so, he becomes a part of God’s plan.
Ironically, here’s God, taking a two-bit, Roman pagan bureaucrat and he has him announcing to the known world at that time,
remember the titles in Aramaic and Greek and Latin, the Truth of Truths, King of the Jews. Here’s God’s global plan unfolding and
Pilate doesn’t even have a clue that he’s a part of it.
Now the Jewish leaders get all upset. They want Pilate to edit the text. And for once in his sorry life, Pilate refuses and takes
his stand for truth, even though he probably doesn’t know it’s truth. He won’t budge. And that’s what you and I do when we say the
Apostles’ Creed. We take our uncompromising stand for truth!
And so Jesus dies on Skull Mountain. He dies under Pilate’s watch. He dies under Pilate’s power. He dies. He dies a real death.
He dies for you and me. His death as a substitutionary atonement. He takes your place and mine on the cross so that the possibility
of At-One-Ment, our restoration and relationship with God, could be a reality. He dies for you and me so that the eternal death and
eternity of hell will never be on our radar but He dies a real death.
Now a lot of people don’t believe Jesus really died on the cross. Ask a Muslim friend, they’ll tell you Jesus didn’t die on a
cross. There’s a kind of reverse substitutionary atonement there. They’ve stuck somebody else up there—Judas or somebody took
Jesus’ place because God would never allow one of His most favorite prophets to die a most shameful death like that. Others say
Jesus didn’t die on the cross, He merely swooned or fainted thus explaining the resurrection that took place three days later.
We’ve got a lot of names in our culture for death, don’t we? Homicide, suicide, infanticide, genocide but on that first Good
Friday, a unique death occurs.
The most abominable, horrible, unjust death ever in the human history of our kind occurred on that day; well, we ought to call
that day Black Friday because hanging on that cross was Jesus and Jesus is God. My friends, that was Deicide and there’ll never be
another Deicide.
But we call it Good Friday because Jesus is God. But it can’t be good unless Jesus is God! And it’s good because there was
God, before the foundation of the world, the Lamb that was slain, the Perfect, Once-For-All-Sufficient sacrifice hanging on that cross
so that our salvation, our eternal life is sealed. Sealed!
And so we stand boldly with Christians around the world, on a day like this, and say the Apostles’ Creed and we get to that
part, “crucified, dead, buried,” that’s the Apostles’ Creed way in a triple-superlative way that Jesus really, really, really died. Dead,
dead, dead-as-a doornail which sets the stage for that most miraculous bodily resurrection that’s coming!
My friends, it’s the cross. It’s the cross, Jesus’ body given for you and me, Jesus’ blood poured out for our salvation for you
and me to this very Table this morning. It’s at this Table that you and I meet in a unique way, the very real presence of Christ and we
also come into direct contact with the life-giving, life-transforming power of His cross.
Edward Scott was a missionary to the Naga Hill tribe in India. They were a most violent people. When he went to India, first
Scott mastered the Naga language. Then the day came for him to set out for the Naga territory. The British government said, “Let us
give you a military escort.” He said, “No, that’s not what God would have me do.” So he took off by himself and one day, as he was
making his way into the Naga territory, he was ambushed, surrounded on all sides by Naga warriors, with their spears leveled at his
heart. Now Scott had already gone to the mat with the Lord on this. He’d already agreed to take up his cross and to suffer and die if
necessary by the Naga’s hands. He knew that might be a possibility and it looked that day as if his worst nightmare had come true.
But prompted by the Holy Spirit, (you see, Scott was an accomplished violinist and he’d taken his violin with him) and
prompted by the Holy Spirit, he opened his violin case, took out the violin and began to play, and began to sing in the Naga tongue,
a hymn that he had recently translated, “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die..” and he sang the whole hymn and
when he finished, there were tears coming down the cheeks of all the Naga warriors. Their spears had lowered and all their hostility
had dissipated and Edward Scott spent the rest of his missionary career ministering amongst the Naga people, leading them to
Christ, discipling them, planting an indigenous church.
My friends, that is the power of the cross. Jesus, crucified, dead, buried.
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!