Is this your king?

4 Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to Him, so He stepped forward to meet them. “Who are you looking for?” He asked.

5 “Jesus the Nazarene,” they replied. “I AM He,” Jesus said. (Judas, who betrayed Him, was standing with them.)

37 Pilate said, “So you are a King?” Jesus responded, “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to The Truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”

38 “What is truth?” Pilate asked. Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime.

Main Point: See Jesus willingly wrongly accused and abused in our place.

Have you ever wrongly been accused of something you didn’t do? This thought definitely takes me back to childhood memories from elementary school days. There were multiple instances of someone talking in class, and the teacher calling out a group of students to identify the culprit. Without fail, someone ended up being the fall guy/gal and wound up with their name on the board to indicate missing time out from recess or some more severe punishment. This would, practically always, produce assertions casting blame to other peers and the commonly expressed exclamation, “this is not fair!” Whether the accused was guilty or not actually made no difference, they were now slated to take the penalty for everyone involved.

These memories subtly remind me of the gospel, and the recounting we are presented with in John chapter 18. We see Jesus being betrayed by one that he loved, Judas, at the beginning of the chapter and arrested. Jesus is then questioned and beaten by people He ultimately created. (See John 1:3) We then see Jesus denied multiple times by one He loved, Peter. Jesus is left abandoned, falsely accused, subjected to multiple trials and ultimately found to be without guilt. Any one of these circumstances would be enough to drive me to uttering that common elementary school refrain, “this is not fair!” However, we find Jesus not running from what was happening to Him, but fully aware of what was happening and stepping towards it, as stated in verse four.

As we will read in the following chapters, Jesus will die a gruesome death on the cross, but what an amazing act we see in these stages leading up to that. Pilate closes the chapter asking Jesus, “what is truth?”, a question that we all must confront. We’ve seen previously in John that Jesus Himself is the truth. We also see that Pilate speaks to the truth that Jesus was not guilty of any crime, yet He chose to stand accused and on trial. The truth is the realization that we all are guilty of sin and deserved to be on trial, not Jesus. However, the beauty of God’s love is that our King Jesus, willingly steps forward into our place to take all of the blame. That is the essence of the gospel.

Deeper Focus:

- How does Jesus being betrayed, arrested, placed on trial, slapped and falsely accused in this chapter make you feel?

- Do you feel guilty of anything currently?

- As in chapter 18, see Jesus willingly stepping forward to take all your accusation for you. Take some time to really focus on what Jesus’ love looked like and how humble it caused Him to be for our good. Let’s pray that God would cause us to be thankful for Jesus in a new, deeper way today and throughout this year