The Gospel of John

The Crucifixion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 66- 70

Genre:

Track: 064

Dictation Name: RR197AH66

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Lord I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thy honor dwelleth. I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank Thee that day after day Thou dost surround us with Thy loving kindnesses, Thy mercies and Thy protecting care. Give us grace so to walk day by day that in all things we see Thy hand and Thy presence and know that Thou art God. That no man and no thing can undo Thy work nor halt nor stay for a moment the execution of Thy holy will. Keep us ever in Thy will and in the certainty of Thy victory. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from the Gospel of John 19:17-22. The crucifixion is our subject. John 19:17-22.

“And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha:

18 Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.

19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing wasJesus Of Nazareth The King Of The Jews.

20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.

21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.

22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.”

The crucifixion is described briefly by John in grim words, we shall next week go into more of it. But as the gospels made clear and as the law made clear Jesus was required by Roman law as a condemned man to carry his own cross, a heavy burden.

In Matthew 27:32 we are told that on the way Simon was drafted by the soldiers to carry the cross. Jesus had been kept awake all night, He had been beaten, lashed probably and it usually was so to the bone by whipping and had suffered great loss of blood. Because of His physical exhaustion He was unable to move ahead as rapidly as the soldiers required. As a result a man was drafted to carry the cross. Our Lord had referred to this law of the draft in Matthew 5:41:

“And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

To refuse such a draft was very dangerous. The place of execution was called Golgotha or the place of the skull. That was the meaning of both Golgotha and Calvary and of course we have it here in this county Calaveras, basically the same word meaning skull. We do not know why it was so called although many scholars have made guesses but the guesses while interesting are not conclusive. There they crucified Him, He in the middle with a revolutionary criminal on either side. Pilate had been humiliated in being forced to give a verdict of guilt, he knew the man was innocent who was before him, he knew that his job could be forfeited if he went against them and they complained that he had refused to condemn a man who claimed to be king. Now Pilate gained his revenge. The religious leaders had finally came out with a charge, namely, Jesus had declared Himself to be a king, they said. Their preferred charge was blasphemy but that offense had no legal standing before Pilate.

They had been pushed into denouncing Jesus Christ’s royal status and to affirm we have no king but Caesar. A more unpopular statement on their part is hard to imagine. It must have gone against the grain of most Judeans to have their leaders make such a statement. We see now how Pilate gained his revenge on the leaders. The charge against Jesus was usually nailed to the cross, almost invariably, and here it was placed on the cross in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. In a country of very high literacy this statement was readable by virtually everybody. Although written by Pilate it represented the legal ground of conviction on the charges filed by the religious leaders and this was profoundly embarrassing to them. It told everyone that Jesus was convicted as the Messiah, precisely what the leaders wanted kept secret. As a result the chief priests protested to Pilate and demanded a revision, write not the king of the Jews but that He said or claimed I am king of the Jews. Make Him a false claimant, not the king. Having successfully pushed Pilate around up to this point they now expected further compliance but Pilate refused to bend anymore. He answered: “What I have written I have written.” It is noteworthy that Jesus was crucified in the center position. The Romans apparently scornfully assigned to this king the place of honor. This is quite likely given the fact also that two revolutionaries were on either side of Him so they tied these two men to Jesus as though He were the leader of a revolutionary movement trying to make Him king.

In effect Jesus was made the king of the lawless, surrounded by men who were like Him the outlaws in the eyes of Rome. Pilate by refusing to alter the charges made legitimate Jesus’ kingship. He in effect said I find this man to be your legitimate king. The protest of the chief priests was thus an awareness of the fact that Pilate convicted Jesus legally because he by law recognized Jesus’ claim to kingship as valid and as a threat to Rome. That was the meaning of the conviction, neither Pilate nor Rome would ever officially say this was a kangaroo court, it was beneath the honor of Rome ever so to admit. So Jesus was legally executed as the king of the Jews, as their Messiah. There is a grim irony in this decision, Isaiah 53:12 tells us he was numbered with the transgressors. The charge against Jesus by Pilate was in effect a charge against the nation because Pilate would be well informed on Jesus’ great following. His spies were everywhere. He was in effect saying that the nation was a rebellious one and he had acted against that danger. Crucifixion was the most painful form of execution known to the Romans, some experts on execution say it is the most painful form of execution that was ever legal in all of history. It originated in ancient Persia where the condemned man was left on the cross until the vultures had picked his bones clean and white on the cross.

The sacred earth on the eyes of the Persian would thus not be polluted by the criminal’s flesh. The Carthaginians borrowed crucifixion from the ancient Persians and Romans borrowed it from the Carthaginians. No roman citizen could be crucified and it was normally used only in the provinces. Scourging always preceded crucifixion and the criminal was compelled to go often through as many streets as possible to publicize his crime. This kind of march was probably omitted in the case of Jesus because they did not want the crowds alerted to what was happening until it was too late. Golgotha or Calvary was very close to the city in order to make executions as public as possible, to stress Roman justice and make the criminals offense a source of fear to others who might be like minded. Without knowing it perhaps Pilate’s superscription for the cross was doubly insulting to the leaders because it read ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’. For the Judeans to be ruled by a Galilean or to have a Galilean called their king was highly offensive. Verse twenty tells us that Pilate’s title over Jesus was read by many of the Jews because Golgotha was close to the city. It was the time of the Passover when thousands of pilgrims, hundreds of thousands, streamed into the city. We are told by ancient records that at the time of the Passover there could be as many as two million people there for the Passover, from all over the world. Pilate was fully aware that this would create serious problems for the priestly rulers and for Christ to be crowned in the middle with the charge of kingship was a kind of grim and ironic enthronement. John recognizes that this indeed was a part of Christ’s enthronement.

By the atonement he destroys the power of sin and death and then later ascends into heaven to reign forever as king over all. What had been done for other motives was the true enthronement after all and the reality of what had taken place was lost on the depraved men who planned and executed it. We are told by Matthew of the fearful events that took place with the death of our Lord. The veil of the temple was rent in twain so that it was a desecration of the most Holy Place. There was an earthquake, many of the dead saints from old arose from their graves and went into the city to witness to those whom they knew so that there was for the entire weekend a great terror on all in Jerusalem. It was a momentous event. It was the strangest enthronement in all of history. What was a grim and ugly fact was one that shook the earth and the nation and they sat in terror over the weekend, Christ was crucified and the people trembled. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that Jesus Christ was crucified in a grim mockery of enthronement, now sits at Thy right hand to rule all the nations. We thank Thee that in His sovereign grace He has made us His people, citizens of the new creation, members of His family. Give us grace so to walk so that in all things we show forth our citizenship and in all things give thanks unto Thee for Thy grace and mercy. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Paul was a Roman citizen by birth. From what we know from the records he came from a very important and extremely wealthy Jewish family and they had been made citizens some time previously so that Paul was born a citizen. Now an aspect of that was that this meant that Paul had a higher standing than many of the officials he confronted because they like the centurion who asked him about his citizenship had had to buy it as he said at a great price, therefore he hardly dared tamper with a man who had been born a citizen. Now Rome made citizenship a privilege, with time however they cheapened it so that finally before Rome fell everybody was a citizen and it meant nothing because you were treated worse than a subject was in our Lord’s day. And their internal revenue service had by that time legalized torture so torturing anybody on audit was a routine practice. So citizenship had become rather worthless. Step by step they moved from citizenship as a great honor to being nothing.

One wonders if that’s not happening today, in my Father’s time an American citizen was not touched anywhere in the world, it was dangerous to do so. Not even the worst scoundrels did, as [unknown] found out in Morocco. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] What?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Perhaps they will, yes. I think so. Any other questions and comments?

The crucifixion of our Lord was something that made at first notice the whole of the Christian faith repellant to anyone in the Roman Empire. For any of the apostles to go out and say they were preaching Christ crucified was a shock to anyone. Who would proclaim someone like that as their Savior, a condemned man who had been subjected to the most brutal form of execution known? So the hatred of that imagery was intense on the part of some although it at least made them listen. Who in the world would proclaim such a man? We have found, I believe it was at Pompeii when they began the excavations, a bit of graffiti on the wall and it was obviously intended to be Christ but they put an asses head where the head should be.

They were thereby expressing their opinion of Christians and of Christ. It was unthinkable to most people that anyone would worship a crucified man. So the offense of the cross was a very, very real one and yet the power that went with it was a very great one. Until the fall of Jerusalem both in Judea and all over the Roman Empire the apostles were performing miracles. It was primarily a witness to the Jews because they said in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of one who is living and all powerful, who though you crucified is now alive and reigns in heaven. Arise and walk. That was a shattering thing for people to hear, it enraged many, many of the Jews, especially the leaders. Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Jesus Christ is now enthroned at Thy right hand. That He reigns eternally and that He shall create a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness, justice dwells eternally. We thank Thee that we are a part of His new creation and we pray that we may extend the boundaries of His kingdom from pole to pole, bring Him the nations, conquer every area of life and thought for Him. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.