I. THAT OF OUR LORD HIMSELF. We see the Saviour scourged, crowned with thorns, &c. Yet this was He whom angels delighted to honour, and who spent His time in going about doing good. Surely the sun never shone on a more wondrous sight.

1. Let us admire that love of Christ which "passeth knowledge." There is no earthly love with which it can be compared, and no standard by which to measure it.

2. Never let us forget, when we ponder this tale of suffering, that Jesus suffered for our sins, and that with His stripes we are healed.

3. Let us diligently follow the example of His patience in all the trials and afflictions of life, and especially in those which may be brought upon us by religion. When He was reviled, He reviled not again.

II. THAT OF THE UNBELIEVING JEWS. We see them for three or four long hours obstinately rejecting Pilate's offer to release our Lord — fiercely demanding His crucifixion — declaring that they had no king but Caesar — and finally accumulating on their own heads the greater part of the guilt of His murder. Yet these were the children of Israel and the seed of Abraham, to whom pertained the promises, &c. These were men who professed to look for a "Prophet like unto Moses," and a "Son of David," who was to set up a kingdom as Messiah. Never, surely, was there such an exhibition of the depth of human wickedness. Let us mark the danger of long-continued rejection of light and knowledge. There is such a thing as judicial blindness; and it is the last and sorest judgment which God can send upon men. He who, like Pharaoh and Ahab, is often reproved but refuses to receive reproof, will finally have a heart harder than the nether millstone, and a conscience past feeling, and seared as with a hot iron (Proverbs 1:24-26; 2 Thessalonians 2:11).

III. THAT OF PONTIUS PILATE. We see the Roman governor — a man of rank and high position — halting between two opinions in a case as clear as the sun at noon-day, sanctioning from sheer cowardice an enormous crime — and finally countenancing, from love of man's good opinion, the murder of an innocent person. Never perhaps did human nature make such a contemptible exhibition. Never was there a name so justly handed down to a world's scorn as the name which is embalmed in all our creeds.

1. Let us learn what miserable creatures great men are, when they have no high principles within them, and no faith in the reality of a God above them. The meanest labourer who fears God is a nobler being than the king, ruler, or statesman, whose first aim is to please the people.

2. Let us pray that our own country may never be without men in high places who have grace to think right, and courage to act up to their knowledge, without truckling to the opinion of men.

(Bp. Ryle.)

1. Hard work. How difficult did Pilate find it!

2. Fiendish work. Satan and his legions do it.

II. THOSE WHO SIN FROM CONVICTION. Such were the chief priests and officers, &c. Innumerable heathen, heretics, persecutors believe they are doing right whilst they are perpetrating the greatest enormities. There are no crimes blacker than those enacted from religious convictions.

III. THOSE WHO SIN WITHOUT CONVICTION — the soldiers and the thoughtless rabble.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

2. The triumph of malice.

3. The abuse of authority.

(S. S. Times.)

2. For what purpose?

3. On what grounds?

4. With what results?

(S. S. Times.)

I. THE PERPLEXITY AND SHAME LIKELY TO BE EXPERIENCED BY ONE WHO ACTS FROM SELFISH EXPEDIENCY INSTEAD OF HIS CONVICTIONS OF RIGHT. Poor mockery of a ruler! Set by the Eternal to do right upon earth, and afraid to do it; told so by his own bosom; strong enough in his legions and in the truth itself to have saved the Innocent One and kept his own soul, he could only think of the apparently expedient! Type of the politician in all ages, who forgets that only the right is the strong or the wise.

II. THE POWER OF POPULAR CLAMOUR, AND THE NECESSITY AT TIMES OF RESISTING IT. Very impressive is the voice of a multitude. Its applause is intoxicating, its condemnation dreadful, its strenuous demand most difficult to deny. When this voice represents the ripe moral sentiment of an intelligent people, or when it is the swift, honest judgment of that people in regard to wrong, then Vox populi est vox Dei. But the clamour by which Pilate was swayed was a different thing. It was the voice of a mob inflamed by passion, worked upon by wicked and crafty leaders — the voice of Satan. Whenever a crowd is foolish or mad, has a cumulative force, and reaches a colossal magnitude. Hence the horrors of the French revolution, and the toleration and support given now and then by the people of a nation to great wrongs. In such cases public opinion is not to be heeded. "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." It is well then to stand up like Luther at Worms and say, "To act against conscience is unsafe and unholy. Here stand I, God help me. Amen." This was the spirit of the apostles, martyrs, and reformers.

III. THAT CHRIST'S CLAIM TO KINGSHIP, WHICH EXCITED SUCH RIDICULE, WAS A TRUE AND VALID CLAIM. Some of the most precious doctrines were first uttered in derision. The grace of Christ to sinners was the subject of a sneer — "He receiveth sinners," &c. The necessity which constrained Him to die for the salvation of man was set forth in the jeer, "He saved others, Himself He cannot save." Here before Pilate His claim of Kingship was made the occasion of brutal merriment. But Jesus was indeed a King! As such He came attended by a retinue of angels, and inquired for by the wise men. Through all the centuries since His kingly dignity has been owned. When the Crusaders proposed to crown Geoffrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem, Geoffrey said, "I will not wear a crown of gold in the city where my Saviour had a crown of thorns!" He is —

1. A beneficent King. He rules in the interests of His subjects. "Woe to the conquered" was the old cry. But Christ's conquests bring good to the conquered. The more perfect their submission, the more perfect their felicity.

2. A perpetual King. His throne is established for ever. "Conceive of Caesar," said Napoleon, "the eternal emperor watching over the destinies of Rome. Such is the power of Christ."

3. His kingdom is constantly advancing. Because the tide ebbs, no intelligent man, viewing the naked sand, would say, "The sea is losing its dominion." He would answer, "Wait awhile," confident that it would reoccupy its lost ground. So with Christianity. In Damascus there is a mosque which was once a Church. Over its portal the Christian inscription still stands — "Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth through all generations." For twelve centuries that writing has been contradicted, seemingly, and probably the Moslem has suffered it to remain to convict Christianity of a vain boast. But that inscription may be regarded as a solemn prophecy that the Moslem sway is but temporary, and that the faith which has been driven from its sanctuary will return. Even now the signs of its return appear.

IV. THE SPIRITUAL CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. He explicitly said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world," &c. But He did not leave His cause impotent and defenceless. There are other forces besides armed battalions. The Word of God, the Spirit of truth, the religious faculties on which they act, faith, hope, love, duty, sacrifice, and prayer; by means of these Christ sent forth His apostles to conquer the world. Christ's patience, self-restraint, and forgiving Spirit were potent even at His trial and crucifixion. They invested Him with that majesty which could not be obscured by indignities, which awed the scoffing Pilate into respect, and moved him to an unwonted desire to do justly; which brought the thief on the cross to repentance, and led the centurion to exclaim, "Truly, this was the Son of God." And in proportion as the followers of Christ have trusted these forces, they have been successful. Alliance with secular power, or reliance on physical force, has proved disastrous.

(Sermons by the Monday Club.)

     2570   Christ, suffering
     5127   back
     5281   crucifixion
     5313   flogging
     5346   injury
     5485   punishment, legal aspects

John 19:1-3

     5879   humiliation
     7110   body of Christ
     8817   ridicule, objects of

John 19:1-6

     7505   Jews, the

August 4 Morning
It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--JOHN 19:30. Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.--I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.--We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering an offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

October 18 Morning
One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.--JOHN 19:34. Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you.--The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.--It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Jesus said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.--By his own blood he entered in once into …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

February 17 Morning
The whole bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire.--LEV. 4:12. They took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him.--The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

The Title on the Cross
'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.' --JOHN xix. 19. This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that, meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should have written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for whom Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the fullest, as indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the most complete. He alone records …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Irrevocable Past
'What I have written I have written.'--JOHN xix. 22. This was a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ's Finished and Unfinished Work
'Jesus ... said, It is finished.'--JOHN xix. 30. 'He said unto me, It is done.'--REV. xxi. 6. One of these sayings was spoken from the Cross, the other from the Throne. The Speaker of both is the same. In the one, His voice 'then shook the earth,' as the rending rocks testified; in the other, His voice 'will shake not the earth only but also heaven'; for 'new heavens and a new earth' accompanied the proclamation. In the one, like some traveller ready to depart, who casts a final glance over his preparations, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ Our Passover
'These things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken.'--JOHN xix. 36. The Evangelist, in the words of this text, points to the great Feast of the Passover and to the Paschal Lamb, as finding their highest fulfilment, as he calls it, in Jesus Christ. For this purpose of bringing out the correspondence between the shadow and the substance he avails himself of a singular coincidence concerning a perfectly unimportant matter--viz., the abnormally rapid sinking …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Grave in a Garden
'In the garden a new tomb.'--JOHN xix. 41 (R.V.). This is possibly no more than a topographical note introduced merely for the sake of accuracy. But it is quite in John's manner to attach importance to these apparent trifles and to give no express statement that he is doing so. There are several other instances in the Gospel where similar details are given which appear to have had in his eyes a symbolical meaning--e.g. 'And it was night.' There may have been such a thought in his mind, for all men …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Jesus Sentenced
'Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him with their hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man! When the chief priests …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

An Eye-Witness's Account of the Crucifixion
'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. 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. Then said the chief priests …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Joseph and Nicodemus
'And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; ... And there came also Nicodemus which at the first came to Jesus by night.'--JOHN xix. 38, 39. While Christ lived, these two men had been unfaithful to their convictions; but His death, which terrified and paralysed and scattered His avowed disciples, seems to have shamed and stung them into courage. They came now, when they must have known …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Fifth Word
"I thirst."--JOHN XIX. 28. This is the only utterance of our Blessed Lord in which He gave expression to His physical sufferings. Not least of these was that intolerable thirst which is the invariable result of all serious wounds, as those know well who have ever visited patients in a hospital after they have undergone a surgical operation. In this case it must have been aggravated beyond endurance by exposure to the burning heat of an Eastern sun. This word, then, spoken under such circumstances, …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Sixth Word
"It is accomplished."--ST. JOHN XIX. 30. 1. What had been accomplished? In the first place, that work which Christ had come into the world to do. All that work may be resumed in a single word, "sacrifice." The Son of God had come for this one purpose, to offer a sacrifice. Here is room for serious misunderstanding. The blood, the pain, the death, were not the sacrifice. Nothing visible was the sacrifice, least of all the physical surroundings of its culminating act. There is only one thing …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Third Word
"Lady, behold thy son." "Behold thy mother." ST. JOHN XIX. 26, 27. In this Word we see the Son of God revealed as human son, and human friend, all the more truly and genuinely human in both relations, because in each and every relation of life, Divine. 1. The first lesson in the Divine Life for us to learn here is the simple, almost vulgarly commonplace one, yet so greatly needing to be learnt, that "charity," which is but a synonym of the Divine Life, "begins at home." Home life is the real test …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Last Look at Life,
(Passion Sermon.) TEXT: JOHN xix. 30. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished." THESE greatest and most glorious of the last words -*- of our Saviour on the cross come immediately after those which are apparently of the least significance and importance. The Lord said, "I thirst;" then the moistened sponge was handed to Him; and when He had received the soothing, though not pleasant draught, He cried, "It is finished." And we must not break the connection of these …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

The Shortest of the Seven Cries
As these seven sayings were so faithfully recorded, we do not wonder that they have frequently been the subject of devout meditation. Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell upon every syllable of these matchless cries. These solemn sentences have shone like the seven golden candlesticks or the seven stars of the Apocalypse, and have lighted multitudes of men to him who spake them. Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so doing have arranged …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 24: 1878

The Procession of Sorrow
I. After our Lord Jesus Christ had been formally condemned by Pilate, our text tells us he was led away. I invite your attention to CHRIST AS LED FORTH. Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. The lictors executed their cruel office upon his shoulders with their rods and scourges, until the stripes had reached the full number. Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 9: 1863

Death of Jesus.
Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy. Consistently with this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

The Third Word from the Cross
In the life of our Lord from first to last there is a strange blending of the majestic and the lowly. When a beam of His divine dignity is allowed to shine out and dazzle us, it is never long before there ensues some incident which reminds us that He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; and, contrariwise, when He does anything which impressively brings home to us His humanity, there always follows something to remind us that He was greater than the sons of men. Thus at His birth He was laid …
James Stalker—The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ

Objections to Genuineness.
THE most plausible objection to the genuineness of these writings is thus expressed by Dupin: "Eusebius and Jerome wrote an accurate catalogue of each author known to them--with a few obscure exceptions,--and yet never mention the writings of the Areopagite." Great is the rejoicing in the House of the Anti-Areopagites over this PROOF;--but what are the facts? Eusebius acknowledges that innumerable works have not come to him--Jerome disclaims either to know or to give an accurate catalogue either …
Dionysius—LETTERS OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

And at his Crucifixion, when He Asked a Drink...
And at His crucifixion, when He asked a drink, they gave Him to drink vinegar mingled with gall. (Cf. Joh. xix. 29) And this was declared through David. They gave gall to my meat, and in any thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. [262] …
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Inward Confirmation of the Veracity of the Scriptures
We are living in a day when confidence is lacking; when skepticism and agnosticism are becoming more and more prevalent; and when doubt and uncertainty are made the badges of culture and wisdom. Everywhere men are demanding proof. Hypotheses and speculations fail to satisfy: the heart cannot rest content until it is able to say, "I know." The demand of the human mind is for definite knowledge and positive assurance. And God has condescended to meet this need. One thing which distinguishes Christianity …
Arthur W. Pink—The Divine Inspiration of the Bible