John 19:22
Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."
Pilate answered
The phrase "Pilate answered" indicates a response to a challenge or question. In the context of John 19, the Jewish leaders were objecting to the inscription Pilate had placed on the cross, which read "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Pilate's response is firm and final, reflecting his authority as the Roman governor. The Greek word for "answered" (ἀπεκρίθη, apekrithe) suggests a definitive reply, emphasizing Pilate's role in the unfolding events. Historically, Pilate was known for his often harsh and unyielding governance, and this response is consistent with his character as depicted in historical records.

What I have written
This phrase underscores the permanence and authority of Pilate's decision. The act of writing in the ancient world was significant, as written words were considered binding and authoritative. The Greek verb "written" (γέγραφα, gegrapha) is in the perfect tense, indicating a completed action with ongoing effects. This reflects the unchangeable nature of the inscription, symbolizing the fulfillment of God's sovereign plan through human actions. In a broader scriptural context, the written word often signifies divine authority and truth, as seen in the Scriptures themselves.

I have written
The repetition of "I have written" serves to emphasize Pilate's resolve and the finality of his decision. It suggests a sense of inevitability and destiny, as if Pilate, perhaps unknowingly, is participating in a divine narrative. Theologically, this can be seen as a moment where human free will and divine sovereignty intersect. Pilate's insistence on the inscription highlights the truth of Jesus' identity as King, a truth that transcends Pilate's understanding and intentions.

Persons / Places / Events
1. Pontius Pilate
The Roman governor of Judea who presided over the trial of Jesus. He is known for his role in the crucifixion of Jesus, despite his apparent reluctance to condemn Him.

2. Jesus Christ
The central figure of Christianity, whose crucifixion and resurrection are foundational to Christian faith. In this context, He is being crucified and a sign is placed above Him.

3. The Inscription
Pilate ordered an inscription to be placed on the cross of Jesus, reading "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." This was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, signifying the universal nature of Jesus' kingship.

4. The Chief Priests of the Jews
Religious leaders who opposed Jesus and sought His crucifixion. They objected to the wording of the inscription, wanting it to say that Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews.

5. Golgotha
The place where Jesus was crucified, also known as "The Place of the Skull."
Teaching Points
The Sovereignty of God
Pilate's statement, "What I have written, I have written," reflects the unchangeable nature of God's plan. Despite human intentions, God's purposes are fulfilled.

The Universality of Christ's Kingship
The inscription was written in three languages, symbolizing that Jesus is King for all people, not just the Jews. This calls believers to share the Gospel universally.

Human Authority vs. Divine Authority
Pilate's authority was limited and ultimately subject to God's will. Believers should recognize that earthly powers are under God's control.

Standing Firm in Conviction
Pilate's refusal to change the inscription, despite pressure, can remind Christians to stand firm in their convictions, especially regarding the truth of who Jesus is.

The Irony of the Cross
The inscription intended as a mockery actually proclaimed a profound truth. God can use even the intentions of those opposed to Him to declare His truth.
Bible Study Questions
1. How does Pilate's response to the chief priests reflect the tension between human authority and divine sovereignty?

2. In what ways does the multilingual inscription on the cross speak to the universal mission of the Church today?

3. How can we apply the lesson of standing firm in our convictions, as Pilate did with the inscription, in our daily lives?

4. What does the irony of the inscription teach us about God's ability to use all circumstances for His glory?

5. How do the accounts of the inscription in the four Gospels enhance our understanding of the significance of Jesus' crucifixion?
Connections to Other Scriptures
Matthew 27:37
This verse also mentions the inscription placed above Jesus, providing a parallel account of the event.

Mark 15:26
Another Gospel account that records the inscription, emphasizing the consistency of the Gospel accounts.

Luke 23:38
Luke's account of the inscription, highlighting the multilingual nature of the sign.

Acts 4:27-28
These verses reflect on the fulfillment of God's sovereign plan through the actions of Pilate and others, showing that even in opposition, God's purposes prevail.
Life an Inscription on a CrossE. L. Hull, B. A.John 19:22
The Ineffaceable RecordP. S. Henson, D. D.John 19:22
The Irrevocable PastAlexander MaclarenJohn 19:22
Bearing the CrossW. Baxendale.John 19:17-25
Christ Bearing His CrossR. Besser, D. D.John 19:17-25
Christ's CrossJ. Caughey.John 19:17-25
Cross-Bearing for ChristChristian at WorkJohn 19:17-25
CrucifixionBp. Ryle.John 19:17-25
Impression of the CrucifixionJohn 19:17-25
Jesus in the MidstD. Moore, M. A.John 19:17-25
Jesus in the MidstW. Hay-Aitken, M. A.John 19:17-25
Love in the CrossH. W. Beecher.John 19:17-25
Nature's Testimony to the CrucifixionJ. Fleming.John 19:17-25
Plea from the CrossJ. Whitecross.John 19:17-25
Prizing the CrossW. Baxendale.John 19:17-25
Salvation no FailureT. Guthrie, D. D.John 19:17-25
The Centre of the Universe -- Jesus in the MidstF. Ferguson, D. D.John 19:17-25
The Cross of ChristJohn 19:17-25
The Cross Our SafetyPreacher's Lantern.John 19:17-25
The Cross the Soul's HavenC. H. Spurgeon.John 19:17-25
The Crucifixion of ChristDavid Gregg.John 19:17-25
The Crucifixion RealizedJohn 19:17-25
The Great Cross-Bearer and His FollowersC. H. Spurgeon.John 19:17-25
The Lonely Cross-BearerT. Whitelaw, D. D.John 19:17-25
The Probable Site of GolgothaCunningham Geilkie, D. D.John 19:17-25
The Three CrossesT. Whitelaw, D. D.John 19:17-25
The Traditional Site of GolgothaCunningham Geikie, D. D.John 19:17-25
Jesus of NazarethDean Stanley.John 19:19-22
Pilate Preaching the GospelC. Stanford, D. D., A. P. Peabody, D. D.John 19:19-22
The Inscription on the CrossC. Spurgeon, jun.John 19:19-22
The Inscription on the CrossU. R. Thomas.John 19:19-22
The Superscription on the CrossD. Thomas, D. D.John 19:19-22
The Superscription on the CrossJ. P. Lange, D. D.John 19:19-22
People
Cleopas, Cleophas, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Nicodemus, Pilate
Places
Arimathea, Gabbatha, Golgotha, Jerusalem, Nazareth, The Place of the Skull, The Stone Pavement
Topics
Changed, Pilate, Pilate's, Writing, Written
Dictionary of Bible Themes
John 19:22

     5638   writing

John 19:16-24

     5879   humiliation

John 19:19-22

     2312   Christ, as king

Library
February 20 Morning
He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.--ISA. 53:11. Jesus . . . said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.--To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

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

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