John 18 -- More Like Them Than We Know?

Once the Jewish leadership had arrested Jesus, they began to question Him in a nighttime court hearing, yet they’d been unable to produce credible witnesses against Him.  Jesus pointed this out to them, firmly stating that everything He’d said and every teaching event had occurred in public, in the synagogues, and in the Temple.  Surely they could find witnesses!  Yet none had come forth.

It was the Friday of Passover.  The Jewish leaders hauled him to the Roman governor’s residence.  “They would not go inside the palace, because they did not want to make themselves unclean,” it says in verse 28.  It’s amazing that Pilate was not so offended by the remark that he didn’t slam the door in their faces.

My commentary really brings this all out:  “It did not seem to bother them that they were plotting the death of the Son of God.  It would have been a tragedy for them to enter a Gentile house, but murder was a mere trifle.  Augustine was astounded by their upside-down way of thinking – that they would feel defiled by someone else’s dwelling and not by their own crime – “the blood of an innocent brother.”

It quoted Bishop Hall:  “Woe unto you priests, scribes, elders, hypocrites!  Can there be any roof so unclean as that of your own breasts?  Not Pilate’s walls, but your own hearts, are impure … Do you long to be stained with blood – with the blood of God?  And do you fear to be defiled with the touch of Pilate’s pavement? … Pilate has more cause to fear, lest his walls should be defiled with the presence of such prodigious monsters of iniquity.”

Someone else said, “Nothing is more common that for persons overzealous about rituals to be remiss about morals.”

They were majoring on the minors and so blinded by ambition that they never considered that they were plotting the murder of an innocent man.

We rail against their hypocrisy, only to run full force into the wall of our own sin.  All sin is rebellion against God, and mine is no different than theirs.  I could therefore substitute my name into this chapter just as easily.  Then let me talk about myself.

Father, forgive me.  That’s the one thing that separates me from them.  I admit that I sin, and because I have believed in Your Son, I can ask for and receive forgiveness and forgetfulness from You.  I am unworthy of such grace, but I gladly accept it.  Thank You for removing my sin as far as the east is from the west – one scared hand to another.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford