The Christmas Story Before Pilate - Part Three

 

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

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They tell me that in college some of the most difficult cases of psychological tensions come from young people who are brought up in ultrafundamentalist homes, and who have been taught that God Almighty created the earth in six twenty-four hour days, and that Adam and Eve were created on the fourth of November at three p.m. in 4004 B.c., according to Ussher's chronology. When they come to college and learn that this isn't true-and certainly it is not true-they say, "Well, then ... we have to throw away the whole Bible." What happened was that they took the Bible and a line of interpretation, and little by little they confused the two, and began to think that the line of interpretation was inspired instead of the Bible being inspired.

 

We are not afraid of truth today. I do not think that there is any intelligent Christian who does not know beyond any question that the earth is tens of millions of years old, and that man has existed in this earth for tens of thousands of years. This does not destroy the Bible in any way.

 

Christ said, "I came to bear witness of the truth," and the truth is an entity. It is one, whether it is biological truth, geological truth or theological truth. You have no idea how confused people were four hundred years ago when men first began to say that the earth turned around the sun. People said, "It can't be true!" But it is true. The earth turns around the sun, and as it turns on its own axis, what appears to be the rising of the sun is merely an illusion. "Why this can't be true," they said. "The Bible says, `From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.' Therefore, the sun must rise." And they were as much in a dither about the rising and setting sun as some Fundamentalists are today about the language of creation.

 

There are people in the United States who say, "The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground." And they have God doing it in a "cookiecutter" fashion. They say He made a mud pie and when He leaned over and breathed into a sculptured being, part of the mud became hair, and part of the mud became toe nails, and part became epidermis, and so on. Well, this idea has to go, just as the idea of the actual rising and setting of the sun had to go. The truth about the earth and the sun did not destroy the Word of God. And the truth about the age of the earth is most certainly not going to destroy the Word of God. We face these things and we understand that what has to give is the nature of our comprehension of the language of the phenomena. As we go on we will discover many new things about the Word of God. Ultimately, the physicist may even recognize that Colossians is correct, as he studies the structure of the atom and says, "What keeps the whirling electrons from going out by centrifugal force? What is it that keeps them together?" We read in Colossians, `By him (Christ) all things consist" (Col. 1:17). We can understand what He means-that His Kingship is over all truth, and the truth that holds all things together.

 

Not only does He point out the unity of truth, but He also points out the objectivity of truth. The truth is there. It is fact. It is coldly objective. And when we can discuss it without prejudice, without any self-consciousness, then it becomes the most personal. Even as a biologist might look through a microscope, so we look through the microscope of the Word of God. We bring ourselves under the scrutiny of the eye of God, and we say, "Look! There am I, a lost sinner. I need Christ." In the microscope of God, we see ourselves objectively.

 

There am I. I'm a sinner. What can I do about it? Nothing. What can be done? God will do it for me! In my sin there is objective truth. In the cross of Jesus Christ, there is objective truth. What He did on the cross for me is immediately relevant, and I find that my problems are met, and my frustrations are gone, and the Lord of mercy has come to bear witness to the truth.

 

Now, this brings us to the point that truth must come from above. "My kingship is not of this world." "I have come to bear witness of truth"; therefore, truth is not of this world. Truth is of God. James 1:5 says, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." Samuel Morse was once seen bowing his head over his desk as he worked. When someone said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm asking God for help. Every time I go into my laboratory," he explained, "I say, '0 God, I am nothing. Give me wisdom, give me clarity of mind."' Is it any wonder that the first telegram ever sent was, "What hath God wrought?" For Morse knew that God had done it. Truth must come from above.

 

And then we also see here that truth must come from a person sent from God. "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world...." (John 18:37). And so, when the Lord Jesus Christ announced that He had come in relationship to truth, He declared that this truth must come through a person sent from God, and that He Himself was that person. He said, "I am the truth." I think we can trace what began to frighten Pilate at this point. He was scared to death. He did everything he could to get out of this situation. Not wanting to judge Jesus, he said, "I find no fault in this man." What set the governor to being afraid? It was Jesus' words, "To this end was I born, to this cause came I. "

 

Now you and I can't say, "I came into this world." I didn't come into this world. I was brought into this world. Every time a baby comes into this world, the doctor or midwife takes hold of the first part of the body that comes from the mother's womb and pulls. Sometimes some of us had to have extra assistance. But we are always dragged into this world. And certainly our spirits did not exist beforehand. We have no memory of the past; but this baby, this Christmas baby could remember the past. He had a memory of Abraham, Moses, and even of the throne of God. "For this cause came I into this world." And this was the sentence that set Pilate to thinking.

 

And it won't be long before the people will add this tremendous verse, "By our law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God." (See John 19:7.) When Pilate relates those words to what Jesus has already said to him, he will try even harder to get out of pronouncing the death sentence on this innocent man.

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