28 Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor’s headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” 32 This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 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.” 37 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.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” 13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, 17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. 19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” 22 Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

• John 18:28-19:22

The Motive: Envy

In the garden, we were told that Judas led a band of soldiers and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees to arrest Jesus (John 18:3). This group, the chief priests and Pharisees, were not natural allies. The chief priests would have been the religious elite, those who held the seats of influence and power within the temple system. They were predominantly Sadducees, who represented a more liberal wing of Judaism, only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament as Scripture, rejected the doctrine of an afterlife, and who were much more sympathetic towards Roman culture. The Pharisees, on the other hand were popular, conservative religious teachers who sharply disagreed with the Sadducees, and despised the Romans. Yet, the progressive liberals and traditional conservatives of the day can unite together over this: Jesus is a threat that must be silenced.

The question I want you to consider this morning is why they are so eager for Jesus to be killed. Let’s answer that question by looking at three possibilities:

Are They Just Good Roman Citizens?

Throughout our reading it appears that these Jews have suddenly become incredibly loyal subjects of Caesar.

• They are willing to submit to the restriction Rome had placed on them to not carry out the death penalty themselves (”It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” John 18:31)—a restriction that had only been put in place a few years earlier.
• They warn Pilate, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar,” (John 19:12).
• Then finally, unbelievably, the crowds shout out, “We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15).

This is surprising when we know a little more about the historical context the Jews were in. The Jews had been under Roman occupation for about 90 years at this point. And as those years rolled on, Roman governance became more overbearing. Thirty years prior, a man named Judas the Galilean led a violent rebellion against the Romans—his rebellion and execution by Rome is mentioned in Acts 5:37. His primary rallying cry? That God alone was to be their ruler and king, not Caesar. In 4 BC, there was another violent upheaval where the Jews sought to overthrow Roman rule, and Varus, the Roman governor, crushed the revolt and crucified 2,000 Jews. Only a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Roman emperor Caligula attempted to set up a statue of himself inside the holy of holies in the temple. It was never brought about because Caligula was assassinated before the order could be completed. But Tacitus, the Roman historian, explained that the Jews would prefer “the alternative of war” to this kind of Roman idolatry.

And, of course, by 66 AD, a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews will again seek to use violence to overthrow Roman rule, leading to the Jewish War which will result in the complete destruction of the Jewish temple and the crucifixion of so many Jews, that they ran out of trees in the nearby region to use as crosses.

Suffice to say, “We have no king but Caesar” is not the actual posture of the Jewish nation.

Are They Crazy?

Even if you knew nothing of that history, you get a sense that there is a strange intensity to the chief priests and Pharisees’ zeal for Jesus’ death. When Pilate gives them a choice to release a prisoner, they choose Barabbas instead of Jesus. John tells us curtly that Barabbas was simply “a robber.” This is somewhat misleading. Barabbas would have been classified as a “terrorist” to the Romans. Listen to Luke’s explanation that colors in both the heinousness of Barabbas’ crimes, and the frenzied intensity of the crowd:

But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas”— 19 a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. 20 Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus, 21 but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” 22 A third time he said to them, “Why? What evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him.” 23 But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. 24 So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. 25 He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will. - Luke 23:18-25

Do you sense their irrational lust for Jesus’ death? The crowds claim to be concerned about civil unrest and the danger of another violent upheaval from this Jesus who is making Himself a king, another rival to Caesar! So what do they do? They plead for the freedom of man who is not only a murder, but participated in an insurrection in the city! Barabbas is the man they are claiming Jesus is—a violent revolutionary prepared to shed Roman blood to achieve his purposes—that is the danger with Jesus, they claim, so give us Barabbas.

The irony is overwhelming. Barabbas used the sword, Jesus refuses it (John 18:11). Barabbas—whose name literally means “a son of a father”—is chosen to be set free so that the true Son of the Heavenly Father, Jesus, can be condemned to death. The guilty is set free so that the innocent may be destroyed.

Jesus was a righteous man who taught and lived by the Scriptures. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, opened the eyes of the blind. He was gentle and lowly of heart. And when Jesus is accused, no one can bring any charge of guilt against Him. He has nothing hidden, no dark secrets, no sinister plots. When He is struck, He does not strike back. Yet He is being painted as more dangerous and guilty than Barabbas?

Envy, the Real Cause

What is fueling this moral insanity? Listen to Matthew’s account of Barabbas:

17 So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” 18 For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. - Matt 27:17-18

For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. - Mark 15:10

Does John’s gospel paint them as envious of Jesus? At the triumphal entry, as Jesus is ushered into Jerusalem as a King, we are told:

So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.” (John 12:19)

One chapter earlier, after Lazarus was raised from the dead, the chief priests convene together and and agree:

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. (John 11:48)

There, at that moment, they agree that the only thing to be done is to murder Jesus (John 11:49-53).

These men are the precise inverse of John the Baptist. John the Baptist had a sensational ministry that was entirely eclipsed by Jesus’, yet, he was content:

Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” …This joy of mine is now complete30 He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:26, 29-30)

That is the exact opposite of the chief priests and Pharisees. As Jesus increases, they are not joyful, they are not content—they are murderous. All throughout the gospels, we see this tension between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees. The problem for them isn’t only that they do not understand Jesus’ identity as the Son of God or how He is fulfilling the messianic prophecies. There is a strange blindness they have which seems to pre-date their resistance to Jesus, as if by the time they get the chance to observe His miracles and hear his teaching, there is already a callous on their hearts. What do the chief priests and Pharisees love?

They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. - Matt 23:5-7

They love attention, praise, approval, applause. And Jesus is a thorn in their side. He is popular, while simultaneously not seeming to care all that much—especially not about the approval of the chief priests and Pharisees! In fact, Jesus is willing to publicly contradict and challenge them, and it appears that for the most part, the crowds are more enamored with Jesus than them. And this gnaws at them like a termite.

Why? Because they envy Him. Envy is the deadly sin that is lying at the heart of the chief priests and Pharisees. What comes to your mind when you think of “envy”? Envy is a desire for what you don’t have, particularly when you see someone else who does. Envy comes from a deficit of contentment. One of the reasons it is so deadly is because it never runs out of fuel. Those who are single, are envious of those who are married; the married are envious of those with children; those with children are envious of those with older children who give their parents more freedom; those parents with more freedom are envious of the days when their children needed them more. The grass is always greener on the other side. Your Instagram feed proves it, does it not? The stories of your friends’ latest vacation, the promotion your co-worker received, the health of your neighbor—why does everybody seem to have such an incredible life, why do they get that?

Where does contentment come from? A deep trust that God can be trusted. That He withholds no good thing from His elect.

Envy is a life lived with its attention perpetually craning its neck to examine if others have it better than itself. It views Joy and Contentment like zero-sum contests, rare, and non-renewable fuel sources—if others have something we don’t, then that means they are taking something from us, we are being cheated.

It usually starts when we begin to desire something, like success or praise, that we think will make us feel good. But, because envious desire is selfish and paranoid, it soon turns out that we want to have this thing ‘for ourselves without any companion’.[6] So, we come to feel [Envy’s] chief symptom: becoming empty and bereft at seeing another person’s success, like we’re seeing a lover cheating on us.

It’s at this point that the frenzy really kicks in. Because once envy hooks us, it becomes impossible to resist the feel-good buzz of knocking other people down. When we overhear someone else being praised, we ignore it, carrying on as if nothing had been said. But if we overhear criticism of somebody else, we rush to join the crowd, adding our own contributions, hoping ‘to darken another’s shining renown with a cloud’.[7] We become addicted to the accidents, the misfortunes and the mistakes of other people. We even enjoy their pain, to the point that, when we see a rival in distress, we hope nobody comes to their rescue. (Jones, Peter. Self-Help from the Middle Ages)

The Cost: Blindness

But as we examine writers of the early and medieval church, as they attempt to catalogue the mortal sin of “envy” the chief characteristic of it is blindness. Last year, we went to the Uffizi gallery in Florence, and there is a series of paintings of the seven deadly sins. The painting of Envy shows a woman, roiling in flames, while a serpent bites her in the eyes. Envy is both agonizing and blinding. “…envy is the inability to really see other people for what they are. It’s ‘the hell of the human mind’, as the preacher and theologian Alain de Lille wrote. A misdirected fixation on somebody else that makes us ‘unerringly blind’ to all the beauty and fortune we already possess.” (Jones, Peter. Self-Help from the Middle Ages).

But it is a strange blindness which only sees what is bad and remains blind to what is good—both in ourselves and in others. I am blind to the good I should be grateful for in my life, and only see what is lacking. And in resentment and a sense of unfairness, I see others, but I am blind to what I should be grateful for, and magnify their faults—or, even fabricate their faults, as the chief priests and Pharisees do with Jesus.

Envy, therefore, is not only a deficit of contentment, it is actually a blindness to the Truth. Which is why we see the religious authorities here having such a flexible relationship with the truth. They claim to be motivated by concern for Roman law, Roman honor, and Caesar’s sovereignty, when they do not at all—they despise Caesar and resent Roman law. They claim to be concerned only with a singular conviction of justice, vowing that they would not be bothering Pilate unless Jesus was guilty of grievous evil, when they know that they just attempted to interrogate Jesus and were incapable of accusing him of any crime (see John 18:19-24). They claim to be motivated out of devotion to the honor of God, when in reality they are so patently motivated out of their own envy that Pilate himself can recognize it (John 19:7). By the time they shout “We have no king but Caesar”—something that they are only saying to manipulate the crowds and Pilate to secure the outcome they desire—they must be aware that they are far from the truth. How could they justify this, morally? I’m sure they argued that the ends justified the means. This is the real world of politics where you have to get your hands a little dirty, plus, as Caiaphas had explained earlier, its better that one man die than the whole nation perish (John 11:50).

I’m sure they had many such statements to soothe their conscience as they murdered an innocent man. No one, however, comes out and says: I just hate that Jesus is more popular than me and that He doesn’t think I am very impressive. One of the consequences of Envy, therefore, is that it hides from you as it blinds you from reality.

This dishonesty sheds new light on Jesus’ strange comment—which seems to come out of nowhere—when talking with Pilate: ““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.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38).

We will return to Pilate’s ambiguous relationship to truth next week, but why does Jesus say this here? Because both Pilate and the Jews are not “of the truth” and so cannot listen to Jesus’ voice. Jesus’ voice has been ringing clearly throughout His entire ministry. He IS the truth (John 14:6). Pilate’s cynical reply, something we might expect from a Roman, ironically could easily be put into the mouth of the Jews. They are free to manipulate and lie because they fundamentally are blind to the truth.

And that is dramatically revealed to us, the readers. If we are able to see who Jesus really is and what He has come to do, we sense the profound blindness.

• The religious authorities are scrupulous not to make themselves unclean by entering Pilate’s house, while they plot the murder of an innocent man—the Man who has the ability to make them actually clean.
• They are eager to go home and celebrate the Passover meal, a meal to celebrate their deliverance and redemption, while the true and final Passover Lamb stands before them.
• They accuse Jesus of being guilty of making Himself a King, Jesus identifies Himself as a King, Pilate calls Jesus their King; He is paraded before them in the garb of a king, the crown of thorns, like a king, and has a LITERAL sign hung above his head that states that HE IS THE KING OF THE JEWS…and still the Jews say, “We have no king but Caesar.”

They are blind. They only see what they want to see, and so they hate Jesus. When Envy compels you to traffic in untruths, be careful. You will begin telling yourself lies, like, “She doesn’t deserve that promotion…I do. I have nothing good in my life. It isn’t fair that they get it.” Dishonesty is a virus that eventually eats its host. You will begin with assuming that you can wield for your own purposes, but in time it will devour you. Dostoevsky wrote: “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” And in the absence of that love, you are consumed by hate.

The Savior

Practice Contentment. If you are not content here, you won’t be there.

Tell the Truth

Look to Jesus

Jesus provides a sharp contrast in this scene of the religious authorities, does He not?

First, He is marked by a deep contentment in His lot—even though it is, by all appearances, dreadful. When given the opportunity to escape through Peter’s attack, what does He tell Peter? Shall I not drink the cup the Father has for me? He does not look at the other disciples and burn with a sense of injured justice, a green envy: You guys got it good—do you have any idea what I am about to face? He doesn’t resent what the Father has given Him.

Second, He submits to the Truth. He will not lie to save His skin. His quiet, confidence exudes a deep certainty that is devoid of the anxious spirit of a deceiver who is trying to manipulate the facts to get His desired outcome.

Third, He can be trusted because He has shown you what He is willing to do for you.