SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE

 

About Pilate. Made Governor of Judea by friendship with Emperor Tiberius. Later following his massacre of an armed uprising of Samaritans at Gerezim their temple, he was tried and found guilty by Caligula. As usual for top Romans guilty of a crime, he was expected to commit suicide. He drowned himself in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland. Nothing known about him before his appointment. Mentioned in all Gospels, Acts and Timothy also by Philo, (Jewish philosopher) Tacitus (Roman historian) and Josephus (Jewish historian). A stone pillar engraved with his name was found on the Temple site.

 

Character according to King Herod “naturally inflexible, a blend of self will and relentlessness”. His ambition was self-promotion. Herod and Pilate were not friends. His final compromise despite his wife’s intervention for Christ, left him execrated for ever. His was the greatest mistake of all judiciaries. According to legend, his ghost appears over Lucerne washing his hands in innocence. Included in the Christian creed, all over the world for centuries – non-stop perhaps, these words “Crucified under Pontius Pilate” endlessly repeated. If Pilate could hear – what a fate!

 

Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate but we are not guiltless - He suffered for our sins. 1 Pt. 3.18. 4.1. Pilate 5 times declared Jesus innocent but still sent Him to be crucified. Like Pilate, people do not find fault with Jesus but they sill brush Him aside as He extends His wounded hand to them and ‘crucify Him afresh’ as Hebrews 6.6 says. (Do you know Studdart Kennedy’s moving rhyme ‘When Jesus came to Birmingham’ ?)

 

­The Cross was built into creation – the world was founded on the shed blood of Christ, the Rock smitten for us. Without intending to bring us atonement and redemption God would never have created the world. As Peter said - Christ’s enemies had crucified Him “by God’s purpose and foreknowledge.” Jesus referred to it “Woe to the world by offences. By necessity they must come. But woe to the man through whom they come.” ( My own translation).

 

Jesus pronounced woes but not maledictions and retribution. He did not curse or pass sentence. Asked to do so He said “Who made me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Luke 12.14. Sin brings death automatically as a law of cause and effect . This is strongly emphasised in Romans . We reap what we sow whether corruption or blessing. We sow evil and reap the whirlwind. Gal. 6:7.  2 Cor. 9.6. “The curse uncaused shall not come.” Prov 26.2. Nature brings only a degree of suffering. For most of it (and much sickness) we can only blame ourselves or ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. “He that breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him”. Eccl. 10.8. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.” Numbers 32.23.

 

Suffering related to Christ

 

All suffering finds its essence, focus and meaning in the Cross. All mankind was brought to judgment at the Cross but there Christ tasted death for all men. That is basic Biblical theology that has to be believed and worked out – (as will follow). There is also the further question of why God allows suffering. That again is answered at the Cross if we understand it.

 

Bible history is true history as God sees it, World history is not plan-less or haphazard but has a focus which is set out in Scripture. The Word contains the entire programme of God against suffering. It points to the suffering of Christ under Pilate as the key. Paradise (Eden) is regained and is symbolised in the book of Revelation. The last book about last things, uses the first book about first things. Half of Revelation comes from the OT - its terms and symbolism.

 

God’s purpose is to wipe away all tears. Rev. 21:4. But how? The profound and incredible answer is for Himself to accept the role of the ultimate sufferer. Sin is wickedness as seen by God. Wickedness is not sin but becomes sin by offending the holiness of God. That is why only God can forgive sin. Only God can truly be said to be sinned against. David said (Psalm 51) “Against thee and thee only have I sinned.” We can forgive those that trespass against us but they still need God’s forgiveness. Sin is a rupture of the goodness and rightness of God’s creation. Cain’s blood made the created earth scream to God. It is disruption, rebellion, friction, war.  Sin is behind all suffering, either directly or indirectly. The whole world is affected by sin – as from the sin of Adam. The OT always treats sickness as God’s affliction for sin. Ps. 103. Jesus also did in some cases but not in general. (John 9.1-3). James 5:16 indicates sickness may be caused by sin, and so also 1 Cor. 1. 32.

 

God does not judge anyone until the Great White throne. Divine judgment is essentially JUDGMENT- not condemnation, but for those who reject Him it becomes confirmation of their own decision. They reject God and He accepts it and banishes them from His presence. ‘Depart from me I never knew you”. Biblical figures of eternal punishment are not spiteful vengeance. God is not a God who ‘gets his own back’. God gets no pleasure from inflicting hell’s pains upon hapless creatures, but the horror of hell is to ‘perish’ – that is to lose the image and likeness of God and be an unrecognisable ruin.

 

Thoughts To live with Christ is difficult , but without Him it is tragic. When you only have Christ, He is enough. Even failure is not final with Him. Mass turning from God is only mass ignorance, for truth is not democratically determined. We are all sinners – human beings are the worst people you will ever meet.

 

Nothing in Scripture suggests that any nation is under judgment. John 3.17. ”God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world”. Israel itself was never said to be ‘under judgment’. . The Lord is not a thunderbolt God, like Jupiter.  John the Baptist made that mistake, not understanding his own prophecy. Jesus showed Him the true marks of Messiah – healing the sick and preaching to the outcasts.

 

The prominent sociologist Dr. Clifford Hill, who claims to be ‘standing in the council of God’ constantly proclaims such teaching but never finds a word of the NT to justify it. Britain is in crisis. The world lurches from crisis to crisis crippled by unbelief. That is what the Bible shows over and over. God said ‘Ephraim have I loved” but this most foolish and tragic of all races, possessing the incredible glory of the revelation of God unknown to the wise of other nations, brought on itself all its calamities, by its blind pagan life-style.

 

God loves and works for sinners to be saved to within a yard of hell. “He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” 2 Pet 3:9.  He is good – always, never a raging threatening bully. Jesus uttered woes but never threats. Matt. 11.21 etc. “His anger lasts only a moment but his favour lasts a lifetime”. Ps. 30.5. There are many Psalms of imprecation calling on God to destroy enemies, but God never answered such Psalmist’s prayers. (The famous Dr. Joseph Parker had a letter from two ladies saying “We are praying for your death. We have been very successful in two previous cases!”)

 

The Cross is an exposure of the Father’s heart. It was first demonstrated with His unsolicited and spontaneous emancipation of Israel in the Exodus and then His patience and kindness throughout their history. They never shook idolatry off their shoulders until the Captivity in BC 500. As Stephen said they ‘do always resist the Holy Spirit”. The Lord did more than bear with them. He bore the evils of His people by identifying Himself with them in solidarity. Why should He compromise His reputation with theirs – or ours? He took the pain but not the blame. The foul sins that revolted Him He took upon Himself – that is what Isaiah 53 said. He spoke amazing things through the prophets which they could never understand.

 

Hosea 11.8-11 is the heart cry of God. “How can I give thee up O Ephraim?” He dramatised His compassion by putting Hosea into a comparative cuckolded situation. He spoke of Israel as a wife and He a husband. Jeremiah 31.32. In Isaiah 63.9 is a very striking statement ” In all their affliction he was afflicted.” He also spoke of Israel as His adopted Son, and brought them out of Egypt and shared their struggles and wilderness experience, stupid as they were, even unbelieving. He talked of walking with them and dwelling in a tent as they did. 2 Samuel 7:5-8. In the NT the picture of God’s forgiveness and patience is shown to be more than a moral conciliatory attitude, but a personal and emotional involvement with sinners. His almost fatal agony in the garden is a harrowing and spectacular revelation of His direct personal concern for us. As priest “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses. ” Hebrew 4.15. Greek ‘sympathesai’ is stronger than our English word sympathy, meaning to suffer along with the sufferer, in solidarity with him.

 

God’s Identity with the evil and suffering of Israel breaks through graphically in Isaiah, especially chapter 53. The ‘Servant’ there is Israel personified. Of course Christ personifies all Israel. The Servant is Israel and Christ. He represented Israel and suffered on their behalf all evils, sin and its consequences, including sickness. It seems to me a superficial quibble when people debate whether Matthew 8.16 refers to salvation or healing. “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases”. (NIV) The revelation of God in all the world’s troubles must include all forms of trouble. All evil blazed in the heart of Christ at the cross.

 

An interesting aspect is given us by Paul using bold language - Col.1:24, that he suffers for Christ and talks about ‘the fellowship of His sufferings’. This seems to reverse the principle – He suffers for Christ, but that is an expression of our ‘reasonable’ service.  From those first centuries (and not only then) people have suffered for His Name’s sake. On my desk at the moment is The History of the Church by Eusebius, the father of church history. From this work we have our knowledge of the persecutions, and they are too harrowing to read – I try but give up, and can’t sleep thinking about the incredible demonic cruelties these wonderful people bore for Christ.

 

THEODICIES

If God is a God love and has all power why does he permit suffering? This has been a prime excuse for unbelief – not that unbelief solves anything or helps anybody, for it does not, but is merely a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of those running from God.

 

Theologians are always trying to establish ‘theodices’ – to rationalise a God of love with evil. This was thrown into starkness in our lifetime by the German holocaust and the two great wars. Faith in England suffered most from WW1 spiritually.

 

My own early ministry constantly attempted an intellectual answer to unbelief caused by the world’s suffering. My congregation suffered awfully from my preaching about suffering! A theodicy which much affected my own early theology was that of CS Lewis’ who called suffering “God’s intolerable compliment”. I no longer see suffering as from God, anyway. God does not send us trouble but is our refuge from trouble. He permits it which is strange, but Peter says “think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you”. 1 Peter 4.12. Having faith in God does not translate us out of the normal conditions of life for ‘man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward’ said Job. But God has just reasons. Unless He did allow evil there would be no freedom in manhood and the world would be under His inflexible control like an automatic machine. He made man in His own image – not physically as he had no physical image, but in all qualities of person, freedom of will particularly.

 

Critics present suffering as a conundrum but they have no real interest in seeking an answer. It is to them just as a scoring point against people who want to do some good in the world as Christians. Answering is not a matter of logic. The problem is not an equation or syllogism. It is a matter of a personal issue between a man and God. The true answer is personal – God’s answer is Jesus Christ, whose suffering, being Who He is deepens the mystery, but also holds the secret of why. If He suffered. Him – then ….

 

In my recent info for Creation, I said God wanted us here on this planet where there would be trouble and testing of faith, because God is making a new species “tried in the fire”. It is not strange. This period is called ‘the great tribulation. ’ (Revelation 7:14), from which emerges “a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and language’.

 

(Incidentally some teach that that countless multitude could be saved during a 7 year tribulation when the Holy Spirit has gone. It would be the world’s greatest revival. How?)

 

Concerning the Bible’s non-argumentive approach to suffering. Such Psalms as 44 set out the problem in ambiguous terms, the most realistic words, but the Psalmists never try to make sense of the contradictions of God and suffering. They leave that. Their comfort was not in Aristotelian logic, but “In Thee O lord do I put my trust”. Jeremiah 4.10. “Then said I ‘Ah Sovereign Lord, how completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying ‘You will have peace, when the sword is at our throats.” The Jews were not philosophers. Their ethos has always been objective, practical, the realism of trust in God.

 

Their Hebrew language is a vehicle for faith, not abstract subjective reasoning. They began with God, the beginning and ending, and nothing beside Him, and all belief and knowledge to them was within the framework of an unchangeable faith if God.   

 

The book of Job is a poetic discussion of suffering. The disputants arrive at no conclusion – no statement of explanation. The peak of Job’s fidelity does not come from debate or rationalisation, but rises to God rises above all the debate. Many questions – some answered in the NT, with Christ is the key.

 

Many turn from God because of sufferings but many turn to him because of sufferings. The old Brains Trust philosopher Professor C E M Joad an agnostic, later wrote a book showing how suffering brought him to faith in God. (My whole family came to Christ through the early death of my father).

 

On the cross Jesus cried “My God why hast thou forsaken me?” It is a theology puzzle. How could God forsake the Son of God? Had God forsaken Him? But it is what we would expect Him to say when He takes the place of us sinners – unbelieving sinners, bereft of God. His cry uttered the final terror - banishment from God. He experienced the desolation of the godless in their sorrows.

 

It is notable that no people on earth have suffered so much as a race and as individuals than the Jews, but it is them and them alone who carried hope in God as a light into the world.

 

An arguing Hindu said “If God knew all the suffering that goes on down here it would break His heart”. The missionary reply “It did.” Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate – man judged God, the moment of human Divine confrontation. Pilate was the immediate cause of His anguish, but all through history the sinfulness of man had found its ultimate target in God, and the Cross revealed what sin did to God. Jesus suffered on the Cross what the whole Godhead Trinity had suffered since the first man sinned. It was there that the truth about God and suffering was exposed. What Jesus experienced in the outer dominion and backwaters of a sin-stained planet the Father shared at home and in glory. The black river of sin and moral and spiritual pollution ran into the sea of God’s infinite heart. The music of God took on a minor mode.

 

 God the Creator made a world in which evil was possible but He took on the responsibility of it Himself at the Cross. He accepted the challenge of evil from the moment He decided to found the earth and from then Christ was the Lamb slain for us.

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                                                George Canty. March 2009.