Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Eighteen

                                                                                                                                              Verses 28-32

Caiaphas had Jesus delivered to Pilate for Roman judgment. Caiaphas had found Jesus guilty of blasphemy because he had asked Jesus directly if He was the Son of God, and Jesus had confessed that He was. Mark 14:59-64. Jesus came into the world to preach the truth. Jesus told Caiaphas the simple truth that He was indeed the Son of God. One might object that if Caiaphas and the Jewish rulers believed that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, then they could have committed no sin if they ordered Jesus to be stoned to death according to Jewish law. Leviticus 24:16. But that is not what Caiaphas and the Jewish rulers did. Caiaphas wanted Jesus to be crucified by the Romans contrary to Jewish law. Caiaphas had plotted in his mind to deliver Jesus to the Romans for them to crucify Him for being a leader of sedition against the Romans. Caiaphas did not care that Jesus was not guilty of that crime. Caiaphas thought that by doing that he would send a message to the zealots that the Jewish leaders were willing to turn seditious persons over to the Romans and thereby discourage the zealots. At the same time, Caiaphas sought to placate the Romans by a demonstration of some submission to Roman rule. Caiaphas thought that by carrying out this plot, he could save his nation from destruction by the Romans. But his sin, and that of the Jewish people, was that they went directly against the law that God had given them. They also demonstrated that they had come to trust Roman rule more than God's rule. John 11:47-53; John 19:14-15. But even if the Jewish leaders had ordered Jesus to be stoned to death, it would not have happened because Jesus knew exactly how to blank out their minds and walk away from any stoning. John 10:31-39.

The Jews who delivered Jesus to Pilate would not go into his judgment hall because they considered it to be a sin for any Jew to even go into the abode of an infidel. Acts 10:28. So Pilate went out to them and asked them what charge they had against Jesus. Apparently, they could provide no example of Jesus having said anything against Roman rule, so they just said that Jesus was a criminal.

Pilate did not fall for that answer because he wanted an exact charge of sedition against Roman rule. When he got no answer, he told the Jews to judge Jesus according to their own law. In other words, Pilate gave the Jews permission to stone Jesus. The Jews answered that Roman law did not permit them to put Jesus to death. They put Roman law over God's law. The Romans did have a law that only they could put criminals to death, but they and the Jews also knew that the Romans did not care, and they did nothing about it, when the Jews stoned someone to death for a violation of Jewish law. John 8:3-5; Acts 7:56-60. Pilate informed the Jews that he did not care if they stoned Jesus to death. But the Jews fulfilled Jesus' prophecy that He would be crucified by the Romans when the Jews insisted that Jesus be judged according to Roman law. This fact made all the Jews and all the Gentiles who ever lived guilty of an evil desire to murder God as influenced by the Devil. That desire abides within the evil natures of all humans. Acts 4:25-28.