John 18:38 Pilate said to him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them… In all deference to Lord Bacon, we cannot believe that this sentence was spoken in jest. In Pilate's whole conduct there is no trace of such a tone. It betrays much of uncertainty, nothing of lightness. He was cruelly tormented with the perplexity of efforts to save his prisoner. He risked his own reputation. He pronounced Him, almost with vehemence, to be innocent. He even felt awe, and was afraid of Him. In such a frame of mind, mockery was impossible. Sarcasm there was: but it was mournful, bitter sarcasm which hides inward unrest. I. THE CAUSES OF PILATE'S SCEPTICISM. 1. Indecision of character. He first throws the blame on the priests — and then acknowledges that all responsibility is his own: washes his hands. And then — "Knowest thou not that I have power," &c. He pronounces Jesus innocent; and then delivers Him to be scourged; yields Him up to be crucified, and then tries every underhand expedient to save Him. What could a mind, like a feather on the wind, know of truth, which remaineth like a rock amidst the changeful fashions of the minds of men? "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." 2. Falseness to his own convictions. Pilate had a conviction that Jesus was innocent. Instead of acting at once on that, he argued and debated till She practical force of the conviction was unsettled. I do not say that a man is never to re-examine a question. A young man of twenty-three, with such light as he has, forms his views: is he never to have more light? Is he never in manhood, with manhood's data and experience, to modify, or even reverse, what once seemed the very Truth itself? Nay, this were the weak pride of consistency, the cowardice which dares not say I have been wrong. The best and bravest have struggled from error into truth; they listened to their honest doubts, and tore up their old beliefs by the very roots. Distinguish however. A man may unsettle the verdict of his intellect; it is at his peril that he tampers with the convictions of his conscience. Every opinion and view must remain an open question, freely to be tried with fresh light. But there are eternal truths of right and wrong, upon which it is perilous to argue. Now Pilate was false to his conscience. Jesus' innocence was not a matter of probability, nor one in which fresh evidence was even expected. Every charge has fallen to the ground. When a man brings a clear and practised intellect to try questions, by the answer to which he does not mean to rule his conduct, let him not marvel if he feels, as life goes on, a sense of desolation; existence a burden, and all uncertain. 3. The taint of the worldly temper of his day. Pilate knew how many systems pretended to an exclusive possession of truth; and how the pretensions of each were overthrown by another. And his incredulity was but a specimen of the scepticism fashionable in his day. And his desire to save Jesus was precisely the liberalism current in our day as in his — an utter disbelief in the truths of a world unseen, but at the same time a half-benevolent, half-indolent unwillingness to molest the poor dreamers who chose to believe in such superstitions. This is the superficial liberalism which is contracted in public life; never going deep; satisfied with the brilliant flippancy which treats religious beliefs as phases of human delusion, seeing the hollowness of the characters around, and believing that all is hollow; and yet not without moments of superstition, as when Pilate was afraid hearing of a Son of God; not without moments of horrible insecurity, when the question, "What is truth?" is a sarcasm on themselves and human life, wrung out of the loneliest and darkest bewilderment that can agonize a human soul. To such a character Jesus would not explain His truth. God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness. 4. That priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry and makes doubt a crime. (1) The priests of that day had much to answer for. One — of whom they only knew that He was a man of unblemished life — came forward to proclaim the truth. But it was new; they had never sanctioned such; and so they settled that the thing was heresy. Then they proceeded to bind that decision upon others. A man was heard to say, "Why, what evil hath He done?" Small offence enough, but it savoured of a dangerous candour towards a suspected man; and in the priestly estimate, candour is the next step to heresy. They stifled Pilate's soul's rising convictions with threats and penalties — "If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend."(2) The results of this priestcraft were twofold. The first was seen in the fanaticism of the people; the second in the scepticism of Pilate. And these are the two results which come from all claims to infallibility, and all prohibition of inquiry. They make bigots of the feeble-minded who cannot think; cowardly bigots, who at the bidding of their priests or ministers swell the ferocious cry for the persecution of some opinion which they fear and hate; turning private opinion into civil crime; and they make sceptics of the acute intellects which, like Pilate, see through their fallacies, and like Pilate too, dare not publish their misgivings. And it matters not in what form that claim to infallibility is made. These two things must follow — you make fanatics, and you make sceptics; believers you cannot make. II. THE MODE APPOINTED FOR DISCOVERING THE TRUTH. 1. I am not about to be guilty of the presumption of answering the question which Jesus did not answer. The truth cannot be compressed into a sermon. Think you, that if Christ Himself could have answered that question in a certain number of sentences, He would have spent thirty years of life in witnessing to it! Some men would compress into the limits of one reply, or one discourse the truth which it took Christ thirty years to teach, and which He left unfinished for the Spirit to complete. 2. The truth is infinite as the firmament above you. In childhood, both seem near and measureable; but with years they grow and grow; and seem further off, and further and grander, and deeper and vaster, as God Himself; till you smile to remember how you thought you could touch the sky, and blush to recollect the proud and self-sufficient way in which you used to talk of knowing or preaching "the truth." 3. The truth is made up of principles; an inward life, not any mere formula of words. God's character; spiritual worship; the Divine life in the soul. How shall I put that into sentences ten or ten thousand? "The words which I speak unto you are life." How could Pilate's question be answered except by a life? 4. The appointed ways to teach this truth. (1) Independence. Independence is nothing more than a deep sense of personal responsibility; a determination to trust in God rather than in man to teach; in God and God's light in the soul. You choose a guide among precipices and glaciers; but you walk for yourself; you use your own strength; you rely on your own nerves. You select your own physician, deciding upon the respective claims of men, the most ignorant of whom knows more of the matter than you. You prudently hesitate at times to follow the advice of the one you trust most, yet that is only independence without a particle of presumption. And so precisely in matters of religious truth. No man cares for your health as you do; therefore you rely blindly upon none. No man has the keeping of your own soul, or cares for it as you do. For yourself therefore, you inquire and think, and you refuse to delegate that work to bishop, priest, or church. (2) Humbleness. There is no infallibility in man. We may err: that one thought is enough to keep a man humble. There are two kinds of temper contrary to this spirit. (a) A disputing, captious temper. Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out the truth. Controversy is wretched when it is an attempt to prove one another wrong. Therefore Christ would not argue with Pilate. (b) A hopeless spirit. Pilate's question breathed this. He felt that Jesus was unjustly condemned, but He thought Him in views as hopelessly wrong as the rest. In that despairing spirit no man gets at truth: "The meek will He guide in judgment"(3) Action. This was Christ's rule — "If any man will do His will" Here we are in a world of mystery, where all is difficult, and very much dark — where a hundred jarring creeds declare themselves to be the truth, and all are plausible. How shall a man decide? Let him do the right that lies before him. Whatever else may be wrong, it must be right to be pure — to be just and tender, and merciful and honest. It must be right to love, and to deny one's self. Let him do the will of God, and he shall know. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. |
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