2334 Therefore we should say with Jerome, Augustine and other Latin Fathers, that the fourteenth day is the beginning of the feast; but the passover refers not just to that evening, but to the entire time of the seven days during which they ate unleavened bread, which was to be eaten by those who were clean. [16] And because the Jews would have contracted uncleanness by entering the residence of a foreign judge, they did not enter so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover, that is, the unleavened bread.
See their wicked blindness, for they feared becoming defiled from a gentile man, but did not fear to shed the blood of a God and a man, "Those who laid you waste go forth from you" (Is 49:17).
2335 Now we see the deference Pilate showed them when he says, So Pilate went out to them, to take Christ, whom they were offering, and said, What accusation do you bring against this man? In this examination of Christ, we see first, how Christ is examined before his accusers by Pilate; secondly, how Christ is examined by Pilate in private (v 33). Concerning the first he does two things: first, we have Pilate's questioning; secondly, his generous concession to the Jews, Take him yourselves .
2336 Concerning the first, we have the examination by Pilate, and then the malicious reply of the Jews. When Pilate saw Jesus bound and brought by so may seeking his condemnation, he said, What accusation do you bring against this man? Their reply was, If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over. They are saying here: We have already examined and condemned him, and are now handing him over to you to be punished. They were regarding their own judgment as sufficient for Pilate. Yet they were not speaking truly when they said he was an evildoer, for "He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38). They were acting like the Psalm says, "They requite me evil for good" (Ps 35:12).
2337 Luke is different, for he says that the Jews accused Christ of many crimes: "He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place" (Lk 23:5). I reply that, as Augustine says, the Jews said many things to Pilate at that time, and it could be that they first said what John reports, and then said what Luke tells us. [17]
2338 The Evangelist now mentions Pilate's generous concession (v 31): first, we see this concession; secondly, the Jews refuse it; and thirdly, we see the reason for their refusal (v 32).
2339 Pilate said, Take him yourselves, intending to do them a favor. Festus did the same to Paul: "But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, 'Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem, and there be tried on these charges before me?'" (Acts 25:9). Or, this could be said as a taunting remark: for they had already examined and condemned Christ, and Pilate wanted those who had condemned Christ as an evildoer to pass the sentence, because "It was not the custom of the Romans to give up any one before the accused met the accusers face to face, and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him" (Acts 25:16). So the meaning is then: You want my judgment, but Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law , for I will never be that kind of a judge.
2340 The refusal of the Jews is mentioned when he says, The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death. This seems not to agree with Exodus [22:18]: "You will not permit a sorcerer to live." And they regarded Jesus as a sorcerer.
According to Augustine the meaning is, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death on a feast day, but it is lawful on other days. [18] Or, according to Chrysostom, the Jews had lost much of their power: for they could not pass judgment on a crime against the state. [19] But here they intended to condemn Christ especially for matters against the state: "Everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar" (19:12). This is why they said, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death , for crimes against the state, although we can do this for some sins against the law, for this kind of judgment was reserved to them. Or, it could be said that some things are not lawful either because they are prohibited by divine law ‑ and they were not prohibited from doing this by divine law ‑ or because they are forbidden by human law ‑ and in this way it was not lawful for them to put anyone to death, for such power was now in the hands of the governor.
2341 There is another question: How then could they have stoned Stephen (Acts 7:58)? Chrysostom answers this by saying that the Romans allowed the Jews to make use of their own laws, and because the punishment of stoning was part of their law, the Romans allowed them to do this. [20] But in the law death on the cross was abhorred: "A hanged [on a tree] man is accursed by God" (Deut 21:23). And so they did not use this kind of death. The Jews, in their malice, were not satisfied just to stone Christ, they wanted to condemn him to the most disgraceful of deaths, as we see from Wisdom (2:20). Thus they now say, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death, meaning the death on the cross. Or, one could say that Stephen was stoned during a change of governors, when many laws were violated.
2342 The Evangelist gives the reason the Jews refused when he says, This was to fulfill the word which Jesus had spoken to show by what death he was to die. The words this was to fulfill do not indicate the intention the Jews had, but the arrangement of God's providence. For Jesus had said (Mt 20:19) that it was by the Gentiles that he would be crucified and killed, but that he would be handed over to them by the Jews. So, in order that this be accomplished, the Jews were unwilling to judge and kill him themselves.
LECTURE 6
33 Pilate entered the praetorium 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 handed you over to me; what have you done?" 36 Jesus answered, "My kingship [kingdom] is not of this world; if my kingship [kingdom] were of this world, my [ministers] servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship [kingdom] is not from the world." 37 Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." 38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again, and told them, "I find no crime in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover; will you have me release for you the King of the Jews?" 40 They cried out again, "Not this man, but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a robber. [21]
2343 Above, the Evangelist told how Pilate examined Christ before those who accused him; here he describes how Pilate questioned him in private. First, the Evangelist gives Pilate's question; then, the answer of Jesus (v 34). In regard to the first he does two things: first, we have Pilate's question; secondly, we see Christ asking the reason for the question, Do you say this of your own accord?
2344 In regard to the first, note that Pilate, as a just judge, and as one proceeding cautiously, did not immediately agree with the accusation of the high priest, "You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; nor shall you bear witness in a suit, turning aside after a multitude, so as to pervert justice" (Ex 23:2). Rather, Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus aside, because he had serious doubts about him. So he called Christ over to examine the case more closely and to allow Christ to answer in more peace and away from the shouts of the Jews: "I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know" (Job 29:16).
2345 Then Pilate said to him, Are you the King of the Jews? This shows, as Luke says (Lk 23:2), that the Jews were accusing Christ of this crime, although John says only that "If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over" (18:30), and many other crimes were laid on him. But the charge about his being a king touched the heart of Pilate most, and that is why he questioned him only about this: "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Mt 12:34).
2346 Then (v 34), Jesus is seen questioning his examiner: first, we have Christ's question; then Pilate's answer, Am I a Jew?
2347 The Evangelist says, Jesus answered , asking a question in return, Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? There are two reasons why someone asks a question. Sometimes it is to find out something that the questioner does not know; as when a student questions his teacher. Sometimes one asks a question about things he already knows in order to learn what answer will be given; as when a teacher questions his student. Now our Lord knew both what he asked about, and what answer would be given, and thus he was not asking out of ignorance, "All are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb 4:13). Rather, he asked so that we might know what the Jews and Gentiles thought, and at the same time be taught about that kingdom.
2348 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Why did he answer this way? Because our Lord had asked him whether he said this on his own. Pilate showed by this that it was not his concern to inquire if Christ was the King of the Jews; it was rather the affair of the Jews, whose King he said he was. By giving this answer Pilate showed that it was others who had told him that Christ was the King of the Jews. Accordingly he says, Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me , by bringing this charge against you. He says, your own nation , because, considering his human nature, Christ was born a Jew: "For I hear many whispering. Terror is on every side. 'Denounce him! Let us denounce him!' say all my familiar friends" (Jer 20:10); "A man's enemies are the men of his own house" (Mic 7:6). And we read chief priests , because the greater their power the greater their crime: "And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost" (Ezra 9:2); "I will go to the great, and will speak to them; for they know the way of the Lord, the law of their God. But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds" (Jer 5:5). If they have handed you over to me, What have you done? It's unbelievable that they would have handed you over to me except for some serious matter.
2349 Now Christ's answer is given: and first, the mistaken impression about his kingdom is corrected; secondly, the truth is established (37b). As to the first he does two things: the mistaken impression is corrected; and a sign is given as proof, if my kingdom were of this world....
2350 The false idea of Christ's kingdom is rejected by his saying, My kingdom is not of this world. The Manicheans misunderstood this, and said that there were two gods and two kingdoms; there was a good god, who had his kingdom in a region of light, and an evil god, who had his kingdom in a region of darkness, and this darkness was this world, because all material things, they said, were darkness. The meaning would then be, My kingdom is not of this world, that is, God, the Father, who is good, and I, do not have our kingdom in this region of darkness.
But this is contrary to, "God is the king of all the earth" (Ps 47:7); and again, "Whatever the Lord pleases he does, in heaven and on earth" (Ps 134:6). Thus we should say that Christ said this for the sake of Pilate, who believed that Christ was claiming an earthly kingdom in which he would reign in the physical way that those of earth do, and so should be punished by death for trying to reign unlawfully.
2351 Sometimes the word kingdom means the people who reign, and sometimes the authority to reign. Taking the word in its first sense, Augustine says, My kingdom, that is, my faithful ‑ you "have made them a kingdom... to our Lord" (Rev 5:10) ‑ is not of this world. [22] He does not say they are not "in the world" (17:11), but that they are not of this world, because of what they love and imitate, since they have been wrested from it by grace. For this is how God has delivered us from the power of darkness and has brought us into the kingdom of his love.
Chrysostom explains this sentence by taking kingdom in the second sense, and says, My kingdom , that is, the power and authority which makes me a king, is not of this world , that is, does not have its origin in earthly causes and human choice, but from another source, from the Father: "His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away" (Dan 7:14). [23]
2352 Here he shows by clear signs that his kingdom is not of this world: first, a sign is given; secondly, the conclusion is drawn (v 36).