We are finishing up the Gospel of John in the next two weeks and will cover most of John 18-21 during this time. For this week, read John 18-19 and pay attention to the contrast given between Jesus’s Kingdom and the nations of the world, represented by Caesar. Pay attention to the contrast of how power is used:
Where does Pilate’s power come from?
Where does Jesus’s power come from?
Whose power is greater?
What does success look like in the power struggle between Rome and God’s Kingdom?
Jesus entered Jerusalem in John 12, celebrated as the coming King in the week leading up to the Passover. Pilate, who lived in Caesarea, also came to Jerusalem for the Passover. Pilate didn’t come because of his sins or because he wanted to participate in the festivities. Pilate came to Jerusalem to squelch any disorder that might arise. For a major festival like Passover, Jerusalem would more than double or tipple in population. Pilate would enter the city to remind the gathering masses who was in charge and to deter them from any kind of uprising. With this context in mind reflect on the contrast between Jesus and Pilate:
How is Jesus depicted as he entered Jerusalem?
What is he riding?
What does this say about the kind of King he is?
Imagine, by contrast, how Pilate would have entered Jerusalem.
What image would Pilate project with his entrance?
What does this say about the kind of ruler he is?
There are a lot of different things to focus on through these chapters, but I want to narrow in on the conversation with Pilate in John 18:28-40. The conversation focuses on Jesus’s kingship, where his kingdom is from, the nature of his kingdom, and what “truth” is. Jesus “bears witness to the truth” (v37). To which Pilate responds, “What is truth?” This question is not merely a discussion of “facts” in the sense of something being “true or false.” This is pointing to something deeper. It is pointing to Truth, with a capital T. This Truth pre-exists creation. Truth is the basis of everything, not just things I choose to believe, which our world has made subjective. Sometimes we fall into the temptation of saying “truth” is my particular way of reading a passage of scripture and then dismissing someone else’s reading of scripture as “they stand against biblical truth,” when they just don’t read it the same way you do. What is Jesus really talking about when he says he came into the world “to bear witness to the truth”?
What is the Gospel of John pointing to? Think back over our lessons.
What does it look like for Jesus to reveal God to the world and make him known?
When he gives us the commission to make God known to the world, how are we to go about doing that?
Think about the phrase, “That’s the way the world works.” What does the Truth Jesus bears witness to say to that phrase?
What does Jesus’s Truth say to power in this world?
Take a moment to reflect on your life:
Where do you depend on power in this world rather than the Truth of God’s love?
Where do you place hope in power that is temporary rather than fully trust in the Truth God promises us in his Kingdom?
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prays, “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What does it look like for you to live in the reality of the Kingdom of God here and now?