John 19:15

THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE KING

‘Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar.’

John 19:15

Are there no Pilates with us now—men and women to whom the obedience of Christ seems almost impossible—who have grown so entirely worldly that there is scarce an avenue left for Christ’s message to reach them? Oh! that before the last opportunity be gone the figure of the King might come before them; that they might be startled at the look upon His face of Divine other-worldliness.

I. Whence was Christ the King?—From the eternal glory of God, from the right hand of the Majesty on high, from heaven, that home where we must go, or forfeit all the joy of eternal life. Shall not we, who by God’s grace have learned the lesson, cry out in all our lives, ‘O blessed Lord, we know Thee, whence Thou camest; we bless Thy Holy Name Thou didst come, and that Thou hast gone back again to prepare a place for us.’ For the glory of that place has touched the hill-tops of our lives, and we know that the full sunshine is but the other side.

II. Turn to consider the cry of the Jews, ‘We have no king but Cæsar!’ It was a cry as true as it was sad. By the mouth of their own leaders they acknowledge their national degradation. They had, indeed, no king to guide them, legislate for them, judge them, and die for them. No king but this One Whom they will not own. Once God was their King, directing their armies, strengthening and teaching their rulers, absolutely providing for every need of their national life. Then, at least, men of their own kith and kin; now a foreign tyrant, a jailer, chaining and despising them and their religion; contemptuously tolerant of their God! This is the nation which once sang, ‘The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory’; ‘The Lord is our King, and He will save us’; ‘God is my King of old.’

III. Man, whether gathered into a nation, or in his individual life, must have a king.—And the choice is not complicated, though its issues are tremendous. It is Christ or Cæsar. Cæsar may stand for the world, the flesh, the devil. For Satan says to us all, ‘See what I will give thee, all the pleasures of the world, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Do you want to heap up money; do you want to enjoy life; do you want to rise in the world, though it be upon the trampled bodies of your fellows? It must be by my aid.’ What raised the cry in the case before us was something even more terrible. The Pharisees desired to stifle the voice which was crying out upon their iniquities. It was the truth they feared, and they would have none of it. And they drowned the voice of truth in the frenzied cry of themselves and of their dupes. ‘The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have it so. And what will ye do in the end thereof?’

IV. And is Christ the King of this our land?—If we as a country do not revile Him, do we worship Him? We have found a more decorous way to quiet the voice; we do not cry, ‘Crucify Him! crucify Him!’ But to some it seems that we are every whit as far as the Jews were from acknowledging Him as the Director of the conscience of the nation, as the King of our kings, and the Lord of our lords! There lies around us a huge mass of heathendom: refined and luxurious on the one hand, coarse and wretched on the other; intellectual here, animal there. We mayflatter ourselves on our wealth, on our dominions, on our navy, on the purity of our courts, but none can say that Christ reigns here. And it is idle to dispute as to whether Cæsar’s sway be now rather more or less extensive than a few years back. It is a great iron tyranny still. Can we do anything? Is it not mockery to cry ‘Give ye them to eat’? Well, doubtless among the Jewish throng one here and there would gladly have raised a cry for Christ, but feared or thought it useless in the face of such demoniacal possession. Yet the cry might have cheered the Master’s heart, might have been a nucleus round which others would have gathered.

At any rate, our duty is clear. We must not for a moment lay ourselves open to the suspicion of going with the crowd. The Lords needs faithful witnesses; the world stifles our witness with its Babel cry of ‘Cæsar, Cæsar!’ Then let us cry louder, ‘Christ, Christ!’ Cry aloud and spare not! Let no comradeship, no society customs, no business methods, drown the cry, ‘Christ, Christ!’ Oh, for more knees that will not bow to Baal, for more fathers, mothers, schoolboys and schoolgirls, menservants and maidservants, who will openly, faithfully, constantly say, ‘Christ is the King’—on Sunday and on weekday, in the home and in the world, ‘Christ is the King!’

—Rev. Dr. Flecker.

Illustration

‘Do you not see what is involved in taking the crucified Jesus as our King? It is something vastly more than doing homage to the superlative excellence of a spotless life, or to the marvellous wisdom of the founder of a new code of morals. It is to recognise in Him, and in this His crowning work, the propitiation for your sins; to feel the heinousness, the separation from God, which sin involves; to feel the burden of them to be intolerable; to feel that here He rids us of the load. And even more than that. For this is but the first step of a new life. As the Master, so the servant. We must gird ourselves with the towel and wash our brethren’s feet; we must take the Beatitudes as the code of our lives; we must welcome difficulties, trials, persecutions, false revilings, for Christ’s sake. In a word, we must walk in the Light. Oh, let us who have recognised the claims of Christ upon us be loyal! False worship has ever dogged the footsteps of the King, from the time when Herod bade the Wise Men bring him word that “I may come and worship Him also.” There has ever been the Judas, the Ananias, the Sapphira; and there have been, too, the timid ones worshipping Him secretly for fear of the Jews, denying Him around a fire of coals. But we will pray the Holy Spirit to help us to recognise the supreme claim which the King has upon our allegiance, upon our worship, upon our speech, our purse, our time. We will pray Him to keep us faithful, us who are called and chosen, until He Who is Lord of lords and King of kings shall triumph and lead us rejoicing in His train.’