Pilate the evangelist

One of the best evangelistic sermons ever preached:

Ecce Homo. [Behold the man.]

Of course Pilate is not being an intentional evangelist in John 19:5. He is a cynical, ruthless political operator who is perfectly happy to have an innocent man beaten and tortured. But then Caiaphas was a cynical, ruthless political operator when he preached brilliant gospel truth:

It is better for you that one man should die for the people (John 11:50).

And John tells us that in this statement Caiaphas was (inadvertently) prophesying (John 11:51). John loves double entendre and dripping irony. The truth comes forth most powerfully from the mouths of its enemies. So we shouldn’t be surprised when a few pages later we find a report of Pilate also preaching the gospel.

So why is “Behold the man” such a great evangelistic sermon?

1. It is pointing to Jesus. “We preach not ourselves but Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:5). The point of preaching is to ‘placard’ Christ before the hearers (Galatians 3:1).
2. It is pointing to Jesus the suffering king. “Jesus Christ as Lord... portrayed as crucified” (2 Cor. 4:5; Gal. 3:1). In the Ecce Homo scene Jesus stands before the crowd wearing the robes and crown of a king but it is a crown of thorns and a robe of mockery and his body and face are black and blue and bleeding from the scourge. This is not to say that preaching should dwell in a Medieval way on the physicality of Christ’s torture but rather that the combination of suffering and kingship is to be the focus of our preaching – Christ being bruised for our iniquities and Christ the glorious conquering king; Christ the lamb and at the same time Christ the lion; Christ on the cross reigning.
3. It is pointing to Jesus the man. For thousands of years, since Genesis 3:15 we have been looking for the man – the man born of woman who would crush Satan as he himself was bruised. Hundreds of years ago Isaiah saw a bruised man (Isa. 53) and Daniel saw a son of man who would crush evil and receive the world. Finally THE MAN is here; the second Adam come to take the curse of Adam and rise on the first day of the week as the gardener of a new creation (John 20). This is preaching that takes seriously the uniqueness and the humanity of Christ; personal encounter and biblical theology; our plight in the old Adam and our hope in the new Adam.
4. It is calling people to look. Just as John the Baptist said, ‘Behold the Lamb’, so Pilate says, ‘Behold the man.’ In John’s Gospel faith issimply looking at Christ crucified. The aim of our preaching is to placard Christ crucified so that people would look at him – so that they would feast their eyes on the bread of life. The most wonderful illustration of this sort of preaching I heard recently was from Spurgeon’s conversion story (in Dallimore’s biography HT Andrew Atherstone at the EMA):

The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach…The text was—"LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH" (Isa. 45:22). He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus:

"This is a very simple text indeed. It says ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It aint liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

"But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!" he said in broad Essex, "many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some say look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some on ye say ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ "

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: "Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me, I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!"

When he had . . . . managed to spin out about ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, "Young man, you look very miserable." Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, "And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved." Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, "Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!"

I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought . . . . I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, "Look!" what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away.