Tractates on the Gospel of John 116.1–118.5

When the Jews had shouted that they wanted Pilate to release to them at the Passover not Jesus but Barabbas the robber (not the Saviour but the murderer, not the giver of life but the taker of it), "then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him." Pilate must be believed to have done this for no other reason than that the Jews, sated with the injuries done to him, might think it enough and stop raging as far as his death. To this belongs the fact that the same governor also allowed his cohort to do what follows; or perhaps even ordered it, though the evangelist is silent about this. For he said what the soldiers did next; but he did not say that Pilate ordered it. "And the soldiers," he says, "plaiting a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and clothed him in a purple robe. And they came to him and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they struck him with their hands." So were fulfilled the things which Christ had foretold about himself; so were the martyrs trained to bear whatever the persecutors might please to do; so, with his dread power hidden for a little while, the patience to be imitated was first commended; so the kingdom which was not of this world conquered the proud world not by ferocity in fighting but by humility in suffering; so that grain which was to be multiplied was sown in horrible insult, that it might spring up in wonderful glory.

"Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find no case against him. So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment. And he said to them, Behold the man." From this it appears that these things were not done by the soldiers without Pilate's knowledge, whether he ordered or permitted them; for the reason, namely, that we gave above, that his enemies might very gladly drink in these mockeries of him and thirst no further for his blood. Jesus comes out to them wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment, not illustrious in command but full of reproach; and it is said to them, "Behold the man": if you envy the king, spare him now, for you see him cast down; he has been scourged, crowned with thorns, clothed in a garment of mockery, mocked with bitter insults, beaten with blows; his disgrace is at boiling point, let your envy cool. But it does not cool; rather it flares up and grows.

"So when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify, crucify him. Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him; for I find no case against him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." See, another and greater envy. For that one seemed small, as though of royal power aimed at with unlawful daring; and yet Jesus claimed neither of these for himself falsely, but both are true: he is the only-begotten Son of God, and he has been established by him as king over Zion, his holy mountain; and both would be shown now, except that the more powerful he was, the more patient he preferred to be.

"When Pilate heard this word, he was the more afraid; and he went into the praetorium again and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer." This silence of our Lord Jesus Christ is found, when the narratives of all the evangelists are compared, to have occurred more than once: before the chief priests, before Herod, to whom, as Luke indicates, Pilate had sent him to be heard, and before Pilate himself; so that not in vain had the prophecy gone before concerning him: "As a lamb before its shearer was without voice, so he did not open his mouth"; at those times, certainly, when he did not answer those who questioned him. For although he often answered some questions, yet because of those in which he would not answer, the likeness of the lamb was given for this purpose, that in his silence he might be held not guilty but innocent. So when he was being judged, wherever he did not open his mouth, he did not open it as a lamb; that is, not as one conscious of wrongdoing who was being convicted of his own sins, but as the meek one who was being sacrificed for the sins of others.

"So Pilate said to him, Will you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to crucify you, and power to release you? Jesus answered, You would have no power against me at all, unless it had been given you from above; therefore he who handed me over to you has the greater sin." See, he answered; and yet wherever he did not answer, it was not as one guilty or crafty, but as a lamb, that is, as one simple and innocent, that he did not open his mouth. So where he did not answer, he was silent as a sheep; where he answered, he taught as a shepherd. Let us learn, then, what he said, which he also taught through the apostle: that there is no power except from God; and that he sins more who out of envy hands over an innocent man to a power to be killed, than the power itself if it kills him out of fear of another, greater power. For God had given Pilate such power that he was also under the power of Caesar. Therefore, "You would have no power against me," he says, that is, the little you have, "unless this very thing, whatever it is, had been given you from above. But since I know how much it is (for it is not so great that it is wholly free for you), therefore he who handed me over to you has the greater sin." For he handed me over to your power out of envy, but you are about to exercise that same power on me out of fear. Not even out of fear, indeed, ought a man to kill a man, especially an innocent one; but still, to do it out of jealousy is much worse than to do it out of fear. And so the truthful master did not say, "He who handed me over to you has sin", as though the other had none; but he said, "has the greater sin", so that Pilate might understand that he too had sin. For the one is not nothing because the other is greater.

"From then on Pilate sought to release him." What does what is said, "from then on", mean, as though he had not been seeking it before? Read what comes earlier, and you will find that he had long been seeking to release Jesus. So "from then on" is to be understood as "because of this", that is, for this reason: so as not to incur sin by killing an innocent man handed over to him, though sinning less than the Jews who had handed him over to him to be killed. "From then on", then, that is, so as not to commit this sin, he sought to release him, not now for the first time but from the beginning.

"But the Jews cried out, saying, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. For everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar." They thought they were striking greater fear into Pilate, by frightening him about Caesar so that he would kill Christ, than earlier when they said, "We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." For he did not fear their law so as to kill him; but he rather feared the Son of God, so as not to kill him. But now he could not despise Caesar, the source of his power, as he did the law of a foreign nation.

The evangelist still continues and says: "When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat down on the judgment seat, at a place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover, about the sixth hour." At what hour the Lord was crucified (since a great dispute usually arises because of the testimony of another evangelist, who said, "It was the third hour, and they crucified him") we shall discuss as well as we can, if the Lord wills, when we come to the very place where his crucifixion is narrated. When, then, Pilate had sat down on the judgment seat, "he said to the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king?" He still tries to overcome the terror they had thrust on him about Caesar, wishing to break them by their own disgrace in saying, "Shall I crucify your king?", since he had not been able to soften them by Christ's disgrace; but he is soon overcome by fear.

"The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then therefore he handed him over to them to be crucified." For he would have seemed to act most openly against Caesar if, when they professed to have no king but Caesar, he had wished to impose another king on them by releasing unpunished the one whom they had handed over to him to be killed for such daring. "So he handed him over to them to be crucified." But did he want anything else before, when he said, "Take him yourselves and crucify him", or even earlier, "Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law"? Why, then, were they so very unwilling, saying, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death", and pressing in every way that he should be killed not by them but by the governor, and therefore refusing to take him to be killed, if now they take him to be killed? Or, if this is not what happens, why is it said, "Then therefore he handed him over to them to be crucified"? Or is there some difference? Clearly there is. For it is not said, "Then therefore he handed him over to them that they might crucify him", but "to be crucified", that is, to be crucified by the judgment and power of the governor. But the evangelist said that he was handed over to them in order to show them implicated in the crime from which they were trying to keep themselves apart; for Pilate would not have done this except to carry out what he saw they desired. As for what follows, "And they took Jesus and led him away", this can now be referred to the soldiers, the governor's attendants. For afterwards it is said more plainly, "So the soldiers, when they had crucified him"; although even if the evangelist attributes the whole to the Jews, he does so rightly; for they themselves received what they had most eagerly demanded, and they themselves did whatever they extorted to have done. But what follows is to be treated in another sermon.

When Pilate had judged and condemned him from the judgment seat, "they took" the Lord Jesus Christ about the sixth hour "and led him away. And carrying his cross for himself, he went out to the place called Calvary, in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him." What, then, does it mean that Mark the evangelist says, "It was the third hour, and they crucified him", unless that at the third hour the Lord was crucified by the tongues of the Jews, at the sixth by the hands of the soldiers? So we may understand that the fifth hour had already passed, and something of the sixth had begun, when Pilate sat on the judgment seat, which John called "about the sixth hour"; and while he was being led out, and nailed to the wood with two robbers, and the things that are narrated were done beside his cross, the whole sixth hour was completed; and from that hour until the ninth, with the sun darkened, the authority of three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, attests that there was darkness. But since the Jews tried to shift the crime of killing Christ from themselves onto the Romans, that is, onto Pilate and his soldiers, Mark therefore passed over the hour at which Christ was crucified by the soldiers, which had already begun to be the sixth, and chose to record the third hour, at which they are understood to have been able to cry out before Pilate, "Crucify, crucify"; so that not only those should be found to have crucified Jesus, that is, the soldiers who hung him on the wood at the sixth hour, but also the Jews, who cried out at the third hour that he should be crucified.

There is also another solution of this question: that the sixth hour of the day is not meant here, since John does not say, "It was about the sixth hour of the day", or "about the sixth hour", but says, "It was the preparation of the Passover, about the sixth hour." Parasceve in Latin is "preparation"; but the Jews prefer to use this Greek word in such observances, even those who speak Latin rather than Greek. So it was the preparation of the Passover. But our Passover, as the apostle says, Christ, has been sacrificed; and if we reckon the preparation of this Passover from the ninth hour of the night (for it was then, it seems, that the chief priests pronounced the sacrifice of the Lord, saying, "He is guilty of death", while he was still being heard in the high priest's house; so that it is fittingly taken that the preparation of the true Passover, of which the Passover of the Jews was the shadow, that is, the preparation of the sacrifice of Christ, began from the time when he was pronounced by the priests to be sacrificed), then indeed from that hour of the night, which is conjectured to have been then the ninth, to the third hour of the day, at which Mark the evangelist testifies that Christ was crucified, there are six hours, three of the night and three of the day. Hence on this preparation of the Passover, that is, the preparation of the sacrifice of Christ, which had begun from the ninth hour of the night, it was about the sixth hour; that is, the fifth being finished, the sixth had begun to run, when Pilate ascended the tribunal. For it was still that same preparation which had begun from the ninth hour of the night, until the sacrifice of Christ which was being prepared should take place; and this took place at the third hour according to Mark, the third not of the preparation but of the day; and this same hour was the sixth, not of the day but of the preparation, the hours, of course, being reckoned from the ninth of the night to the third of the day. Of these two solutions of this difficult question, let each choose which he will. But he will judge better which to choose who has read what has been argued most laboriously in The Harmony of the Evangelists. And if other solutions of it can also be found, the consistency of the Gospel truth will be defended the more abundantly against the slanders of unbelieving and ungodly vanity. Now, having briefly treated these matters, let us return to the narrative of John the evangelist.

"And they took Jesus," he says, "and led him away; and carrying his cross for himself, he went out to the place called Calvary, in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him." So Jesus was going to the place where he was to be crucified, carrying his cross. A great spectacle: but if ungodliness looks on, a great mockery; if godliness, a great mystery. If ungodliness looks on, a great proof of disgrace; if godliness, a great bulwark of faith. If ungodliness looks on, it laughs at a king carrying, instead of the sceptre of his kingdom, the wood of his punishment; if godliness, it sees a king carrying the wood on which he himself was to be nailed, which he was to fix even on the foreheads of kings: to be despised by the eyes of the ungodly in that very thing in which the hearts of the saints would glory. For to Paul, who was to say, "But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ", he was commending that very cross by carrying it on his own shoulder; and he was carrying the lampstand for the lamp that was to burn, which was not to be put under a bushel. So, "carrying his cross for himself, he went out to the place called Calvary, in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus in the middle." These two were robbers, as we have learned from the narrative of the other evangelists, with whom Christ was crucified and between whom he was fixed; of whom the prophecy had said beforehand, "And he was reckoned among the lawless."

"Pilate also wrote a title and put it on the cross; and it was written: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this title, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. And it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: King of the Jews." For these three languages were prominent there above the rest: Hebrew because of the Jews, who glory in the law of God; Greek because of the wise men of the Gentiles; Latin because of the Romans, who were already then ruling over many and almost all nations.

"So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write, The King of the Jews, but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written." O the ineffable power of divine working, even in the hearts of the ignorant! Was there not some hidden voice sounding within Pilate, in a kind of, if one may say so, clamorous silence, what was prophesied so long before in the writings of the Psalms: "Do not corrupt the inscription of the title"? See, he does not corrupt the inscription of the title; what he has written, he has written. But what did the chief priests say, who wanted it corrupted? "Do not write," they say, "The King of the Jews, but that he said, I am King of the Jews." What are you saying, madmen? Why do you oppose the doing of what you can by no means change? Will it be any less true because Jesus said, "I am King of the Jews"? If what Pilate wrote cannot be corrupted, can what the Truth said be corrupted? But is Christ king of the Jews only, or of the Gentiles too? Of the Gentiles too, indeed. For when he had said in prophecy, "But I have been established by him as king over Zion, his holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord", lest anyone should say, because of Mount Zion, that he was established king for the Jews alone, he at once added, "The Lord said to me, You are my Son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." Hence he himself too, speaking now with his own mouth among the Jews, says, "I have other sheep which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd." Why, then, do we wish a great mystery to be understood in this title, in which was written "King of the Jews", if Christ is king of the Gentiles too? Because, namely, the wild olive was made a sharer in the richness of the olive, not the olive a sharer in the bitterness of the wild olive. For since the title "King of the Jews" was truly written about Christ, who are to be understood as Jews but the seed of Abraham, the children of the promise, who are also children of God? For "it is not the children of the flesh," says the apostle, "who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed." And they were Gentiles to whom he said, "But if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise." So Christ is king of the Jews, but of Jews by circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, "whose praise is not from men but from God"; of those who belong to the free Jerusalem, our eternal mother in the heavens, the spiritual Sarah, who casts the slave woman and her children out of the house of freedom. For Pilate wrote what he wrote because the Lord said what he said.

Let us treat in this sermon, as far as he helps us, the things that were done beside the Lord's cross when he had already been crucified. "So the soldiers, when they had crucified him, took his garments and made four parts, a part for each soldier, and the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top throughout. So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be; that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." What the Jews wanted was done: not they themselves, but the soldiers who obeyed Pilate crucified Jesus, Pilate himself passing judgment; and yet, if we consider their wishes, their plots, their efforts, their betrayal, and finally their extorting shouts, it was surely the Jews rather who crucified Jesus.

But the dividing of his garments and the casting of lots for them must not be spoken of in passing. For although all four evangelists mention this, the others do so more briefly than John, and obscurely, but he most plainly. For Matthew says: "And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments, casting a lot." Mark: "And crucifying him, they divided his garments, casting a lot upon them, who should take what." Luke: "And dividing his garments, they cast lots." But John also told how many parts they made of his garments, namely four, so that each might take one. From this it appears that there were four soldiers who obeyed the governor in crucifying him. For he says plainly, "So the soldiers, when they had crucified him, took his garments and made four parts, a part for each soldier, and the tunic": "they took" is to be understood, so that the sense is: they took his garments and made four parts, a part for each soldier; they took the tunic too. And he spoke in such a way that we see no lot was cast for the other garments, but for the tunic, which they took together with the others but did not divide in the same way. For he goes on to explain about it: "Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top throughout." And telling why they cast lots for it: "So they said," he says, "to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be." It appears, then, that in the other garments they had equal parts, so that there was no need to cast lots; but in that one they could not each have a part unless it were torn, so that they would carry off useless pieces of it; and so as not to do this, they preferred that it should go to one by lot. The prophetic testimony too agrees with this evangelist's narrative, which he himself adds at once: "That the Scripture might be fulfilled," he says, "which says, They divided my garments among them, and upon my clothing they cast a lot." For it does not say "they allotted" but "they divided"; nor does it say "casting lots they divided"; but, not mentioning a lot at all for the other garments, it afterwards said, "and upon my clothing they cast a lot", because of that remaining tunic. About this I shall say what he grants, after I have first repelled the slander that may arise, as though the evangelists disagreed among themselves, by showing that the words of none of the others are contrary to John's narrative.

For Matthew, by saying, "They divided his garments, casting a lot", wished it to be understood that the tunic too, for which they cast a lot, belonged to the whole division of the garments; because in dividing all the clothes, among which that one also was, they cast a lot for it. Such too is what Luke says, "Dividing his garments, they cast lots": for in dividing them they came to the tunic, for which the lot was cast, so that the whole division of his garments among them might be completed. And what difference does it make whether it is said, "Dividing, they cast lots", as Luke says, or "They divided, casting a lot", as Matthew says? except that Luke, by saying "lots", put the plural for the singular, an expression not unusual in the Holy Scriptures; although some manuscripts are found to have "a lot", not "lots". Mark alone, then, seems to have raised some question; for by saying, "casting a lot upon them, who should take what", he seems to have spoken as though the lot were cast upon all the garments, not upon the tunic alone. But here too brevity causes obscurity: for "casting a lot upon them" was said as if it were said, "casting a lot when they were being divided"; which indeed was done. For the division of all his garments would not have been complete unless it had been made clear by lot who should take that tunic too, so that the dispute of those dividing might be ended, or rather that none might arise. So what he says, "who should take what", since this is assigned to the lot, is not to be referred to all the garments that were divided; for the lot was cast as to who should take that tunic; and since he passed over telling what kind of tunic it was, and how, when equal parts had been made, it alone remained and came to the lot so as not to be torn, he therefore put what he says, "who should take what", that is, who should take it; as though the whole were said thus: "They divided his garments, casting a lot upon them, who should take the tunic which was left over from the equal parts."

Perhaps someone may ask what is signified by the division of the garments into so many parts, and by the casting of lots for that tunic. The fourfold garment of the Lord Jesus Christ figured his fourfold Church, spread, that is, throughout the whole world, which consists of four parts, and distributed equally, that is, in concord, in all those same parts. That is why he says elsewhere that he will send his angels to gather his elect from the four winds; and what is that but from the four parts of the world, east, west, north, and south? But that tunic, for which lots were cast, signifies the unity of all the parts, which is held together by the bond of love. And the apostle, when about to speak of love, says, "I show you a way that surpasses all"; and in another place he says, "to know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge"; and again elsewhere, "But above all these things, love, which is the bond of perfection." If, then, love both has the more surpassing way, and surpasses knowledge, and is commanded above all things, rightly is the garment by which it is signified said to be woven from the top. And it is without seam, so that it may never be unstitched; and it comes to one, because it gathers all into one. So among the apostles, since their number too was twelve, that is, divided into four threes, and all were asked, Peter alone answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"; and to him it is said, "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven", as if he alone received the power of binding and loosing; whereas he both said the former as one for all, and received the latter together with all, as bearing the person of unity itself: therefore one for all, because unity is in all. Hence here too, when he had said "woven from the top", he added "throughout". And if we refer this to what it signifies, no one is without a share in it who is found to belong to the whole; and from this whole, as the Greek language indicates, the Church is called catholic. And in the lot, what is commended but the grace of God? For thus in one it came to all, since the lot pleased all; because the grace of God too comes to all in unity; and when a lot is cast, the decision is left not to the person or merits of each, but to the hidden judgment of God.

Nor let anyone say that these things did not signify something good because they were done by evil men, that is, not by those who followed Christ but by those who persecuted him. For what are we to say about the cross itself, which certainly was likewise made and thrust upon Christ by enemies and ungodly men? And yet it is rightly understood to signify what the apostle says: "what is the breadth and length and height and depth." For it is broad in the crossbeam, on which the hands of the one hanging are stretched out, and it signifies good works, in the breadth of love; it is long from the crossbeam down to the ground, where the back and feet are fixed, and it signifies perseverance through the length of time to the end; it is high at the top, where it rises upward above the crossbeam, and it signifies the end above, to which all works are referred, since all that is done well and perseveringly in breadth and length is to be done for the sake of the height of the divine rewards; it is deep in the part by which it is fixed in the ground; for there it is hidden and cannot be seen, but all of it that appears and stands out rises from there; just as all our good things proceed from the depth of the grace of God, which cannot be comprehended or judged. But even if the cross of Christ signified only what the apostle says, "And those who are Jesus Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires", how great a good that is! Yet only the good spirit, desiring against the flesh, does this, though it was the enemy, that is, the evil spirit, who made that cross of Christ. Finally, what is the sign of Christ, which all know, but the cross of Christ? Unless this sign is applied, whether to the foreheads of believers, or to the very water by which they are regenerated, or to the oil with which they are anointed with chrism, or to the sacrifice by which they are nourished, none of these is duly performed. How, then, is nothing good signified by what evil men do, when by the cross of Christ, which evil men made, every good is sealed for us in the celebration of his sacraments? But enough of this; what follows we shall see, God helping, in discussing it another time.