“BEHOLD THE MAN!”
Paul A Gray
John 19: 6 (“Behold the man!”)
These are words spoken by Pilate in relation to the Lord Jesus. I do not know exactly why he said them. Some have said it was in derision; others have said otherwise. What I do know is that he did say them, and I believe that it was the action of the Holy Spirit to draw attention to Jesus at that moment. You might say it was the time of His humiliation, a time when He had been mocked and abused. It says, “Jesus therefore went forth without, wearing the crown of thorn, and the purple robe” (v 5), but, even at that time, there was only one Man worth seeing, and that Man was Jesus. And it remains so.
There was an item of news recently about a young man speaking about a forthcoming election and one of the things he said was that he hoped that someone would be elected whom he could trust. There is only one Man you can always trust, and that is the Lord Jesus. You might ask, ‘What about my parents?’. Well, I can assure you that they love you, and you can trust them; but, speaking as a parent, I know I do not always get everything right. And what about the brethren? They love you too, and you can trust them, but, speaking as one of responsible years, I know I have not always done everything right; but I also know that you can trust Jesus for everything. You can go back through all that is known of Him, and there is not one thing He has done that is out of place or has had to be corrected or adjusted. There is not one thing about Him as Man when He was here that had to be adjusted or corrected and, indeed, someone who tried to adjust Him was severely rebuked. There was no requirement for adjustment, and nothing He has done since He was here has needed to be adjusted, nor ever will. This gospel says, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”, chap 3: 35. Why is that? Because Jesus is perfectly trustworthy!
But there is another thing about this Man: He did something that no one else could do. If someone is appointed to a position of authority and they are trustworthy, they may be able to do things for you. Things have been done in the mercy of God through governments, such as the welfare state, providing for people in need, a health service, a police service, a functioning justice system, but in fact all of these things - although they are blessings from God, and we give thanks for them - are testimony to the fact that man is trying to put right areas in which man has already failed. But Jesus was not here to build a better world, a better place. Jesus came to take away your sins, and that is something that no one else could do for you. No one else can; no one else will ever be able to; and you cannot take away your own sins either. You cannot do it for yourself because you are a sinner, and you cannot do it for someone else because the Bible says, “the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be given up for ever”, Ps 49: 8. So if you cannot do it for yourself, and you cannot do it for anyone else, who is going to do it for you? The work has already been done, and it has already been done by Jesus.
You will remember the time in 2 Kings 5 when Naaman the Syrian had leprosy and he was sent to the prophet. He did not initially want to do what the prophet told him to do, which was to plunge seven times in the Jordan, and his servants approached him and said, “My father, if the prophet had bidden thee to do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?”, v 13. Of course, he would: he was the captain of the host of the king of Syria, but there was no need for him to do a great thing. There is no need for you to do a great thing to be forgiven. You must only trust in Jesus, because He has already done the great thing. He has been to the cross; He has suffered there, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Pet 3: 18. He has died. The Bible says, “Christ died for our sins”, 1 Cor 15: 3. And He shed His blood. The Bible says, “without blood-shedding there is no remission”, Heb 9: 22. His blood has been shed, and He “has been raised for our justification”, Rom 4: 25. We are not justified in our original state; we are justified on the basis of a risen and glorified Man. We are not justified as being made better. The Lord in going into the grave put out of sight everything that had offended God by way of sin. He Himself was perfect. We say He took it upon Himself vicariously. That is to suggest that He took it upon Himself on behalf of another, and it was on behalf of all who trust Him. He did it for you and for me. There is a hymn we sometimes sing:
Blest Substitute from God,
Wrath’s awful cup He drained;
Laid down His life, and e’en the tomb’s
Reproach sustained. (Hymn 13)
That is what He did He took the place that I should have been in, this Man: “Behold the man!”
It is often the case when trouble arises that persons are looking for someone to come and help, to do something about it, but there is only one Man you can look to for salvation. The Bible is very clear about that: “for neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, Acts 4: 12. And it is not just salvation to eternity; it is salvation all the way home. It says in Isaiah 32, “And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm; as brooks of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land”, v 2. “A man”: that Man is Jesus. The thief on the cross found that; Jesus was “the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land”. The work of Jesus overshadowed the thief on the cross and took him safely home. You may say that the thief was a wicked man; he had done what was wrong. Yes, but no matter how wicked he was, Jesus was willing to take his place, and that is what He did for me: can you say by faith that He is that for you, “a hiding-place from the wind”?
When the storms of life blow around us, there is “a hiding-place from the wind”. And sometimes the wind becomes so strong it is overwhelming. It says, “a covert from the storm”. That is what the man who wrote hymn 396 describes. There is a tradition that he was walking not far from Cheddar Gorge in England, in a storm , blowing branches and debris down the gorge, and he was afraid he might lose his life. It is said that he found a cleft in the rock and stood in it until the storm went by. Thus the hymn says:
Rock of Ages! cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
There is no storm too powerful; there is no storm so great that Jesus cannot shelter you. The disciples said when He was here, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”, Matt 8: 27. There is nothing too great, and no power greater than the power of Jesus. Nothing can overwhelm you, if you are safely trusting in that blessed One.
“As brooks of water in a dry place”: the world is ultimately a dry place, although there are many things to attract in it. I am not going to pretend that there are not things that are interesting; sometimes when we are younger certain things are interesting, and then when we get older different things become interesting. But, nevertheless, it is a dry place. There is no lasting refreshment in it. I remember a brother preaching when I was quite young. He quoted an old gospel verse:
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But, ah, the waters failed!
E’en as I stooped to drink, they fled,
And mocked me as I wailed!
Emma Frances Shuttleworth Bevan
(1827-1909)
There is an answer to that.
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad.
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him.
(Hymn 248)
That is another thing: where do you find your life? You may find your life in this Man, not in all the things that the world can offer. Pilate had to acknowledge that this was the Man. In another section, the centurion had to acknowledge, “Truly this man was Son of God”, Matt 27: 54. He had to acknowledge the Man for who He is. And, you know, such a Man, the Son of God, the One by whom also God made the worlds (Heb 1: 2), the One of whom it was said, “without him not one thing received being which has received being” (John 1:3), the One of whom the scripture says He is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb 1: 3), came to save you from your sins, and me from mine, and even if I had been the only sinner that ever was, He would still have had to come because God is offended by sin. He did it for you. He did not bear our sins in a mass; it says, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 24. They were enumerated one by one. Who could measure those three hours of darkness? Who could say what depths went into it? There is a touch of it in Jonah:
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The bars of the earth closed upon me for ever;
Jonah 2: 5, 6.
How the Lord felt it to be separated from the love of His God, and forsaken. It was more terrible than anything that could ever be contemplated. The writer says, “A thing of Belial cleaveth fast unto him”, Ps 41: 8. It was indescribable - a “thing” - and for the Lord Jesus it was an awful thing to be made sin: will you believe that He did it for you, as I can say He did for me? He did it in view of an answer to God’s holy claims of justice, of course, but will you believe that He did it for you, as He did for me? He “bore our sins in his body on the tree”. He was made sin, and He bore those sins that they might be washed away in His blood. He died for you and for me. He is the Man that will fill eternity.
His Name has power. There was a time in the 1940s when people were taken to concentration camps and murdered, and two women, who were both believers in the Lord Jesus, met each other. They had no common language. One was Dutch and the other was Russian, but one of them said in her own language, ‘Jesus Christ’, and the other one understood it well enough to share in the midst of such suffering. What a Name it is, the Name of Jesus! “At the name of Jesus ever knee should bow” (Phil 2: 10), but you need to bow the knee to Him now. There is not another day; I cannot give you another hour. We were speaking in the reading of the Spirit and the bride saying, “Come”, Rev 22: 17. The Lord is coming soon; He could come before I finish: this is the moment when you can trust in Jesus as your Saviour. If you have not already done so, this is the moment to commit yourself to Him. These persons heard this word, “Behold the man!”; but there came a point when it was said to some of them, “ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers, ye also”, Acts 7: 51. Do not resist the Holy Spirit! Think of this, that the Father who is in heaven is working for the salvation of your soul. The Lord Jesus is waiting and ready and willing to save you, and the Spirit who is here is working in new birth and power in order that there might be receptive ground. Would you resist the love and grace of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, each interested in you personally? Such love has been shown that it says of God, “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him grant us all things?”, Rom 8: 32.
Beloved, that is really all I have to say: “Behold the man!”. The Man is Jesus. He is the Man for you. Make Him your Man forever for His Name’s sake!
Linlithgow
20th September 2020