Pilate's Choice

This past Sunday I attended an adult Sunday School class at the local church I frequent.  We happened to be studying the 18th chapter of the gospel of John, the section where Jesus is interviewed by Pontius Pilate and ultimately condemned to the cross.

For some reason, the people in the class betrayed an almost desperate need to affirm Pilates's freedom of the will regarding his decision to send Jesus to the cross.  "Pilate could have set Jesus free," they said.  "God could have found some other way to accomplish His purpose."  But is that the truth?

Hadn't Christ just a night before in the Garden of Gethsemane passionately prayed three times for exactly that thing: that if there would be any other way than the way of the cross, God the Father would allow it?  If Jesus the Son, well-beloved of the Father, had prayed and mourned in agony, His sweat becoming like great drops of blood, pleading for some other way ... if there had been any other way, would not the Father have granted it?

Jesus had in fact been announcing to His disciples for some time that He was headed to the cross.

Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.” But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken. (Luke 18:31-34 NKJV)

The purpose of God was for His Son to hang upon a Roman cross, and the road to a Roman cross led through the Roman government, and the Roman government meant Pontius Pilate.  While I would agree with my classmates that Pilate's will was in accord with the decision he ultimately made, I would also contend that his will was not necessarily "free" in the sense that 21st-century Americans mean.

The Basement Tapes: They Were Me

Between the years 1974 and 1997 I wrote over four hundred songs, ranging in quality from "hmm ... not bad" to "totally craptastic."  I recorded several demo tapes, but lacked the strength of character to actually submit them to record companies, choosing instead to protect my fragile self-esteem by simply not trying.  Through the course of the intervening years, between changing households and stuff just getting lost or thrown out, the number of recordings that still remain has apparently been reduced to twenty-one songs.

These are really Basement Tapes; some of them were actually recorded in the basements of different family members and friends.  Because they are quite old, some of the sound fidelity has been lost; there are mysterious drop-outs and crinkles and fuzziness.  But they represent the best I could do at the time.  Don't expect too much and you might not be disappointed!

This first song, They Were Me, is one of my all-time favorites.  I had written a brief post about it back in 2009 when I first rediscovered the tape, but I didn't have any way to convert the song to digital format back then.  A couple of months ago, though, my friend and ex-brother-in-law Dave was kind enough to do that job for me.  This week I put together a rudimentary music video for the song, just so you'd have something to look at while the music plays.  Click here to view the result.

This song was composed and recorded in the mid-to-late 1980s, to the best of my recollection.  I remember being surprised at my own lyrics; they kind of burst forth from me unexpected, revealing a truth about myself that I had not previously entertained.  I am pretty sure I played all of the instruments in this recording.

From time to time I'll add other songs to YouTube and link to them here at Preaching to the Choir, unless you beg me to stop.

Forgiveness as an Act of Worship

What is worship but a response in the human heart to the realization of who God is, and what He has done?  It is the sense of awe-struck wonder that we have found ourselves embraced by His love; but more.  It is the sense of fear and reverence that He is holy, that we have offended Him, that we deserve Hell; but it is more than that too.  It is the act of obedience to His righteous commands because we realize we have been bought with the price of Christ's blood; but more.  It is the astonishment and admiration upon recognizing the glories of His creation, the perfection of what He has made; but certainly more than that.  It is all of these things, being informed by His Word and taught by His Spirit, and recognizing in some small part the majesty that is His, and offering to Him in some small part the everything that is us.

And so I present the first of my "Acts of Worship"—Forgiveness.

When we forgive those who have offended us—because of God's forgiveness to us—that is an Act of Worship.  When we set them free of any obligation that is owed us, whether known or unknown, we offer that obligation to God and let Him do what He wills with it, forgetting as much as possible that it was ever owed to us at all.

The basis of this releasing of a perceived debt is of course rooted in God's forgiveness for our sins, which is greater by far (to say the least) than any debt that is owed us.  One thing we have regrettably lost in the 21st-century American church is the awareness of how massive is the debt we owed to God because of our sins.  We have trivialized our trespasses, we have lost sight of the purity and holiness of God. (Here I would refer you to the great book The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul.)

But when we can say (whether inwardly or outwardly), "Because of what Jesus has done for me, I release you from any sense that you owe me something," that is an act that honors the Lord.  I have written at other times about our obligation to forgive based on the teaching of Jesus; I won't burden us anymore today with a recasting of those words.

When we realize who God is, and what He has done by pouring His love out in us, what can we do but forgive?  When we realize that we owed God the price of an eternity in Hell, but He has instead promised us an endless paradise in Heaven, how can we not forgive?  When we see the words of Jesus written in red, as red as blood, how can we cling to our own demands for our own sense of justice?  Answer: We can't.

We offer to our most holy and loving Father the injustices and injuries that have been done to us.  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And give us the grace to forgive continually in a way that will honor You … and bring You pleasure with this Act of Worship.