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.



In fact, that is essentially what I said in class.  "We need to remember that the cross was God's ultimate purpose for Jesus.  Pilate probably didn't really have a choice."

That statement was met with a rather strong outcry defending man's free will.  One gentleman said, "Well, that opens up another whole can of worms, regarding free will.  Pilate chose to send Jesus to the cross, but if he hadn't, God would have found some other way."

My wife thinks I tend to over-analyze things like this, but here is what I heard when that gentleman offered his opinion: "That opens up another whole can of worms, and we don't want to do that.  So let's just agree that I'm right, and move on from there."

I figured that there wasn't any good point to pursuing the argument then and there, but the topic continued to bother me for the next several days.  What was it that the class was hoping for by insisting upon man's free will?  Was it just that it didn't seem fair for God to be the One who chooses?  Were they of the opinion that if it had been up to them, Jesus would have been released?

That opens up a whole new panorama of difficulties.  Would they have a Christ without a cross?  If so, then their sins would not have been paid for, and they would be without a savior.  I don't think that's what they meant; I don't think they had actually ever considered the possibility.

If God had found "some other way" regarding Pontius Pilate's decision, would they have had Jesus suffer the pangs of Gethsemane, and the scourging and mocking of the Romans, and the fleeing and denying of His disciples, all to no end?  Would they have had Him do it twice?  Again, I don't think they had ever considered the possibility before.

I have spent a great deal of time pondering the freedom of man's will, for many years now.  I have read Martin Luther's "The Bondage of the Will" twice, and Jonathan Edwards "Freedom of the Will" almost once, until I became quite certain that I didn't know what he was talking about.  And this is the conclusion I have reached: I don't know.

I don't know if man has some kind of free will that he can exercise over relatively minor events in his life such as which tie to wear or which girl to marry, or if it has all been preordained.  I suspect that we are free in many of those areas.  But I also know that God had purposed from before the beginning of time that His Son would suffer the pain and disgrace of the cross, and that He would turn that apparent defeat into the sole source of victory for the entire human race.  And I am quite confident in saying that the purposes of God trump the freedom of man every time.

Your comments are welcome.