Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
My Kingdom Is Not of This World
John 18:33-40
33 Pilate therefore entered again into the Praetorium, called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” · WEB
A governor and a prisoner discuss kingship and truth, and the governor asks the best question of the night and does not wait for an answer.
"Are you the King of the Jews?" John 18:33.
This Gospel gives the interview at length where the others give a sentence, and it is the fullest conversation Jesus has with any Roman.
"Do you say this by yourself, or did others tell you about me?" John 18:34.
The prisoner questions the judge, and it is not evasion. The word king means two different things depending on who is using it — an insurgent to Pilate, the Messiah to the priests — and he asks which is being asked before answering.
"I'm not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered you to me. What have you done?" John 18:35.
The irritation is audible. Pilate wants nothing to do with the religious content and asks the only question a magistrate cares about.
"My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight, that I wouldn't be delivered to the Jews. But now my Kingdom is not from here" John 18:36.
The answer is careful and it is not what it is often taken for. Not of this world is about origin rather than location — the phrase is repeated as not from here, which is a statement about where the kingdom comes from, not about whether it operates on earth.
And the evidence offered is empirical and aimed at a soldier: look at the fighting. There is none. A movement whose king is arrested and whose followers do not take up arms is not the kind of thing Rome executes people for — which is exactly the finding Pilate reaches two verses later.
There is a quiet rebuke in it for Peter as well. One man did draw a sword, and it is here disowned as belonging to a different kind of kingdom.
"Are you a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this reason I have been born, and for this reason I have come into the world, that I should testify to the truth" John 18:37.
The title is accepted with the same reserve as before, and then the mission is restated in terms Pilate might understand. I have been born and I have come into the world are two statements, not one — the second is the prologue's claim, dropped into a Roman hearing.
And the kingship is described as a testimony. What this king does is tell the truth, which is a strange job description for a monarch and an exact one for this book.
"Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." The shepherd's line John 10:27, said to a governor.
Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he went out again John 18:38.
It is the best question anyone asks in the Gospel and he does not stay for the answer. The account does not say whether it was cynicism, weariness, or a man who felt something opening and closed it — only that he asked it and walked out of the room, and the truth he was asking about was standing in it.
"I find no basis for a charge against him" John 18:38. The first of three such findings in this account John 19:4 John 19:6.
"Not this man, but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a robber John 18:40. The writer's last four words are the whole irony. The word he uses is the one for an insurrectionist — they refuse a king with no army and ask for a man who took up arms.
settled What this mark means