Why call a crucified man a king?

In John 19:14-24, Pilate fixes a sign above the dying Jesus: “The King of the Jews.” In this study, Dr. Toby Holt shows how the cross is the true throne of the King.

Jesus is handed over on the day the Passover lambs were prepared — the true Lamb dying at the appointed hour. He carries the crossbar to Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull,” and is crucified between two criminals. Pilate writes the charge in three languages and refuses to change it: “What I have written, I have written.” The soldiers gamble for Jesus’ seamless robe, unknowingly fulfilling Scripture written a thousand years earlier. Dr. Holt shows how the whole scene fulfills prophecy, proving that even Jesus’ death was no accident but God’s plan.

Questions this study answers:

1. Did Jesus really have to die? Yes. His death was God’s plan to rescue sinners, foretold long before in Scripture. He died willingly as the true Passover Lamb.

2. Why was Jesus called a king? Pilate meant the title as mockery, but it was the truth. Jesus reigns as King — and the cross, not a palace, is where He won His people.

3. What prophecies were fulfilled at the cross? Details like the soldiers casting lots for His clothing fulfilled Scripture written centuries earlier, showing God’s hand over every moment.

“And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” — John 19:19 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

When you think of a king, you may picture him upon a throne. That's a position of royalty. But in John 18, the King of kings was not seated on a throne. He was nailed to a cross. In today's study, we'll consider what Jesus was doing on Calvary and why his sacrificial death was absolutely necessary if he was to obtain our salvation.

[clapping] When was the first recorded prophecy? Think back. Where was the first prophecy recorded in scripture? Who's got this? Genesis 3. Yeah, absolutely. Genesis 3, what verse? 15. 15. Genesis 3:15. The first prophecy you see anywhere in scripture happened three chapters in. It happened in the garden, it happened immediately after the first sin, and it was a prophecy given from the mouth of God to who? To the serpent. Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you," O serpent, O snake, O devil, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her Seed." And if you're reading the New King James, the Seed is capitalized, capital S. Why? Because it's pointing to Jesus Christ. He, it's an individual. "He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." All right, the first prophecy, Genesis 3:15. It anticipated a conflict. It anticipated a coming conflict between this Seed, between this one, between this one who would come from the woman at some point, and the serpent. Now, how would that conflict be fought? If there's a conflict to come, how would it be waged? Well, initially, it was waged through what we would call proxy war, through proxies. Think of some of the proxies. Immediately after the garden, who was the first major villain we see in scripture? Immediately after Genesis 3, in Genesis 4, you come to who? Cain. Cain, right. You come to Cain. What does he do? He kills Abel. The seed of the devil, so to speak, kills the seed of the woman, so to speak, kills Abel. Beyond that, you see other intervals. You see Pharaoh. You see Pharaoh utilized by the devil. You see Moses raised up by God. Later on, you see Goliath raised up by the devil, and you see David raised up by God. Later, you would see Ahab and Jezebel raised up by the devil. You see Elijah raised up by God. Time and time and time again, you would see that there was a battle being fought between the seed of the serpent, so to speak, and more importantly, the seed of the woman. But it was initially done through proxies. Godly, holy, righteous men and women contending against their spiritual adversary. With that said, all of that conflict pointed towards a final battle royale. A final conflict where there would be no more proxies. Where there would simply be the Seed, capital S, and the serpent. That's what we're seeing in this opening part of John 19. That's what we're seeing on Calvary, on the cross. We're seeing that the final conflict has come. All the other conflicts fought by proxies have pointed forward to what is about to happen on the cross, and the victory that is to come on the cross, which we'll get to here in two weeks. For 4,000 years, the preliminary rounds have been waged, but the first prophecy pointed forward to a final resolution when a victor would emerge. When a heel would be bruised and a head would be crushed. And we're seeing that in today's text, and we'll see it growing in magnitude in the next couple of weeks. All right, let's return to verses 14 through 16 of today's text as we work our way through these Passion Week events. Verse 14. "Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews," meaning Pilate said to the Jews, "Behold, your King! But they cried out, saying, 'Away with Him, away with Him!'" They repeated it for emphasis. "Crucify Him!" And Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" But the chief priests answered and said, "We have no king." We have no king but Caesar. Then he delivered Jesus to them in order to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led Him away. All right. Verse 14 here. Verse 14, we're reminded of some of the chronology, the course of events that happened on the cross. You see some of these events given to us in John, but if you read all four Gospels, you get the most rounded view. We're going to focus, for our purposes, on what John records here. Now, verse 14, it refers to a specific day. It says that the day these things are going down is something called Preparation Day. Preparation day for the Passover, for the Passover meal. Now, what preparation was involved? Well, you got to remember a couple things about the Passover itself. Number one, in our culture, we celebrate Christmas. It's like one of the big events, the top events, the biggest holiday of the year. Take whatever you perceive Christmas to be, take the celebration and the revelry, and magnify that times 10, and you have what the Passover was to the Jews. You had people coming from everywhere in Israel to Jerusalem in order to celebrate this event, to celebrate this memorial of times past, to engage in these feasts, to gather together. The Passover was a really big deal. So what was the preparation day for the Passover? Well, on preparation day, the Jews would take the lambs that they had obtained on lamb selection day, and they would slaughter them in preparation for the meal that was yet to come. Now let's step back for a moment. What in the world is Passover? Passover, as you recall, occurs in the Book of Exodus. In the Book of Exodus, God is attempting to free his people from the grasp of evil Pharaoh. Remember we talked about the proxy war being fought here? So Pharaoh is oppressing the people. He's got the people making bricks without straw. He's a wicked, evil, pagan man. He's also very hard-headed and hard-hearted. So God sends Moses to him, says, "Let my people go. Set my people free." Pharaoh says, "No." Again and again and again, even as God sends plagues to teach and instruct Pharaoh of who's really in charge here. Pharaoh says, "No,"

until you get to the last plague. Until you get to the final plague. The plague involved what? Involved the death of the firstborn. On the night that we call the Passover night, the angel of death went through the land and struck the firstborn of both man and beast, killing them where they stood on the night of the Passover. He slaughtered all of those except those who what?Except those whose doors were marked, whose lintels on the doors were marked by the blood of a Passover lamb, a lamb that they had identified and had slaughtered previously, a lamb that was to be perfect. They had been instructed to go and find a perfect unblemished lamb, not the three-legged, buck-teethed, lazy-eyed lambs. Rather, find a perfect lamb. Find a perfect lamb, and when you find the perfect lamb, slaughter the perfect lamb, take the perfect lamb's blood, put it on your doorpost, and when the angel of death comes to the land, he will pass over your house. Why? Because it is marked in the blood of the lamb. Fast-forward. Centuries go by. What happens? Well, they continue to celebrate the Passover, even as they oftentimes forgot its meaning. We can do that sometimes, too. We can celebrate things and not even remember exactly what it's all about. Well, that's what happened to Israel. They would celebrate the Passover feast, and they had lost touch with what it necessarily meant and what it pointed forward to, because here's the thing, the Passover itself and the Passover lamb that they'd been sacrificing for centuries always pointed forward to a future lamb that would one day arrive. Someday, a better lamb was coming. Someday, a better king was coming. Someday, a better deliverer than Moses was coming. Someday, a better prophet than Elijah was coming. One day, this one would show up, and when he did, he would be the ultimate sacrifice on the behalf of the people. And when you're covered in that one's blood, the blood of the perfect lamb, that was the means not only to be saved from the angel of death passing over the land, but to be saved from the very wrath of a holy God. So the original Passover meal pointed forward to a greater Passover. The original lambs pointed forward to a greater lamb. And if you remember John the Baptist, he's sitting by the riverbank. He looks, and one day he sees Jesus Christ approaching down the beach. What does he say? He says, "Behold, the lamb. The lamb that takes away the sins of the world." John the Baptist knew who the lamb was. The righteous of this day knew who the lamb was. Pilate did not. And to their exceptional shame, neither did the priests. Neither did the chief priests. So what happens here in verses 14 through 16? It's Passover. It's preparation day. It's the very day that lambs are being slaughtered. And irony of irony, what are the high priests and the Jews committed to doing at this time? Slaughtering Jesus, not understanding who he is and what he came to do, and yet fulfilling scripture with every breath out of their mouth, fulfilling prophecies that went all the way back to Genesis 3:15. So when you see this text going down, starting in verses 14 through 16, what you're seeing is that God's plan is right on track. Even in the face of all the darkness, even in the midst of all the sort of things you go, "How can this be good? How can any good come out of that?" Something wonderful was coming out of it, and something God ordained in times past. And if you just open up the Bible, read Psalm 2, read Psalm 22, read Isaiah 53, you'd say, "This is the lamb. This is the one. This is the one who has come." Meanwhile, the chief priests who should've known better, the guys with tall, pointy hats, all they could say is, "Crucify him," and Pilate just nods. That's what we're seeing in this text. All right, let's move forward. Let's look at verses 17 through 18. "And so he, bearing his cross, went out to a place called the Place of the Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center." All right. In verses 17 through 18, we learn three main things about the circumstances of the crucifixion itself. First of all, we see this in verse 17. It says that Jesus bore his own cross, which, as a side note, was probably the crossbar. We have been taught by movies, and movies show Jesus hauling this giant cross around. That's not really what happened. The Romans, when they prepared a site like Calvary for a crucifixion, they had the vertical beams, the vertical posts already established. So what would happen was that if you were to be crucified, you would carry the crossbar with you to the place where you would be crucified. And yet, the crossbar was substantial enough, it was heavy enough, and Jesus was beaten enough that we would find in the other gospels, we would find that as Jesus is beaten and scourged and tasked with carrying this heavy crossbar, even that weight was so significant that he was not able to bear it single-handedly, and the Romans would ask Simon of Cyrene or compel Simon of Cyrene to assist him. So with that said, Jesus is bearing this cross. And I guess one other side note, a reasonable question would be, if the Romans could put the vertical pole up, why didn't they just have a big pile of crossbars waiting up at the top of the hill? Why in the world would you have a man carry the beam, the means of his own execution through the city? Was it just to be cruel? Well, they were a pretty cruel people. It could've been. But there was something else to that. If you're going through the city, carrying the means of your own public execution with you as you go through the city, and you are deemed an evildoer by the Roman government, what will happen to all the other potential evildoers around you? They'll see how you are being executed, and they will think to themselves, "I don't want to be like that guy." So when you walk through the city with the crossbar that was to be the very means of your own death and others saw it, it had the effect of quelling some of the rebellion that otherwise might occur through the masses. So the Romans had a practical reason for doing this. All right. Now, secondly, the crucifixion we see there in verses 17 and 18, it was done outside the city, probably very close to the city, but outside the city in a place called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Now, when I was in Israel, there's all manner of people who will tell you exactly where Jesus died. There's all manner of people who will point to where he was born, to where he died, where he did this miracle, that miracle, and the like. All manner of people who are certain that such and such event occurred in such and such a place. We really don't know exactly where Golgotha is. We do know that this particular location was well-known to the people, and there's a lot of different thoughts as to why they refer to it in that way. One might be that it might've looked, the outcropping of the rock or the location might've had the shape of a skull, so that's possible. There's also a tradition. The early church father, Origen, he once wrote that this location, Golgotha, was referred to as the place of the skull because that's where Adam, remember from back in Genesis 1, that's where his skull was. So the irony in this theory would be that the first Adam and the last Adam, that their death, so to speak, would be in the same rough place. Whatever the case is, that Jesus is taken to this place called Golgotha, the place of the skull, and in verse 18, we see that Jesus is then crucified between two other criminals. The Romans were efficient. They held more than one crucifixion on one day, and they put Jesus in the center between these two other men that we see are thieves. Now, in the various gospel records, we read that the two thieves that are placed to either side of Jesus, initially, they do the same thing that Pilate and the Romans and the Jews and the high priests were doing. They mocked the guy in the middle. Initially, you have two thieves, and they're mocking the guy in the middle, and what are they saying?They're saying, "Hey, we can read. It says King of the Jews there on that placard. If you are the King of the Jews, if you are who some people say you are, then why don't you just hop down off this cross? And while you're at it, while you're busy freeing yourself, maybe you can free us, too." So they're mocking him with their final breaths. They're mocking this guy in the middle. But then something happens. We don't know exactly what moment it happened, but at a certain point, the thief, who we believe to be the right hand of Christ himself, the thief to Christ's right hand, something happened in his heart. It's very likely he was regenerated, he was born again, but something happened. And then he turns and he looks at Jesus, the one he'd been mocking just moments before, and he no longer looks at him with the intention to mock. Rather, he looks at him with the intention to adore and to worship. Now, how do we know that? Well, first of all, he looks at the other thief on the other side, and he says, "Hey, shut up you over there. You and I, we deserve what we're getting. But you see this guy? He's innocent. You and I are guilty. He is not." And then he turns and he looks at this one. He looks at the one in the center, and what does he ask? He makes a request. He makes a petition. He says, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Said King of the Jews right there on the cross. "Lord, I know you are the king, whether this rabble understands it or not. I now know something I didn't even know moments before. I now know that in some way that I can't fully understand, you're not only a king, but in some way I can't fully understand, you are paying the debt for my sin. Lord, when you get where you're going because you're innocent, remember me when you enter into your kingdom." He didn't stand there and say, "Lord, remember me because I'm such a great guy. I've been falsely accused. I did good things at times." He doesn't appeal at all to any righteousness. He just, through faith in the one next to him, who he understands is going to someplace better because he's innocent and righteous, he asks this one to remember him. And Jesus looks at him and says the most awesome, amazing thing to this horrible sinner that was such a sinner, his own society was happy to be done with him. He looks at a sinner, he looks at a guilty party, and he says, "Truly, truly, this day you'll be with me in paradise. Truly, truly, I say to you, take it to the bank, my friend. Today you'll be with me in paradise. Where I'm going, you are going, not because you earned it, not because you deserve it, you clearly don't, but because you had faith and you've professed it, even with your last breath. Because of that faith, your future is vested with mine. Truly, this day you will be with me in paradise." So that's what's happening there on the cross. Let's look at our next verses, verses 19 through 22. Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross, and the writing was, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. And it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and in Latin. Therefore, the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but" he said, "I am the King of the Jews." In other words, the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Don't say that he is the King of the Jews. Don't do that. Don't do that. Rather, write this, that he said, 'I am the King of the Jews.'" And Pilate answered in the verse 22, "What I've written, I have written." You ever watch the Ten Commandments with Yul Brynner? "So let it be written, so let it be done." Right? That's what we're saying here. What I've written, I have written. All right. In verses 19 through 22, interestingly, you have Jesus on the cross, and you'd think that the whole narrative would be focused like a laser on what's going on right there. But the narrative shifts for a moment. It shifts for a moment in verses 19 through 22, back to Pilate and his discussion with the Jewish leaders. Now, here's the thing. In Roman executions, we're talking about how it was customary for the accused party or the guilty party to take their cross through the city to the place of their execution. Well, something else that happened on the crosses that they were crucified upon was that a placard was placed on the cross that identified the guilt of the individual being crucified. In other words, if someone was a thief or a murderer or what have you, that would be placed on the cross. And the reason why is so that people could look at the crosses, which were lifted up in a place of visibility. They were intended to be looked upon by the population to discourage other serving criminals. But upon each of the crosses, the crime for which they were guilty was written so that people could see it and say to themselves, "If that man is being crucified for thievery, I better not be a thief in the future because I don't want to pay that same debt or same outcome." Whatever the case, it was normative to write something and put it on the cross. But Pilate writes something that flies in the face of what the high priests and the Jewish leaders want him to write. He writes the words, "The King of the Jews." Now, the chief priests and the leaders and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and all these people, they hated that. They looked at that for a moment and they said, "No. Pilate, you've got this all wrong. That's not the issue. He's not our king. Not our king." He was their king, but they said, "Not our king. We don't have a king. If we have any king, we have Caesar. Oh, Pilate, we have Caesar," which was just what gross blasphemy that was. Dear heavens, the chief priest should have known better. If there's anything you should not say as a chief priest, as a religious leader in first century Israel, you should not say that our king is Caesar. No king but Caesar. Don't you remember the prophecy that was given to David? "You will never cease to have a man on your line." The king is never going to be a pagan Gentile from Rome. And for the priests of all people to say, "We have no king but Caesar," it was almost a worse betrayal than what Judas did in the garden. Whatever the case is, they reject this. Pilate says, "The King of the Jews." They say, "No, we have no king but Caesar. We have no king, no king, no king." Never mind that Zechariah 9 had said, "Rejoice, O daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and having salvation, lowly, and riding on a donkey." Jesus had just ridden in on a donkey just days earlier, and he was their king, and they knew it not, which happened to fulfill another passage of scripture, Psalm 118. "The stone which the builders rejected would become the chief cornerstone." All right, let's move ahead and look at our final verses. Let's look at verses 23 and 24.Now then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and they made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now, the tunic was without seam. It was woven from the top in one piece. And they said therefore among themselves, "Let us not tear it. Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose lot it shall be," that the scripture might be fulfilled, which says, "They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." That's in Psalm 22. Therefore, the soldiers did these things. When Christ was crucified, he was crucified naked, and the reason why is this, because it brought great shame upon crucified people to be naked before their peers. The humiliation that Christ willingly endured to buy you back from sin and death cannot be calculated. When he went to the cross, he went to the cross naked. They stripped him of all his clothes, and then interestingly, in order to fulfill the prophecies we see in Psalm 22, although they didn't know they were fulfilling it, they cast lots for his clothes. Now, there was four parts of the clothes that they were able to easily share, but there was one tunic. There was one bit of fabric, and rather than rip up this fabric and basically make it worthless, they cast lots. They cast lots to see whose it would be. It's right out of Psalm 22. If you ever want a text you want to read for Easter season coming up that's not in the New Testament, you want to go to an Old Testament text, read Psalm 22. It's not terribly long. Let me just read a few verses from this. This is Psalm 22. It's a Psalm of David. Psalm 22, it says this in verse 15, "My strength is dried up like a potsherd, my tongue clings to my jaws; you have brought me to the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They have pierced my hands; they have pierced my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." Who is being referred to here? Jesus, but for centuries they didn't know. This text was written 1,000 years before Jesus himself, 1,000 years before. It's referring to the public execution of a man. It's referring to the public execution of a man who's going to be surrounded by evildoers, and the evildoers among crucifying with his hands and feet being pierced, they would also cast lots for his very clothing. For years, no one understood that. Why? Because it's a song of King David, and King David never died such a death. King David never experienced something like this, but prophetically, David was a type of Christ, and he looked forward to this one, to the greater king who would descend from that king, a greater king who would come, King Jesus. And Jesus here in these events on the cross is fulfilling prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, including the very division of his clothing, which seems trivial, and yet to those who thought about it thereafter, who studied the Old Testament text, they would've said, "Oh my goodness, that's exactly what scripture said would happen." All right. So, to wrap up this morning. One of the things I love about the Bible, and one of the things that makes me excited, part of the reason I get excited about this stuff is because I love that the book is consistent. I love that I can go to Genesis 3 or Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 or John 19 and see the same narrative. I like that a book that was written across thousands of years of recorded history is consistent right down to the smallest details, including the casting of lots for clothing. I like this book because things like prophecies written down centuries earlier are fulfilled in exacting detail centuries later, and that just doesn't happen. There's no other book written in the annals of history of mankind where this sort of thing happens except in holy scripture, and it gives me faith that what we're believing in, this isn't made-up gobbledygook. I think that's Hebrew. This isn't [chuckles] made-up gobbledygook, this is truth. It's inspired truth from Genesis 3 right back to the garden all the way through the pages of scripture. Let me give you one other of the prophecies as we close this morning, Isaiah 53. Isaiah chapter 53, written 700 years before Jesus, said this about exactly what's going down in John 19 on the cross. Isaiah 53, this one who was coming, he would be despised. He would be rejected by men. He would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, this meaning God's people, they hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs. He has carried our sorrows, and yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But

he was wounded for our transgressions, just as the thief next to him knew. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes, the scars on his back, the nails in his hands, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity

of us all. What Isaiah is saying is the same thing that the thief understood, and it's the same thing we're celebrating here this morning. It's the same thing we'll celebrate in a few moments when the elements are distributed. The gospel tells us that a man has sinned, therefore a man must die. The wages of sin is death. You have sinned. What are you going to do about it? The good news is this, although you can do nothing, Christ has done everything. On Calvary, a body was broken. On Calvary, blood was spilled. And on Calvary, God's law, his wrath were fulfilled, and our faith, and the faith of the prophets was validated. Because on Calvary, it pleased the Father to crush the Son, and yet the Son didn't stay crushed. The Son would be resurrected just days later and sits now at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. For centuries, all these events were anticipated in the pages of scripture in great detail. Then they were fulfilled, and the question for you this morning is how do you respond to it? How do you respond? Let's pray.

[gentle music] To search through an archive of Dr. Holt's previous sermons, please visit us at fpcgulfport.org, or you can look us up at sermonaudio.com.