Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 19-21.

When Jesus told Pilate that he would have no power over Jesus unless it had been given to him from above, Pilate would have understood Jesus to mean “given to him from Caesar”, when we as Christians understand Jesus to have meant, “given to Pilate by God.”  I believe that Jesus meant the traditional Christian understanding, but intended Pilate to take it the way that he did.  With that thought in his mind, Pilate would have found it difficult to oppose the argument that Jesus claiming a king made Him an enemy of Caesar.  There is another aspect of these two different possible meanings of Jesus statement about power being given from above, it highlights the idolatry which the Jewish religious leaders expressed when they said they had no king but Caesar.  A consistent theme throughout the Old Testament presented God as the king of Israelites.  The kings of Israel ruled as surrogates for God’s rule.  By declaring that Caesar was their only king, the Jewish religious leaders were denying a commitment to God as the highest authority.  More importantly for us, they were replacing God with the government of Caesar.  We must be careful not to make the same mistake: the mistake of allowing ourselves to think that the government can bring us salvation from whatever problems we believe are overwhelming.  We have just come off of an election where too many Christians put their hope for the future in voting, and thus in the government, when they should be putting their hope in God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.