There is a certain ambiguity to the way that Christians of all traditions use the name Jesus. It disturbs me because there is so much people talk about and do “for the glory of Jesus” and I wonder whether we truly understand what we are talking about.

This phrase – the glory of Jesus – appears all over the place in the Christian landscape, from worship songs to hymns, sermons to books; but it is rarely, if ever, explained.

A Charismatic faith healer evokes the name of Jesus, as does a Roman Catholic priest. Both would say they entered their vocation because of Jesus. When one says it, he means he believes Jesus is glorified through the miracles he will perform; when the other says it, he means the liturgy will be performed properly and grace will be granted. Those are two quite distinct views. And what of my own tradition, the Baptists? They often believe Jesus is glorified through ideological and cultural conversion of large numbers of people. (Please forgive the stereotypes in all cases)

Is Jesus’ glory simply the praises of his people? Is it miraculous signs and wonders? Is it conversion?

The Source of Christ’s Glory

First of all, we must be plain that Jesus’ glory is not his own. It is given to him by the Father [John 8:54]. Paul reiterates this, nothing that God is “the Father of glory” which is given to Jesus [Ephesians 1:17].

Jesus is always quite clear that his glory draws from his death and resurrection [Luke 24:26, Acts 3:13] and the author of the Gospel of John reiterates it several times [John 7:39, 11:4, 12:16-23, 13:31]. This idea that suffering is a component of Jesus’ glory is echoed in Peter’s words, even tying into the source of Christ’s glory [1 Peter 4:13-14; 5:10].

Peter also points out that Jesus had “subsequent glories” that resulted from his sufferings [1 Peter 1:7]. We must equate this to a two-fold glory – the glory of the resurrection but also his crowning of glory [Hebrew 2:9]. This glory will be visible when we are Christ’s presence [Titus 2:13].

Our Role in Christ’s Glory

According to the apostle Paul, the church is called to bring glory to Christ [Ephesians 3:21]. This glory is perpetually directed from church to Jesus [Hebrew 13:21]. In fact, we are called into eternal glory [1 Peter 5:10].

But how do we bring glory to Jesus? Again, Paul states it plainly:

Through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. [1 Thessalonians 2:14]

So, in our lives the glory of Jesus is holiness and truth. In other words, living in Jesus’ way and believing Jesus’ word. Elsewhere, Paul strengthens this statement in contrasting the glory of Jesus (which is inherently tied to light) with the darkness of the god of this world:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the gory of Christ, who is the image of God…God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. [2 Corinthians 4:4,6]

From this, we see that Christ’s glory is the glory of God. As Jesus explained in John 8:54, his glory is a reflection of the Father’s glory. It is the manifestation of God’s glory for the believer.

The primary way Christ is glorified then is through our belief. This is the opening of the door of his glory. Without belief, there is no visible glory. It is hidden to those who do not follow Christ. They might see the glory of the Father as creator in creation, but they cannot see Christ’s glory.

The secondary way he is glorified is through our sanctification or pursuit of holiness. This glory is the visible transformation of the believer that occurs in his words and actions as he follows Christ.

The Glorification of the Father

Interestingly, the Christian is not called to glorify Jesus but rather to glorify God the Father through Jesus [Romans 15:16, 1 Peter 4:11]. We are to be glorified with Christ [Romans 8:17], which seems to indicate that when we glorify the Father as Jesus did, we are also glorified.

The indication seems to be that when we emulate Christ, we give the glory to the Father and in doing so, we reflect his glory (i.e. are glorified). This does not mean that we have any glory of our own but rather that we become reflections of His glory. In fact, unbelievers may glorify the Father when believers confess the gospel [2 Corinthians 9:13, 2 Thessalonians 1:12] which reinforces that the glory is of the Father.

Conclusion

All of our Christian pop culture not withstanding, the glory of Jesus is not something we produce by our actions. It something the Father gave to Jesus as a result of the crucifixion and resurrection. Thus, we are a part of his glory only when we live the way of Jesus, trusting his word and acting on it.

Glory is not a warm fuzzy produced by cool music, nor is it the result of us praying a lot and believing it will fall. (By the way, there is not a single place in Scripture where glory “falls”).

Resurrection Sunday (April 12) will feature a special message on the power of the resurrection. As always, come ready to encounter Jesus.

www.hbc-nh.org

Now, I may be picky but I think that antivirus software should have a teeny, tiny footprint in the computer’s processes; and McAfee is GIGANTIC. It updates all the time; it is always running some RAM hog process; it installs features most people don’t want or need and its just generally annoying.

Today was the final straw – after McAfee updated 4 times and still said it was missing something. I dumped it and downloaded AVG’s free edition. So far, AVG is light and nimble. It is not invasive and it does not hog RAM. Me likee.

Big thanks to my co-laborer Darrin Shaw of Christ Church on spotting the item.

But WHAT THE HECK? New Calvinism? Let’s be honest. Calvinism is a divisive label applied to people too stiff (or afraid) to pursue Jesus’ agenda for the world. Why do we HAVE to label this movement of trusting God’s sovereignty as Calvinism?

I know John Piper and Mark Driscoll take the title Calvinist with a certain amount of pride, but it isn’t Calvinism – it’s Bible. Why do we have to identify it with a person’s name?

Have you ever noticed that in general use, positions named after people are viewed negatively (McCarthyism anyone?). Why can’t we just say we believe God is sovereign?

http://dialogueconcerning.blogspot.com/2009/03/ideology-and-science.html

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/03/the_poetry_of_p.html

What do you think? Should a pastor be a realist or a poet? Or a tension of both?

Sorry, tirade over.

Sources

We really know very little about him. We don’t know who he was other than possibly a descendant of a Samnite general G. Pontius (c. 320 BCE). He appears in no known secular records. The only literary references to him are in the New Testament, the works of Flavius Josephus and the later works of Tacitus.

• The New Testament records are fairly well known (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 18-19 and a couple of references in Acts and 1 Timothy).
• Josephus makes two direct references to Pilate. We see him succeeding Valerus Gratus in Judea, dealing with Jesus plots and judging Christ and suppressing a Samaritan revolt (Antiquities 18.various, Wars 2.9)
• Tacitus’ reference is only in passing when writing about Jesus. He wrote: auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat. Literally translated as, “The source of the name [Christian] is Christ who, during the imperium of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate, suffered the ultimate penalty.)

It is generally concluded that any later references to Pilate draw from these three sources, and even Tacitus may have simply been an expansion of Josephus.

One additional resource has come to light in recent times. In 1961, a block of limestone was discovered in Caesarea that features and inscription in Latin.

[DIS AUGUSTI]S TIBERIEUM

[PO]NTIUS PILATUS

[PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E

[FECIT D]E[DICAVIT] 

(letters in brackets are conjectured)

The inscription is short, but it does give us one vital clue about Pilate’s career. He is called a prefect in the inscription. This is different from Tacitus, who called him a prelate. Although the two positions were similar, a prelate was a man of senatorial rank while a prefect was equestrian. This will matter in a little bit, so just file it away for now.

His Career

The limited resources we have available keep us from having a better idea of the kind of man Pilate was. He was almost certainly not a senator. He was probably a member of the equestrian class, which was the lower of the two aristocratic classes of Roman citizen. This meant he was probably from one of the old families, but probably not one with the ear of the senatorial families. As mentioned before, he might have been a descendant of G. Pontius.

As an equestrian, Pilate could not hope for any of the truly powerful offices like consul. At best he could attain power as a silent partner in one of the many power deals that took place in the early imperium. Unfortunately it appears that Pilate did not have the proper connections and was left to rot in a distant, troubled province.

Prefect of Iudaea

Josephus tells us that he replaced Valerus Gratus as prefect of Iudaea in 26 CE and ruled there for ten years. The prefecture itself was a recent consolidation of Judea, Idumea and Samaria, completed in 6 CE after the abortive rule of Herod Archelaus. It was one of the few official provinces ruled by a prefect instead of a legate.

This was primarily because it had been formed from some of the remnants of Herod the Great’s kingdom. The other part, Galilee, was still ruled by Herod’s son Antipas. The Romans attempted to institute home rule several times in the first century but eventually converted the entire region to a prelature.

The prefect was a sort of auxiliary governor to the legate. While Pilate was personally appointed by the emperor, just like a legate, he did not have the same powers as a legate and would have had to draw all of his military might from the legate’s legions.

Instead of the three legions available to the legate of Syria, Pilate had only six cohorts (about 3,000 men). Two were permanently stationed at the provincial capital, Caesarea, and two were in Jerusalem. The other two moved around quite a bit, so at any given time, Pilate had no more than 1,000 troops to call upon and none of them were front line soldiers.

The year 26 CE is significant because that was the year that Tiberius Caesar essentially exiled himself from Rome. His son had died in 23 CE, and Tiberius never recovered. Pliny the Elder called him tristissimus hominus, “the gloomiest man.” Tiberius left the imperial administration to his Praetorian Prefects – Lucius Aelius Sejanus and Quintus Naevius Sutorius Macro. It is very likely that these men had recalled Gratus and sent Pilate to Iudaea.

Unfortunately, the increasingly petulant Tiberius had refused to allow the Syrian legate, the respected senator Lucius Aelius Lamia and relative of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, to go to his province. As a consequence, Pontius Pilate went to Iudaea without the power to command a legion or a superior to request a legion from.

Necessity Breeds Destruction

With so little power to enforce his control of a troubled province, it is not surprising that Pilate managed so badly. We know that he was forced to move quite frequently between his capital at Caesarea and the Jewish religious center in Jerusalem. Quite simply, he was spread too thin.

There were a number of Jewish revolts throughout the rule of V. Gratus and P. Pilate. The constant nuisance of putting down rebellions seems to have worn on Pilate. When he heard of a rebel of the Samaritans, he overstepped his authority and called the Roman cavalry into action. They swept down on Mount Gerazim and massacred the Samaritans.

When L. Aelius Lamia’s replacement, Lucius Vitellius, finally made it to Syria in 36 CE, he found Pilate was overreaching to maintain any kind of order in the provinces. Vitellius immediately dismissed him and replaced him with his friend Marcellus.

Pilate journeyed to Rome to present his case, but Tiberius died while Pilate was in transit. We do not know if Pilate ever presented his case before Caligula, but it is safe to assume that even if he was heard, his appeal was not heeded. Shortly thereafter Caligula appointed his childhood friend, Herod Agrippa, as the King of the Jews and temporarily suspended the Roman prelature. The region was more or less under self rule until they rebelled against Rome and the Roman general Vespasian put down the rebellion. Vespasian’s work was completed with his son Titus’ destruction of the Temple in AD 70. All of Judea was incorporated into the province of Palestine and then Syria-Palestine during the reign of Hadrian.

His Place in the Jesus Story

Pilate’s exchange with Jesus in John 18-19 shows us a lot about who Pilate was. He was clearly intelligent and perceptive. He was also at a tremendous disadvantage when dealing with a troublesome people who wanted Roman protection but not Roman rule.

His own place was precarious, so when he was confronted with this man – Jesus – who he knew had been hailed by the Jews only a few days before, he did his best to manipulate the situation and free Jesus. Unfortunately, Pilate seems to have been a poor politician. He chose to appease the Jews in order to mock them, and his actions (both with Jesus and the later incident with the Samaritans) probably aided in the destabilization of Roman rule in the region.

To John, who provides the most detail about the exchange between Pilate and Jesus, Pilate represents all Gentiles. He asks questions of Jesus while the Jews and Herod Antipas demand things of him. To the Gentile church, Pilate is a symbol of Gentile openness to Jesus’ claims. The Ethiopian church even made him a saint!

More than anything, Pilate is an example of the trap the early believers found themselves in. They were torn in the tension of Judaism, Roman culture, the teaching of Jesus and their own thoughts and ideas. Through Pilate’s interrogation, Jesus remained other – not Jewish or Roman, not rebel or subject. It shows Jesus’ distinction from these powerful influences.