22. The Majestic Silence of Christ
“Jesus Answered Him Nothing.”
The Majestic Silence of Christ
WITH THE BACKGROUND of our Lord’s trial and all its irregularities and illegalities, His silence is all the more vocal. His bearing and deportment during those proceedings were worthy of His Father. He maintained the dignified calm, the loving forbearance that had always characterized Him.
An examination of the gospel records reveals:
His Dignified Bearing
Throughout the farcical and biased proceedings of His trial, Jesus was never other than calm and dignified. No matter how great the provocation, He never descended to abuse or retaliation. Even when struck in the face by a minion of the high priest simply because He had rightly suggested the propriety of calling witnesses to establish the Sanhedrin’s case, Jesus replied with dignity and restraint. He merely asserted His right to fair treatment in the ecclesiastical court (John 18:21–23).
The priests were endeavoring to make Him appear a secret fomenter of rebellion, and His only response was to call attention to the fact that He always acted openly, as a hundred witnesses could testify. A comparison of Paul’s reaction under almost identical circumstances is very revealing. Paul could not resist hurling back a stinging rejoinder that conveyed his contempt and indignation. He quite lost his temper, but Jesus maintained a sublime calm.
His Eloquent Silence
It is always more difficult to remain silent than to speak. But on three occasions it is recorded of the Lord that He was silent before His enemies: before the Jewish rulers (Matthew 26:62–63; Mark 14:61), before Pilate (Mark 15:3–5), and before Herod (Luke 23:8–11). In each case His silence was immeasurably more eloquent than any spoken word could possibly have been.
When the bitterly prejudiced Sanhedrin with its perjured witnesses endeavored to make Him incriminate Himself, “Jesus held his peace” (Matthew 26:63). He listened in silence to the witnesses contradicting each other but volunteered no reply to the high priest’s interruption.
“Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee?” he thundered. Before those clear, searching eyes the high priest became ill at ease. But asserting his right, he said to Jesus, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.” Now he was at the heart of the matter, and in those words clearly revealed his secret purpose. If he could induce Jesus to assert His deity, then He was in their power.
Only then did the Lord deign to open His mouth, for His continued silence could then be construed as tantamount to a withdrawal of His claims. Knowing that His answer would without doubt seal His doom, Jesus answered, “Thou hast said.” But He added these pregnant and prophetic words, “Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” It was as if to say, “You are My judges now, but the hour is coming when roles will be reversed, and it will be you who will stand before My bar to answer for your action in condemning Me.”
When He appeared before Pontius Pilate with the chief priests vehemently bringing charges against Him, “He answered nothing” (Mark 15:3). “Answerest thou nothing?” questioned Pilate. “Behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled” (Mark 15:3–4). Conscious of His complete integrity, Jesus ignored both judge and accusers, to the discomfiture of both. His silence was more crushing than a spate of words.
“In the silence of this interior hall,” wrote James Stalker, “He and Pilate stood face to face, He in the lonely prisoner’s place, Pilate in the place of power. Yet how strangely, as we look back at the scene, are the places reversed. It is Pilate who is going to be tried. All that morning Pilate is being judged and exposed;and ever since he has stood in the pillory of history, with the centuries gazing at him.”
Before Herod, whom Jesus called “that fox” (Luke 13:32), Jesus maintained a similar lofty silence. The dissolute king welcomed the diversion created by the advent of Jesus. He had long desired to see this man of whom he had heard so much perform some miracle. Herod “questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing” (Luke 23:9). Herod’s volubility, “many words,” met only a calm and impressive silence that was very disconcerting for the king and the chief priests and scribes who vociferously accused Him.
Jesus had counseled His disciples not to waste their pearls of truth on those who would not appreciate them (Matthew 7:6), and He was practicing His own precept. Herod was merely seeking entertainment, and Jesus refused to gratify his vulgar desire. Such silence in the face of certain death was the hallmark of His inner fortitude.
His Consistent Claims
Throughout the crowded closing hours of His life, Jesus did and said nothing that could in any way be construed as a withdrawal or watering-down of the astounding claims to kingship and deity He had made. Although He did not disallow the claim that He was King, He hastened to make clear that His kingdom was not of this world, but a spiritual one (John 18:36). Nor did He deny that He was “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed” (Mark 14:61), but quietly accepted the ascription. In the face of such a statement, it is difficult to understand how hostile critics can suggest as they do, that He never claimed deity for Himself. He always spoke and acted in a manner entirely consistent with such a claim.
His Sublime Indifference
Nothing could be more impressive than His total indifference to the cajolings and threats of his unscrupulous judges. For various reasons Pilate obviously desired to release Jesus, but He did nothing to make it easy for Pilate to do so, or to assist him to this end. An unusual prisoner this!
When Pilate suggested that he would listen favorably to Him, much to the governor’s amazement, Jesus did not even deign to answer. He evinced not the slightest interest in Pilate’s repeated endeavors to secure His release, whether by dissuading the Jews from pressing their demand or by persuading them to accept Barabbas the murderer instead of Jesus the holy.
When for the last time Pilate sought to release Jesus, he said, “Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?” (John 19:10). Jesus answered, “Thou couldst have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above.” Both by His silence and His words, Jesus made clear that it was Pilate and the Jews who were on trial before Him, and not He before them.
His Perfect Composure
The moving words of Robert E. Speer complete the picture:
He said but little, but He said enough, and no word of His ever bore testimony to the truth, or revealed more fully the majesty of His divine life than the uncomplaining patience and self-possession and composure of His conduct under the hideous treatment to which He was subjected; when after His condemnation before Caiaphas, the men who held Him, in pretence that He was a dangerous character spit in His face and mocked Him, and beat Him, and blindfolding Him, struck and reviled Him. “Prophesy unto us, Thou Christ: who is he that struck thee?” When Herod with his soldiers set Him at nought and made sport of Him and sent Him back through the streets of the city arrayed in mock royal attire, and became the friend of Pilate again through this sport—cursed be such friendships. When in the hope, doubtless, of showing the people how harmless and inoffensive He was, Pilate had Him before the people with the jeering remark, ‘Behold the Man!’ When, after the surrender of Pilate, the whole band of the governor’s soldiers took Him, stripped, put on Him a scarlet robe, with a crown of acanthus thorns still piercing His brow and staining His face crimson like His robe, and giving Him a reed for a sceptre, played with Him as a mock king, spitting on Him and seizing His sceptre from His hand and smiting Him on the head with it, driving the thorn’s cruel spikes deeper into His brow; when at last they led Him away to Calvary, stripped of His robe, but still wearing His crown.
‘Behold the man!’ was Pilate’s jeer. That is what all the ages have been doing since, and the vision has grown more and more glorious. As they have looked, the crown of thorns has become a crown of golden radiance, and the cast-off robe has glistened like the garments He wore on the night of the Transfiguration. Martyrs have smiled in the flames at that vision, sinners have turned at it to a new life…. and towards it the souls of men yearn forever.