There was something very strange happened to Pilate. It was that Jesus consistently kept silent. The high priests persecuted Jesus for all kinds of reasons, but Pilate knew that they gave every absurd reason to kill Jesus. Despite this reason, Jesus did not defend Himself. Did Jesus not know that He would be falsely accused if He kept silent like this? Actually, Jesus acted in consideration so that He would not hinder God’s work of paying the price of human sin through His death.
People trying to defend themselves is close to human nature. They do not engage themselves in justice faithfully, however they misunderstand that they are righteous. They think that they never make mistakes, and they often criticize others’ mistakes to justify themselves. Like this, the nature which believes that they are right and asserts that it is true is a typical characteristic of human beings who are fallen into sin. But, we should not show this habit, especially when we deal with spiritual matters.
The nature of sin does not disappear just because you believe in Jesus. Whoever pretends they are pure and do not have any sin, it is no different from treating the Lord’s crucifixion as meaningless. The essence of the truth is that Jesus, who has no sin, was put to death because of the sins of human beings. How can anyone who ignores this truly repent? Also, how can such a person live as the Lord has commanded, and how can he preach the Gospel?
Human beings hurriedly make excuses to justify themselves. Unlike them, the Lord kept silent because He did not want to make a problem for His own duty - which was bearing sins for humanity. What if the Lord defended Himself and avoided the crucifixion? What would happen if the people who were judging the Lord misunderstood His words and claimed that He confessed His sin? Or what would happen if the authoritative Roman court convicted the Lord, so there was no evidence left that the Lord did not commit a crime in the world? To make these not happen, the Lord kept silent until the end to the people who were accusing Him.
We are very sensitive in defending ourselves. However, we should change our attitude toward spiritual matters. That is, we should be sensitive in situations when we have to defend the Lord. To make it happen, we must be trained in our daily lives. The attitude to bear in our hearts is what is right to the Lord as right and what is not right to the Lord as wrong ourselves. We should try for them to become second nature to us.
The Lord loved us with silence even though He suffered from every insult. Now, let us testify the Lord’s sacrifice with our silence not to defend ourselves. Let’s admit that we still have a sinful nature, so without hesitation, let’s abandon our habit of defending ourselves as if we were unfamiliar with sins. Let’s show that the Lord’s death is His love to save us. Let us no longer make an excuse for ourselves, and let’s offer our hearts to defend the Lord who sacrificed for us. Let us also respond with silence to the Lord’s heart who loved us with silence.
(Lord’s Day Service on March 6, 2022)
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