Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
As I was reading Luke 23 this morning, it occurred to me that politics and religion conspired to kill Jesus. Make no mistake about it, it was the will of the Father for Jesus Christ to take the sins of the whole world. Yet there is a real sense in which, pragmatically, politics and religion both conspired to kill Jesus.
Verse 1 says, “And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.” Not only was this not true, it was the exact opposite of what had happened. The religious leaders had tried to trap Jesus by asking Him, “Should we pay tribute to Caesar or no?” Jesus famously said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.” Yet, here they are telling the representative of Caesar that Christ had said, “Don’t pay tribute to Caesar.”
What is even more interesting is that those who were in the religious class and those who were in the political class worked together on this. When they sent people to question Jesus about whether they should render tax to Caesar or not, among those people who went were the Herodians, followers of Herod. They weren’t religious zealots. They were political operatives. Here the Bible tells us, “The same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together.” So, both Jew and Gentile, including Romans, had to work together in order to crucify Christ.
Now it occurs to me that for many people, politics is a religion of a sort. In Washington, many people don’t believe in God or eternity, so they are doing whatever it takes to get power for themselves right now. Politics has a bad name because of such people. Pilate and Herod were essentially political creatures.
On the other hand, religion today is so often political. Jesus’ own disciples were guilty of saying, “Who is the greatest?” They were concerned about how they were accounted and what people called them. In short, in this case both politics and religion are examples of people trying to gain power instead of giving submission to God. But, Jesus is the King. Verse 38 says, “THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” The point is that power from God comes from submission to Jesus, not from trying to work people through “religion” or politics. Our goal should not be to strong-arm people; it should be to submit to Christ Jesus.
The two questions we should ask are “What does Jesus want?” and “What would Jesus do?” What does Jesus want? I know what I want. I want power. I want my way. I want my will. That is what Pilate, Herod, and the crowds who cried, “Crucify him” wanted. They wanted their will, their way.
As to what Jesus would do, the way you would know what Jesus would do is by looking at what Jesus did do, and the way you know that is by looking at the Bible. So, we are subjects of the Lord Jesus and we show ourselves subject to Jesus when we live by His example and by His power.