The Judgment Seat

Imagine the Roman praetorium in Jerusalem, the HQ of Roman Judaea, located probably in one of King Herod’s palaces built a generation earlier. By now, the Romans, with their hereditary mistrust of kings, have done away with ruling through the puppet throne of Judaea and have officially annexed the region as a province. At the praetorium stands a chair of state, a judgment seat, occupied by Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Roman Judaea. Pilate represents the emperor Tiberius, who rules much of the world from Rome, claiming more authority than any Tarquin, and expecting posthumous god status to be awarded him by the Roman Senate. Indeed, prefect Pilate calculates to offend Jewish religious sensibilities by displaying worship images of the emperor’s divine spirit around Jerusalem. Now, however, from his province of Judaea arises one who says he is the son of God, scandalizing the Jews; one who claims the kingship. Pilate is uneasy, maybe tortured. He has reason to be so.

“Christ Before Pilate”, Rembrandt, 1636

The Gospel of St John, chapter 19, verse 13: “Pilate… brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.” This verse has one of those peculiarities of language so frequent in John’s writing, so fraught with meaning, that they are unlikely to be copyists’ errors. In the Greek manuscripts, the subject of the second clause is undefined. Grammatically speaking, that is, the sentence does not specify whether Pilate or Christ sat in the judgment seat. We infer logically that Pilate the prefect of Rome sat in the seat, to pass judgment on his prisoner; we imagine, with justification, the prisoner being judged by Pilate, representative of the emperor. However, this is no ordinary prisoner. Do we imagine rightly? John, his sight keen as an eagle’s, sees beneath appearances, and brings us up short.

St John’s Eagle mosaic, San Manuel y San Benito, Madrid, 20th century. Photo credit—Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons user: Buho07

One may draw several morals from this grammatical wordplay: Do not judge without authority. Take care whom you judge. Those who judge may be judged. Those who are judged might be found to have the true authority. John’s implication, all the clearer for paradox, seems this: that whatever Pilate said and did, however the situation may have looked, Jesus was the one in the judgment seat. He was Ruler and Judge of all, fulfilling the dual roles of a King. Jesus endured all things for the joy that was set before him; divine authority was in his left hand, and in his right hand was power exercised with love. “Now is the judgement of this world”: now, when Roman tyranny is at its peak; now, at the first time when a stable empire has spread its influence over all the West, literally paving the roads on which Christ’s Gospel will propagate. No one could guess it now, but Christianity will far outlast the Empire and will prove its greatest legacy.

Christ Pantocrator mosaic at Daphni, 12th century

Last Sunday, Christ was received into Jerusalem as a king. Now, in the fullness of time, at the last possible moment, while under trial on pain of death, He claims the kingship in a way that none could have imagined. Tiberius rules the world from Rome; but the least of Tiberius’ subjects, sentenced to execution today, is the King “before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

“Christ Crowned with Thorns”, workshop of Dirk Bouts, c. 1470

The Lord Jesus is always showing us God’s glory in ways we never expected, in modes and forms that perpetually surprise and scandalize us. He spoke the most astonishing things, the most pointedly honest words if there was good reason to speak them, and because there was no shadow of guile in him, he was unafraid of apparent self-contradictions. He astonished His own disciples by girding himself with a towel, servant-like, and washing their feet. When the lantern-bearing soldiers asked for Jesus of Nazareth, He said, “I am”, and they fell to the ground to hide themselves from His light. In mangled flesh hanging on the cross between two thieves, Jesus Christ faced everything we fear—humiliation, subjection, separation, harm, and death. He took our greatest gifts and our darkest curses, and wove them into the warp of divinity to make a veil of flesh which will forever clothe him in our sight, and be our clothing too: a veil forever pierced and torn, that we may touch his wounds, that we may enter in. Sunday morning, three women found a tomb overshadowed by the two cherubim; in the sepulchre, they were in the presence of God, not His absence.

“Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples”, Albrecht Dürer, c. 1508

Malcolm Guite, considering Palm Sunday and Holy Week, writes, “The inner journey is more necessary than ever… What was happening ‘out there’ and ‘back then’ as Christ entered Jerusalem is also happening  ‘in here’ and ‘right now’. There is a Jerusalem of the heart. Our inner life also has its temple and palaces, its places of corruption, its gardens of rest, its seat of judgement.” Often I have recognized Christ, as fleetingly as in a kind gesture in a crowd of foreigners, as humblingly as in a kind gesture from an enemy; I do not doubt that I have more often failed to recognize him. Just the other day, in a moment of discontent and shame, I realized He was there, too, pointing me higher, providing all things necessary for my good, and entreating me to come into His Father’s house.

—Brandt Nightingale,

Good Friday 2025