◄ John 19:7 ►
"We have a law," answered the Jews, "and according to that law He must die, because He declared Himself to be the Son of God."
Study Bible
We have a law
This phrase refers to the Jewish religious laws found in the Torah, particularly those that govern blasphemy. The Jews are invoking Leviticus 24:16, which states that anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The use of "law" here underscores the deep commitment of the Jewish leaders to their religious traditions and legal system. It highlights the tension between the Jewish authorities and Jesus, who they perceive as a threat to their religious order.

answered the Jews
The term "Jews" in the Gospel of John often refers to the Jewish leaders or authorities, rather than the Jewish people as a whole. This distinction is important for understanding the narrative context. The Jewish leaders are responding to Pilate, the Roman governor, who is hesitant to execute Jesus. Their answer is a legal justification for their demand, emphasizing their authority and the seriousness of the charge against Jesus.

and according to that law
This phrase reinforces the idea that the Jewish leaders are appealing to their religious legal system. It suggests a sense of inevitability or obligation, as if they are bound by their own laws to seek the death penalty for Jesus. This appeal to the law is a strategic move to pressure Pilate into complying with their wishes, as it frames the issue as a matter of legal necessity rather than personal vendetta.

He must die
The phrase "He must die" is a stark and definitive statement of the Jewish leaders' intentions. It reflects their belief that Jesus' actions and claims are not only blasphemous but also deserving of the ultimate punishment. This phrase also foreshadows the crucifixion, highlighting the gravity of the situation and the fulfillment of Jesus' own predictions about His death.

because He declared Himself to be the Son of God
This is the crux of the accusation against Jesus. The claim to be the "Son of God" is seen as blasphemous by the Jewish leaders, as it implies equality with God. In the Jewish context, such a claim was considered a direct challenge to the monotheistic belief in one God. Theologically, this statement is central to Christian belief, as it affirms Jesus' divine identity and mission. The tension between Jesus' self-identification and the Jewish leaders' rejection of it is a key theme in the Gospel of John, highlighting the conflict between divine revelation and human misunderstanding.

Persons / Places / Events
1. The Jews
Refers to the Jewish leaders and authorities who were responsible for bringing Jesus to Pilate. They were adamant about enforcing their interpretation of the Mosaic Law.

2. Jesus
Central figure in this passage, accused of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God, which was considered a capital offense under Jewish law.

3. Pilate
The Roman governor who was overseeing the trial of Jesus. He was caught between the demands of the Jewish leaders and his own assessment of Jesus' innocence.

4. The Law
Refers to the Jewish Law, particularly the laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which prescribed death for blasphemy.

5. Son of God
A title that Jesus used for Himself, which the Jewish leaders interpreted as a claim to divinity, thus constituting blasphemy.
Teaching Points
Understanding the Law
The Jewish leaders were zealous for the law, but their understanding was limited. They failed to see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

Jesus' Identity
Jesus' claim to be the Son of God is central to Christian faith. Believers are called to recognize and affirm His divinity.

The Cost of Truth
Jesus' unwavering commitment to the truth of His identity led to His crucifixion. Christians are encouraged to stand firm in their faith, even when it leads to persecution.

Misinterpretation of Scripture
The Jewish leaders' misinterpretation of the law serves as a warning to study Scripture diligently and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Role of Fear and Politics
Pilate's struggle highlights how fear and political pressure can lead to unjust decisions. Believers are called to act justly, regardless of external pressures.
Bible Study Questions
1. How does the charge against Jesus in John 19:7 relate to the Old Testament laws concerning blasphemy?

2. In what ways did the Jewish leaders' understanding of the law prevent them from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah?

3. How can we, as modern believers, ensure that we are interpreting Scripture correctly and not missing the truth of Jesus' identity?

4. What are some situations in your life where you might face pressure to compromise your faith, and how can you prepare to stand firm like Jesus did?

5. How does Pilate's role in this passage challenge us to consider the influence of fear and politics in our decision-making processes?
Connections to Other Scriptures
Leviticus 24:16
This verse outlines the punishment for blasphemy under Jewish law, which is death. It provides the legal basis for the Jewish leaders' claim against Jesus.

John 5:18
Earlier in the Gospel of John, the Jews sought to kill Jesus because He was making Himself equal with God, showing a consistent pattern of opposition to His claims.

Matthew 26:63-65
During Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin, He affirms His identity as the Son of God, leading to the charge of blasphemy.
Sermons
Literalism and Party SpiritDean Stanley.John 19:7
People
Cleopas, Cleophas, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Nicodemus, Pilate
Places
Arimathea, Gabbatha, Golgotha, Jerusalem, Nazareth, The Place of the Skull, The Stone Pavement
Topics
Accordance, Claimed, Death, Die, Insisted, Jews, Law, Ought, Replied
Dictionary of Bible Themes
John 19:7

     2218   Christ, Son of God
     5738   sons
     6696   necessity
     7346   death penalty
     8402   claims

John 19:2-12

     2585   Christ, trial

John 19:4-16

     5714   men

John 19:6-7

     2525   Christ, cross of

Library
February 20 Morning
He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.--ISA. 53:11. Jesus . . . said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.--To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

August 4 Morning
It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.--JOHN 19:30. Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.--I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.--We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering an offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

October 18 Morning
One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.--JOHN 19:34. Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you.--The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.--It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Jesus said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.--By his own blood he entered in once into …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

February 17 Morning
The whole bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire.--LEV. 4:12. They took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him.--The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

The Title on the Cross
'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.' --JOHN xix. 19. This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that, meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should have written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for whom Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the fullest, as indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the most complete. He alone records …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Irrevocable Past
'What I have written I have written.'--JOHN xix. 22. This was a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ's Finished and Unfinished Work
'Jesus ... said, It is finished.'--JOHN xix. 30. 'He said unto me, It is done.'--REV. xxi. 6. One of these sayings was spoken from the Cross, the other from the Throne. The Speaker of both is the same. In the one, His voice 'then shook the earth,' as the rending rocks testified; in the other, His voice 'will shake not the earth only but also heaven'; for 'new heavens and a new earth' accompanied the proclamation. In the one, like some traveller ready to depart, who casts a final glance over his preparations, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ Our Passover
'These things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken.'--JOHN xix. 36. The Evangelist, in the words of this text, points to the great Feast of the Passover and to the Paschal Lamb, as finding their highest fulfilment, as he calls it, in Jesus Christ. For this purpose of bringing out the correspondence between the shadow and the substance he avails himself of a singular coincidence concerning a perfectly unimportant matter--viz., the abnormally rapid sinking …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Grave in a Garden
'In the garden a new tomb.'--JOHN xix. 41 (R.V.). This is possibly no more than a topographical note introduced merely for the sake of accuracy. But it is quite in John's manner to attach importance to these apparent trifles and to give no express statement that he is doing so. There are several other instances in the Gospel where similar details are given which appear to have had in his eyes a symbolical meaning--e.g. 'And it was night.' There may have been such a thought in his mind, for all men …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Jesus Sentenced
'Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him with their hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man! When the chief priests …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

An Eye-Witness's Account of the Crucifixion
'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Joseph and Nicodemus
'And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; ... And there came also Nicodemus which at the first came to Jesus by night.'--JOHN xix. 38, 39. While Christ lived, these two men had been unfaithful to their convictions; but His death, which terrified and paralysed and scattered His avowed disciples, seems to have shamed and stung them into courage. They came now, when they must have known …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Fifth Word
"I thirst."--JOHN XIX. 28. This is the only utterance of our Blessed Lord in which He gave expression to His physical sufferings. Not least of these was that intolerable thirst which is the invariable result of all serious wounds, as those know well who have ever visited patients in a hospital after they have undergone a surgical operation. In this case it must have been aggravated beyond endurance by exposure to the burning heat of an Eastern sun. This word, then, spoken under such circumstances, …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Sixth Word
"It is accomplished."--ST. JOHN XIX. 30. 1. What had been accomplished? In the first place, that work which Christ had come into the world to do. All that work may be resumed in a single word, "sacrifice." The Son of God had come for this one purpose, to offer a sacrifice. Here is room for serious misunderstanding. The blood, the pain, the death, were not the sacrifice. Nothing visible was the sacrifice, least of all the physical surroundings of its culminating act. There is only one thing …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Third Word
"Lady, behold thy son." "Behold thy mother." ST. JOHN XIX. 26, 27. In this Word we see the Son of God revealed as human son, and human friend, all the more truly and genuinely human in both relations, because in each and every relation of life, Divine. 1. The first lesson in the Divine Life for us to learn here is the simple, almost vulgarly commonplace one, yet so greatly needing to be learnt, that "charity," which is but a synonym of the Divine Life, "begins at home." Home life is the real test …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

The Last Look at Life,
(Passion Sermon.) TEXT: JOHN xix. 30. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished." THESE greatest and most glorious of the last words -*- of our Saviour on the cross come immediately after those which are apparently of the least significance and importance. The Lord said, "I thirst;" then the moistened sponge was handed to Him; and when He had received the soothing, though not pleasant draught, He cried, "It is finished." And we must not break the connection of these …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

The Shortest of the Seven Cries
As these seven sayings were so faithfully recorded, we do not wonder that they have frequently been the subject of devout meditation. Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell upon every syllable of these matchless cries. These solemn sentences have shone like the seven golden candlesticks or the seven stars of the Apocalypse, and have lighted multitudes of men to him who spake them. Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so doing have arranged …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 24: 1878

The Procession of Sorrow
I. After our Lord Jesus Christ had been formally condemned by Pilate, our text tells us he was led away. I invite your attention to CHRIST AS LED FORTH. Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. The lictors executed their cruel office upon his shoulders with their rods and scourges, until the stripes had reached the full number. Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 9: 1863

Death of Jesus.
Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy. Consistently with this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

The Third Word from the Cross
In the life of our Lord from first to last there is a strange blending of the majestic and the lowly. When a beam of His divine dignity is allowed to shine out and dazzle us, it is never long before there ensues some incident which reminds us that He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; and, contrariwise, when He does anything which impressively brings home to us His humanity, there always follows something to remind us that He was greater than the sons of men. Thus at His birth He was laid …
James Stalker—The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ

Objections to Genuineness.
THE most plausible objection to the genuineness of these writings is thus expressed by Dupin: "Eusebius and Jerome wrote an accurate catalogue of each author known to them--with a few obscure exceptions,--and yet never mention the writings of the Areopagite." Great is the rejoicing in the House of the Anti-Areopagites over this PROOF;--but what are the facts? Eusebius acknowledges that innumerable works have not come to him--Jerome disclaims either to know or to give an accurate catalogue either …
Dionysius—LETTERS OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

And at his Crucifixion, when He Asked a Drink...
And at His crucifixion, when He asked a drink, they gave Him to drink vinegar mingled with gall. (Cf. Joh. xix. 29) And this was declared through David. They gave gall to my meat, and in any thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. [262] …
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Inward Confirmation of the Veracity of the Scriptures
We are living in a day when confidence is lacking; when skepticism and agnosticism are becoming more and more prevalent; and when doubt and uncertainty are made the badges of culture and wisdom. Everywhere men are demanding proof. Hypotheses and speculations fail to satisfy: the heart cannot rest content until it is able to say, "I know." The demand of the human mind is for definite knowledge and positive assurance. And God has condescended to meet this need. One thing which distinguishes Christianity …
Arthur W. Pink—The Divine Inspiration of the Bible

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