Easily Excitable

We’re in the middle of Easter weekend, and I hope you have a fun weekend planned out: I hope it’s full of all the seersucker, good food, and egg hunts your heart desires. 

We celebrate, and we remember, and we live in victory because we know Jesus rose from the dead. We have the benefit of seeing it from 2026: we know Sunday is coming.

But hindsight is 20/20. The folks in 33 AD lacked our perspective. 

Friday and Saturday weren’t just dark days for them.

They were the darkest days.  

The disciples and all who loved Jesus were wracked with confusion, fear, disappointment, and sorrow we can’t quite fathom. 

If you’ve been around church for any amount of time, you’re familiar with the story.

As I type this, it’s Good Friday. I read the account of Good Friday in the Bible this morning, and what pulled me in was the cast of characters in John’s account. 

What an interesting tableau.

There are priests scheming, 

Pilate’s wife dreaming, 

Women mourning, 

A crowd that’s scorning. 

There is Peter denying- 

And believers who’re crying. 

Now, I’ll end the rhyme there, and I’ll hope I didn’t give you too much secondhand embarrassment in that. 

I get a little carried away. My point here? There was a lot going on. 

The character in all this I found most interesting this year was Pilate. 

On Friday morning, the Jewish leaders visited Pilate with a purpose. 

The priests? They cannot kill Jesus, for to kill Him in the Jewish way would be to stone Him. Rather, He must be put on a pole, a sign of God’s curse on Him. 

Pilate, interestingly enough, doesn’t want to crucify Jesus. They have an interesting conversation about kings, kingdoms, and truth itself. 

Pilate concludes with, “What is truth?”

He then has Jesus flogged. Skin’s hanging in tatters from His body. Muscle sinews are exposed across his back. 

Streams of blood roll down His face- a result of the crown of thorns. 

And Then, Pilate brings Jesus back before The crowd. 

“Here is the man,” Pilate declares. 

By Pilate’s perspective, these were true words: what he saw before him was a man- nothing more, nothing less. What Pilate probably didn’t recognize or realize just then was his declaration would ring throughout history.

So, we might take Pilate’s words with a little more depth than he meant for them to have:

Here is the Man of whom much has been made.

Here is the Man who will continue to be spoken about for thousands of years to come. 

Here is the Man who millions will put their faith in. 

An unspoken question that faces each of us personally? 

Here is the Man. What will I do with Him? 

To many, Jesus is just what Pilate described: a man, and a man alone. 

Many might call Him a good teacher, but I think C.S. Lewis said it best here: 

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”

So, this Jesus? If He’s just a man, then he might have had just about the best PR team in all of history. After all, it’s been thousands of years later, and we’re still talking about Him.

Plus, there’s like a whole book dedicated to Him. And, come to think of it, a whole religion too.

We can understand Pilate’s perspective if we try. 

He wouldn’t be a whole lot different from us. Sure, he had titles, but much like us, he had stuff going on- had responsibilities, things weighing on him. He knew he had to keep things copacetic between the Romans and Jews, and that was probably heavy. 

But we all have our stuff, right?

What’s more, he probably didn’t want for a whole lot: I imagine he had a pretty comfortable life.

And as a result of that combination of responsibility and comfort? I doubt he was looking for the spiritual- for the miraculous- right in front of him. 

To Pilate, Jesus looked like just a man. There was nothing that would really attract Pontius Pilate to Him, save for a few stories and some folklore. 

“Here is the man.” 

We’re similar to Pilate in that it’s hard to discern Our spiritual needs.

Specifically? Our need for a Savior.  

We live in America, the land of self-sufficiency. We believe in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and making do. We don’t glory in asking for help. 

And to be honest? 

The majority of us (or at least the majority of us reading/ writing this) try to live life in such a way that we don’t actually need God. We’re tangible people, dealing with practical needs. 

We feel better on payday, and when our bills are paid, and everyone in the house is happy, we feel a little ecstasy of invincibility. 

Again, we are a practical people, so there is little space in our lives for the spiritual. So the idea that we have a spiritual need we can’t fill? 

Well, that sounds outlandish. 

And so much like Pilate, we aren’t looking for the supernatural. 

We don’t much feel like we need a hero. 

Whether our mouths or our lives would declare it, we might live like Jesus is just a man. Day in and day out, we’re self-reliant, and while the Cross is pertinent this time of year, it might not be something we’re apt to think about every day.

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, Jesus is one of the first priorities that gets shuffled to a lower rung.

“Behold the man,” Pilate says, and our lives echo his words.. 

We seem to forget just what an insurmountable price we owed, and this God-Man Himself paid. 

Left to our own devices, we can’t make heads or tails of Jesus. 

It’s hard to square with what He did. I try to make it make sense, but I have a very finite mind. It’s hard for me to really comprehend the enormity of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

Because, if we believe in who He said He is, then Jesus paid our sin debt- the debt I myself couldn’t pay. 

Here is the truth: you and I both needed a sacrifice in our place. We needed Someone to atone for a debt we simply couldn’t pay. 

That doesn’t compute in our minds: it doesn’t make sense that death has to come because we did a couple of bad things, right? Here’s why (and maybe I’m just speaking for myself. If so, I apologize):

We see the world through a human lens, one that says. “I make the rules.” And if we were to make the rules about sin? These rules would be simple:

I did bad, but then, I did good to cancel it out. Therefore, things are balanced. That is enough.

The reality? We humans don’t make the rules. 

We didn’t create ourselves, nor did we create the natural order, so we don’t make the supernatural laws that govern our existence. 

Here’s an illustration. I think I read it somewhere, but I may have made this up. I don’t think I’m smart enough to arrive here on my own, but if I did, bully for me:

Let’s say (God forbid) someone were to murder my husband, and as restitution, this murderer offered an exorbitant amount of money. 

From his perspective, when that money is paid, he would get off scot-free- no other payment necessary.

But here’s the thing: is there any amount of money that could replace who I lost? 

No matter what this person paid, it would never be able to cover the loss of my husband- to perfectly equate and cover the debt of losing Trey. 

Simply put? The ball is not in the offender’s court: the offender doesn’t decide the price. 

That’s similar to our sin debt. We can’t offer good works to pay off God for our offenses. 

As one who was raised to work? That’s hard for me. 

I like to think of myself as a try-hard, maybe even an achiever (overachiever? eh…). 

As one who wants to work for things, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there is something I can’t attain by effort alone.

I can beat my chest and declare my self-sufficiency, but my biggest issue in life was something I could do nothing about. That was my sin. 

That sin meant that I would have to live the rest of eternity away from God. And make no mistake: our souls are eternal. There is eternity waiting for us. The question is how we want to spend that eternity: would we prefer with God or apart from Him? 

So, all that being said, let’s go back to what Pilate had to say: 

“Here is the man.”

Praise God, Here is the Man. 

Here is our Solution. 

Here is our Hero. 

Here is the spotless Lamb. 

Here is He who stood in my place, 

Who bore my sins,

Who died on my Cross.

Here is the man-

Who rose to defeat death,

Who ascended to the right hand of the Father,

Who reigns and rules.

Here is the man 

Who made it possible- 

That I might have future eternity with Him, 

And, also?

Ensured that I wouldn’t walk this here and now alone. 

He is the only Way I had to the Father, and He did everything within His power to make sure my life was not lost because of my sin stain. 

There was nothing in me to make Him love me, for I am a wretch before the Holiness of God. And yet, this Man?

This Man looked upon me with grace, and with mercy, and with compassion, and with love, and He decided before the dawn of time that the price of His life was worth it to bring me back home. He looked at you, and He thought the very same thing. 

Here is the Man.  

Pilate knew not who really stood before him. 

And unfortunately, we all miss it from time to time, too. 

Praise God, though, that our salvation rested not on humanity, but rather, on His perfect purpose and His perfect Son. 

Here is the Man, but praise God, that’s not all He is. 

Here is the Man who became accursed for us: here is the Man who defeated death for us. There was only One who could, and praise God, He did. 

How incredible You are, Jesus- King of kings, and Lord of lords. All glory and honor to You.