“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
EPHESIANS 2:1-3
The Irony of Christ’s Trial1
The soldiers plunged the crown of thorns into Jesus’ head, undoubtedly rendering a skin-piercing agony. They placed Him in a scarlet robe, handed Him a scepter, and with malicious sarcasm, they hailed Him. They struck Him and asked Him to prophesy who had done so (Matt. 27:27–31; see also Mk. 15:16-20; Lk. 22:63-65, 23:9-11; Jn. 19:1-16). Later, on the hallowed ground of Calvary, Pilate hammered the sign above Jesus’ head that read “’Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’”. When asked to change what he had written to something less offensive, perhaps something less prone to misinterpretation, Pilate did not oblige (Jn. 19:19–22).
All of this harmonious cacophony served as a terrible yet joyfully juxtaposed irony. Those involved in Jesus’ trial knew not what they did, as our Lord prayed with dying breath (Lk. 23:34). But what they did was, in one sense, accurate. They crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8) but also crowned Him. They placed Him, the true King of kings and Lord of lords, in a scarlet robe (Rev. 17:14). The one prophesied to be the ultimate and true Davidic King who would shatter rebels with a rod of iron was handed a scepter (Ps. 2). The one asked to prophesy who had struck Him would be in a little while struck by His Father for the sins of His people (Is. 53:4). The one who hung on the cross as bystanders walked by and gazed at the sign above His head will, at the end of time, be rightly hailed as the King of the Jews by knee-bending humanity (Phil. 2:9-11).
Therefore, even in the depraved mocking and evil actions of wretched mankind, there shone this peculiar divine irony of what was to be: salvation for mankind, wrought by no other than the King of kings. Based on this wrought salvation, if the soldiers had faith in Christ, as the centurion presumably did (Matt. 27:54), then this irony became actuated in their lives in glorious salvation, in the transfer from the arena of darkness into Christ’s kingdom (Col. 1:13-14). If the soldiers did not, then their actions only furthered their condemnation. The incarnate Word, full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14), stood before them, and in their blindness, they rejected His gracious figure.
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