John Chapter 18 verse 36 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 36. - In reply to this challenge, Jesus answered - obviously assuming the fact that he was a king in a sense entirely different from that which had been maliciously suggested to Pilate - My kingdom - the kingdom that is mine - is not of this world. Neither now nor at any future period will it derive its origin from this world. So far as Christ is King, his royal power and state are not furnished by earthly force, or fleshly ordinances, or physical energies, or material wealth, or imperial armies. The dominion that he will wield will be one over hearts and lives; the authority of the Lord Jesus cannot be arrested or overpowered by physical force. Most commentators justly regard this as a spiritual manifesto of the sources and quality of the kingdom of Christ, and a foreshadowing of the separation between the spiritual and secular power - a declaration that all effort to embody Christian laws and government in compulsory forms, and to defend them by penal sanctions and temporal force, is disloyalty to the royal rank and crown rights of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hengstenberg regards the assertion as precisely the reverse; sees in the passage, "rightly understood, the very opposite purpose. The kingdom that sprang directly from heaven must have absolute authority over all the earth, and it will not submit to be put into obscurity. The kingdoms of this world must become the kingdom of the Lord and his Anointed, and he shall reign for ever and ever." This is true, but not along the lines or with the machinery of earthly rule and authority. The influence and authority of Heaven works upon the spirit by truth and righteousness and peace, and thus transforms institutions, permeates society from the ground of the heart, modifies the relations between the members of a household, and transfigures those between a ruler and his subjects, between the master and his slaves, between labor and capital, and between man and man. Whenever it is triumphant, whenever the lives of kings and their peoples are sanctified by supreme obedience to Christ the King, then war will be impossible, all tyrannies and slaveries will be abolished, all malice and violence of monarchs or mobs will be at an end; then the wolfish and the lamblike nature will be at peace. Then all the means for enforcing the will of one against another will be done away. He will have put down all rule, authority, and power; for he must reign, and he alone. This kingdom is not (ἐκ) "from," "out of," this world's methods or resources; does not begin from without and establish itself, or propagate or preserve itself, from the world, which is a rival, and is not to be coerced but drawn to itself. Like the individual disciple, the kingdom may be in the world, but not of it. Christ proceeded, If the kingdom that is mine were from this world, which it is not (mark the form of the condition), then, on that Supposition, would the servants (ὑπηρέται, generally translated "officers") that are mine fight, with physical force, in order that I should not be delivered up (παροδοθῶ) to the Jews. The supposition that the ὑπηρέται of whom our Lord spoke were "the angels" (as Bengel, Lampe, Stier, and at one time Luthardt, imagined), is distinctly repudiated by the ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, "of this present world." If it were the case, as it is not, then would my officers be, not a handful of disciples (whom he generally calls διάκονοι δοῦλοι), but the servants who would be appropriate to my royal mission, - then would my servants be busily fighting that I should not be delivered up by the Roman power that is for the moment thrown over me like a shield, to the Jews, who are thirsting for my blood. The loud cry of hatred and vengeance may even at this moment have pierced the interior of the Praetorium, thus giving its force, if not form, to the sentence. Godet thinks our Lord was referring to the crowds who actually gathered round him on Palm Sunday, and not to hypothetical ὑπηρέται; but the force of the condition goes down deeper, and, moreover, such language might have awakened the suspicion that, after all, Jesus had a political following, if he should choose to evoke it. Observe that this entire severance between "the Jews" and the friends of Christ, which, though occasionally adopted by the evangelist, is not the customary method of our Lord. The moment at which the Savior speaks gives great significance to the phraseology (observe John 4:22; John 13:33; John 18:20; the only other occasions on which the Lord used this phrase to denote his own people). But now (the νῦν, cf. John 9:41 and John 15:22, is logical, not temporal); i.e. But seeing that it is so - my kingdom, he adds, is not from hence. The ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου is equivalent to ἐντεῦθεν, and suggests that the kingdom derives its re sources and its energies "from the upper world, from above."

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(36) Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.--The answer of Jesus is two-fold, declaring (1) in this verse, that He is not a King in the political sense; and (2) in John 18:37, that He is a King in the moral sense. By "of this world" we are to understand that the nature and origin of His kingdom are not of this world, not that His kingdom will not extend in this world. (Comp. John 8:23; John 10:16.) In the world's sense of king and kingdom, in the sense in which the Roman empire claimed to rule the world, He had no kingdom.Then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.--Better, then would My servants have been fighting. (Comp. John 19:16.) His "servants" are His disciples, who would be in this relation to Him if He were a temporal king, and the crowds such as those who had sought to make Him king (John 6:15), and had filled Jerusalem with the cry, "Hosanna: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel" (John 12:13). One of His servants had drawn the sword (John 18:10), and, but that His will had checked the popular feeling, neither the Jewish officers nor the Roman cohort could have delivered Him to be crucified. . . .