04/03/2026
BEHOLD, THE MAN. BEHOLD, YOUR KING.
Holy Week || Good Friday || Pastor Josh
(John 19:5, 14)
Let’s reflect on a scene from the Gospel of John.
Jesus has been flogged. His back is torn open. His face is swollen past recognition. The soldiers have dressed him in a purple robe as a cruel joke and pressed a crown of thorns onto his head until the blood runs down. And then Pilate steps out before the crowd and says three words:
“Behold the man.”
He means it as mockery. Look at this pathetic figure. This is what happens to men who call themselves kings. But John is highlighting something else entirely with those words. This is an announcement that Pilate cannot begin to understand.
Behold the man.
Every human being was made to bear the image of God, to reflect his goodness and glory into creation. But every one of us has fallen tragically short of that purpose. We know it. We feel the weight of it. But standing there before that howling crowd, beaten and bleeding and still somehow unbroken, is the one person in all of human history who never failed. The
Word made flesh. Fully God and fully man.
Pilate speaks again, with even more contempt:
“Behold your King.”
What Pilate cannot see is that he is telling the truth. The cross they are about to nail Jesus to is, in John’s Gospel, a throne. The crown draws blood, yes, but it is still a crown. The coronation is happening through ex*****on. This King wins not by overpowering his
enemies but by absorbing their worst and refusing to be anything less than perfect love. He goes to the cross willingly. Nobody takes his life from him. He said so himself: “I lay down my life of my own accord.” This is not a tragedy that spiraled out of control. It is a
mission, carried out deliberately, at the appointed time, by the only One in history with both the authority and the love to see it through.
And at the very end, He speaks his last words:
“It is finished.”
Not the last breath of a defeated man. This is the declaration of a King who has done exactly what he came to do, fully and finally. The Lamb of God, announced by John the Baptist at the very opening of the book of John, is sacrificed at the very hour the passover lambs were being slaughtered in the temple courts. The mission is complete. The work is done.
And because it is finished, it stays finished-permanently.
How can a dark day like this be called “Good Friday? On that day, God was not losing. The King was not being dethroned. He was being enthroned, with his arms stretched wide to receive all who would come within reach of his saving embrace.
Behold the Man. Behold your King. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
A PRAYER FOR GOOD FRIDAY
Lord Jesus, today we stop and we remember. We behold you: beaten, bleeding, crowned with thorns, lifted up on the cross. We will not rush past this to Sunday. We want to stand here for a moment and let the weight of it settle on us.
We behold you, Lamb of God, whose sacrifice covers our failure. We receive what you finished. We have nothing to add to it. We only open our hands, and our
hearts, and say thank you.
It is finished. And it is enough.
Amen.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
— John 13:1
