Three people get shoutouts in the Apostle’s Creed: Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate.
We hardly need to puzzle over why Jesus is included. It is, after all, the Creed of His Apostles.
The Virgin Mary’s inclusion is likewise unsurprising; if you mention someone (after Jesus), Theotokos seems an obvious choice.
But why Pilate?
The Heidelberg Catechism asks and answers that question in Q&A 38:
Q. Why did he suffer “under Pontius Pilate” as judge?
A. So that he, though innocent, might be condemned by an earthly judge, and so free us from the severe judgment of God that was to fall on us.
Amen to Heidelberg (and to the closely aligned Baptist rendering in An Orthodox Catechism)! The earthly trial and conviction of Jesus was a rich confluence of fulfilled prophecy, gospel-disclosure, and vicarious redemption. Jesus, though sinless, was counted among the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12), exchanged for a sinner (Matthew 27:26), and condemned to an accursed death (Galatians 3:13).
But there’s more. Including Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea for about ten years in the early first century A.D., locates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the same literal, lived-out history we are living out now. The Apostle’s Creed does not confess mystical principles or ephemeral spiritualities; it confesses that the gospel happened in literal, objective history. When Paul writes “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15), he’s talking about the very same world we’re living in today.
This may seem obvious—even painfully so. But has the reality of the tangible connection this establishes to Jesus been fully absorbed? For many of us who follow Him in faith, I’m convinced it hasn’t.
Jesus suffered and died in the same world we are living in now. He is not a storybook hero of a fictional realm; He is God made flesh in our very own world. Share on XI’m from the Pacific Northwest, but lived for several years in South Carolina. One evening I was feeling a little homesick, and as I stood outside enjoying the warm Southern twilight, something struck me. I was standing on the poured concrete of my driveway in Greenville, and that driveway connected to a paved street that wound its way out of my neighborhood to the main road, and eventually to the Interstate. And that Interstate connected to another and continued over 2,800 miles too an off-ramp and another series of streets, and then it connected right to the driveway I was from, so far away.
There was an unbroken road, paved from where I stood to my hometown, a tangible connection between my fingers when I knelt down to touch the street, and the people I was particularly missing that evening.
There’s a similarly tangible connection made in confessing that “Jesus Christ … suffered under Pontius Pilate.”Jesus suffered and died in the same world we are living in now. He is not a storybook hero of a fictional realm; He is God made flesh in our very own world.
And, because His literal suffering and death under Pilate led to His literal resurrection, the tangible connection is more than just historical. Jesus is alive, even now. He is as alive as you or me. His incarnate lungs inhale; His human heart beats; He is seated at the right hand of the Father, actively making intercession for us (Romans 8:34). When we sin, he is our advocate (1 John 2:1). When his first martyr died, he rose to receive him home (Acts 7:55, 59).
I love the words of the old Gadsby Hymn, A Man There Is A Real Man. It is a gripping meditation on the current ministry of the God-man, focusing especially on the abiding reality of His incarnation:
A Man there is, a real Man
With wounds still gaping wide,
From which rich streams of blood once ran,
In hands, and feet, and side
[Tis no wild fancy of our brains,
No metaphor we speak;
That same dear Man in heaven now reigns
That suffered for our sake.]
This wondrous Man of whom we tell,
Is true Almighty God;
He bought our souls from death and hell;
The price, his own heart’s blood.
That human heart he still retains,
Though throned in highest bliss;
And feels each tempted member’s pains;
For our affliction’s his.
Come, then, repenting sinner come;
Approach with humble faith;
Owe what thou wilt the total sum
Is cancelled by His death.
His blood can cleanse the blackest soul,
And wash our guilt away;
He will present us sound and whole,
On that tremendous day.
So, why Pilate? Because confessing that Jesus suffered in the real world reminds us that Jesus is real. That may be the simplest and most basic truth of the gospel, but it’s the one we tend to forget.
For the Christian, every moment of sinful stumble, every temptation to doubt, every discouragement over life in this world in all its manifold trials, is a moment of forgetfulness of the reality of Jesus. But the gospel hope we have is this: Jesus is real whether we forget or not. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).
May we all, by faith, maintain that tangible connection with Christ—who suffered under Pontius Pilate, but is alive today. May we realize his reality; may we rejoice in His resurrection; may we rest in the confident hope of His return.
Nicolas Alford serves as Pastor of King’s Cross Church in Kirkland, WA, and has taught systematic theology for the Reformed Baptist Seminary. He has co-authored and authored several books, including Doxology: How Worship Works, In Praise of Old Guys, and Further Up and Further In: Experiencing the Inexhaustible Gospel of Jesus Christ, published by Marrow Press. Nick is married to Shelby, and they are blessed with three children.
