"The Coronation of the Crushed King": John 19
John 19, the Mocked King, and the Missing Necessity of the New Birth
This Good Friday sermon was preached by Paul Jung at Canterbury Presbyterian Church. The Preacher is earnest, and comes across as very sincere and I do not want to suggest anything contrary. However, he is not the minister and in this particular instance the minister has failed to stop erroneous doctrine in a sermon from being preached in his pulpit. It is a disturbing sermon. It presents John 19 as the scene in which the coronation of Jesus takes place. My hope remains that afterwards the minister gave good feedback that the preacher will be able to use and grow by.
The sermon’s chief weakness is that it does not handle the context of John 19 with sufficient theological precision. It treats the passage too directly as “the coronation of Jesus,” when the immediate scene is more properly a mock coronation who’s action reveal the depravity of Man. Pilate is not enthroning Christ. The soldiers are not honouring Him. The Jewish leaders are not receiving Him. Rome is not confessing Him. The world’s kings and powers are mocking the true King.
Although this Easter series has not generally not made comment on hermeneutics, an exception needs to be made with this sermon. John is certainly showing royal irony. The crown, robe, public presentation, and inscription all reveal more than the human actors intend. Pilate and the soldiers mean contempt, but God sovereignly uses their contempt to display the truth: the crucified One really is King.
But the sermon has blurred mockery and true enthronement. The cross displays the King in humiliation; it is not Pilate’s coronation of the eternal Son. Christ is eternally King as God, promised King as David’s Son, and publicly vindicated by the Father in His resurrection. On Good Friday, He is revealed as King precisely by being rejected, shamed, and cursed.
Mock Coronation and Adamic Curse
This is where the crown of thorns is especially significant. The sermon notices the crown as part of the royal imagery, but it should have gone deeper. Thorns are not merely an ironic substitute for gold. They belong to Adam’s curse. After Adam’s fall, the ground brings forth thorns and thistles. In John 19, Adam’s world presses the sign of the curse onto the brow of the obedient Son. The crown of thorns is therefore not only Roman mockery; it is Adamic theology. The last Adam bears the curse of the first Adam’s race.
That observation would have strengthened the whole sermon. John 19 does not merely show that Jesus suffers unjustly. It reveals why Adam’s race must die. Every major party in the passage is exposed by its treatment of Christ. Pilate chooses expedience over righteousness. The soldiers mock what they do not understand. The Jewish leaders reject their own Messiah and cry, “We have no king but Caesar.” The crowd demands crucifixion. Rome writes the truth over Jesus’ head in contempt. Jew and Gentile, religion and empire, ruler and mob all converge against the Son of God.
This is not the picture of humanity sincerely looking for the right King. It is the exposure of humanity’s hatred of the true King. The sermon begins with the claim that everyone is looking for a king. But John 19 shows something darker: fallen man does not naturally seek Christ’s reign. Adam’s children love their sins, cling to their idols, and reject the Lord’s Anointed when He stands before them. False kings do exploit sinners, but sinners also love false kings because they promise autonomy, control, pleasure, approval, and self-rule.
This is why the sermon’s anthropology is too thin. It speaks of people searching for security, identity, warmth, and belonging in the wrong places. That may describe part of human experience, but it does not reach the depth of Reformed doctrine. We are not merely disappointed seekers. We are guilty in Adam, corrupt in nature, spiritually dead, lovers of darkness, and hostile to God. Our personal rebellion is not the root of our condition; it is the fruit of original sin.
The sermon does speak of rebellion. It says that sin is wanting God off the throne and wanting ourselves to reign. Again, this is a useful description of personal sin, but by itself it is misleading. God was never savingly enthroned in the heart of the unregenerate sinner. The natural heart is not a neutral throne room waiting for the right occupant. It is a rebel fortress. The sinner does not simply need to stop looking for false kings and choose the true one. He needs a new heart.
This becomes especially important when the sermon moves from “King of the Jews” to “your King.” The inscription over the cross is not a generic religious slogan. “King of the Jews” belongs first to Israel’s covenant story. Jesus is David’s Son, Israel’s Messiah, the promised King of Zion. Therefore, the horror of John 19 is covenantal: the leaders of Israel reject their King and confess Caesar instead. At the same time, Rome mocks and crucifies Him. The guilt is not ethnic but Adamic and universal. Jewish leaders and Gentile power together reveal the world’s hostility to God’s Christ.
Nor does the sermon explain how this crucified “King of the Jews” becomes “my King” two thousand years later. It moves too quickly from the inscription to personal application. A Reformed answer requires more than recognition. Christ becomes mine through grace: He fulfils Israel’s promises, bears the curse, dies as substitute, and by the Spirit unites sinners to Himself through faith. Even in a Good Friday sermon, the preacher need not expound the whole resurrection-ascension-Pentecost sequence, but he should not leave the impression that spiritually dead sinners can simply recognise the King by natural ability.
This is the missing necessity of the new birth. John 19 should be read in the light of John 3: unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 19 shows why. The King stands before Pilate, the soldiers, the priests, and the crowd, yet the old humanity does not see Him. They see a political inconvenience, a religious threat, a prisoner, a joke, a defeated man. They do not see the Lord of glory. That blindness is not intellectual only; it is moral and spiritual. Fallen man cannot behold the King savingly unless the Spirit gives life.
Therefore, this Good Friday sermon failed to preach John 19 faithfully and failed to show why the cross was necessary. The cross is necessary because Adam’s race is guilty, cursed, and hostile to the Son. The thorn-crowned Christ bears Adam’s curse. The mocked King receives the hatred of the world. The innocent Son dies in the place of rebels. His blood is not merely the answer to human disappointment; it is the satisfaction required for guilty sinners who must be reconciled to God.
Therefore, the sermon goes on to subtly undermine the necessity of the new birth. By framing the hearer chiefly as someone searching for the right King, the sermon softens the biblical reality that the natural man cannot see, love, or enter Christ’s kingdom unless he is born from above. John 19 does not present humanity as confused seekers awaiting clearer information, but as Adam’s race exposed in hatred, blindness, cowardice, and unbelief before the true King. If the sinner’s problem is merely misplaced allegiance, then the answer can sound like recognition: behold Jesus, admit your sin, and make Him your King. But if the sinner is dead in Adam, loving darkness and unable to bow before Christ, then the answer must be sovereign grace: the Spirit must give a new heart, open blind eyes, grant repentance and faith, and unite the sinner to the crucified King. The sermon’s failure to ground its appeal in this reality leaves the new birth not merely unstated, but functionally unnecessary.
