The Inverted Coronation
Introduction: The World's Liturgy
The world has a liturgy. It has a worship service. It has rituals, vestments, and a confession of faith. We are witnessing that liturgy here, in the Praetorium. This is not simply a case of soldiers getting out of hand, a bit of barracks bullying. This is the formal, corporate, and religious response of fallen man to the presence of the holy God. When the kingdom of man comes face to face with the King of heaven, its instinctive and immediate reaction is to mock Him. It cannot do otherwise.
This scene is a coronation. But it is an inverted coronation. The world sees a Galilean peasant, beaten and bloody, and decides to play a game. They will make Him a king, but their kind of king. A joke king. A king to be spat upon. They dress Him in the symbols of power, a robe, a crown, a scepter, but they make sure each one is an insult. A cast-off soldier's cloak for royal purple. A circlet of thorns for a diadem of gold. A flimsy reed for a scepter of iron. And they offer Him the worship of contempt.
What they do not realize, in their blind and brutal game, is that they are officiating at the most significant coronation in the history of the world. They are blind participants in a divine drama, speaking prophetic truth through sneering lips. Every act of mockery is, in fact, an unwitting acknowledgment of who He is. They are crowning the King of the Jews. They are clothing Him in the sin He came to bear. They are placing upon His head the very curse He came to conquer. This is the worship service of the city of man, and its high priests are Roman soldiers. But the God they mock is sovereign over their mockery, turning every jeer into a jewel in His true crown, and using their liturgy of hate to accomplish His liturgy of love.
The Text
Then when the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium, they gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. When they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him. And as they were coming out, they found a man of Cyrene named Simon, whom they pressed into service to bear His cross.
(Matthew 27:27-32 LSB)
The Gathering of the Gentiles (v. 27)
The drama begins in the seat of worldly power.
"Then when the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium, they gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him." (Matthew 27:27)
Jesus has been condemned by His own people, the Jews. Now He is handed over to the Gentiles. The Praetorium was the governor's headquarters, the symbol of Roman imperial might in Jerusalem. This is the nerve center of the pagan world order. And they gather the "whole Roman cohort." A cohort could be up to 600 men. This is not a private affair. This is an official, corporate act. The world system, in its military fullness, is assembled to pass its judgment on the Son of God. This fulfills what Jesus Himself had prophesied, that He would be handed over to the Gentiles to be mocked and crucified (Matthew 20:19). The nations are gathered against the Lord and against His Anointed, just as Psalm 2 foretold. This is institutional rebellion.
The Robe, the Crown, and the Scepter (v. 28-29)
The soldiers now begin to assemble the regalia for their mock king.
"And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand..." (Matthew 27:28-29a)
First, they stripped Him. This is an act of utter humiliation, designed to remove every last shred of dignity. But it is more than that. In the garden, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. After their sin, they were naked and ashamed. Christ, the second Adam, is stripped bare, publicly exposed, in order to bear our shame and clothe us in His righteousness.
Then they put a scarlet robe on Him. This was likely a faded cloak of a Roman officer, a cheap imitation of the royal purple. Scarlet is the color of empire, but it is also the color of sin. As Isaiah says, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). They think they are dressing Him like a fool, but they are prophetically dressing Him in the sins of the world, which He is about to carry to the cross. He is wearing our guilt.
Next, the crown. Not of gold, but of thorns. This is the masterstroke of their satanic ingenuity, and of God's sovereign poetry. When Adam sinned, what was the curse God placed upon the ground? "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you" (Genesis 3:18). Thorns are the very symbol of the curse, of creation groaning under the weight of man's rebellion. And here, the soldiers take the curse itself, twist it into the shape of a crown, and press it down onto the head of the One who came to break the curse. He literally wears the curse as His crown. He conquers the curse by bearing it.
And in His right hand, the place of power and authority, they place a reed. A reed is a common weed, a symbol of fragility and worthlessness. It is a pathetic joke of a scepter. But the prophet Isaiah said of the Messiah, "A bruised reed He will not break" (Isaiah 42:3). They give Him a scepter of weakness, and He receives it, because He is displaying His strength through His weakness. He rules not by breaking the bruised reeds of this world, but by becoming one for our sake.
The Worship of Contempt (v. 29-31)
With the king properly attired, the liturgy of mockery begins in earnest.
"...and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And they spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. When they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him." (Matthew 27:29b-31)
They knelt down. They performed the posture of worship. They hailed Him with the traditional greeting for Caesar. They spoke the absolute truth: He is the King of the Jews. But they did it all in mockery. This is the very essence of hypocrisy and false religion. It is possible to have faultless externals, to say all the right words and perform all the right actions, while the heart is filled with seething contempt for God. The devil knows who Jesus is. He is a better theologian than most seminary professors. But he hates Him.
Then the mockery turns from sarcastic ritual to raw violence. They spat on Him. This is the most profound expression of disgust and rejection one human can show another. Isaiah prophesied it: "I did not hide My face from shame and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6). Then they took His joke scepter, the reed, and used it to beat Him on the head, driving the thorns of the curse deeper into His brow. The world always uses Christ's claims to authority as a weapon against Him. They take the scepter and use it to hammer the crown.
When their game was finished, they stripped Him of the mock regalia and put His own clothes back on. The fun was over; it was time for the execution. He goes to the cross not as a Roman caricature, but as Himself, Jesus of Nazareth, the Lamb of God, wearing the simple garments of a man. The liturgy of mockery is the prelude to the sacrifice.
The Conscripted Disciple (v. 32)
As the procession of death begins, we are introduced to a new character.
"And as they were coming out, they found a man of Cyrene named Simon, whom they pressed into service to bear His cross." (Matthew 27:32)
Jesus, weakened by the scourging and the beatings, is stumbling under the weight of the crossbeam. The soldiers, impatient to get the job done, grab a man from the crowd. His name is Simon, and he is from Cyrene in North Africa. He was likely a Jewish pilgrim in Jerusalem for the Passover. He was an outsider, a bystander. And he was "pressed into service." The word is a technical term for military conscription. He was compelled. He did not volunteer.
And what a picture of discipleship this is. Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matthew 16:24). Simon of Cyrene is the first man to literally do so. But notice how it happens. He is compelled. He is sovereignly interrupted in the course of his normal day and forced into the fellowship of Christ's suffering. This is how grace works. We are not spiritual volunteers. We are rebels, minding our own business on the road to destruction, when the sovereign grace of God conscripts us into the army of the King. He presses us into service. And the first duty He gives us is to take up the instrument of death and follow Him. For Him, the cross was an instrument of execution. For Simon, and for us, it is the instrument of our salvation and the central symbol of our allegiance to the King who was crowned with thorns.
Conclusion: Whose King?
This entire scene is the gospel in miniature. It is the great exchange, acted out in a bloody pantomime. He was stripped that we might be clothed. He wore the scarlet robe of our sin that we might wear the white robe of His righteousness. He wore the crown of the curse that we might receive the crown of life. He was hailed in mockery that we might hail Him in truth. He was spat upon in contempt that we might be washed clean by His blood. He was beaten and broken that we might be healed and made whole.
The soldiers thought they were defining Him, but in reality, they were revealing themselves. And they reveal the heart of every man apart from grace. The world is still kneeling before Jesus in mockery. It still gives Him the title of "king" so long as it is a title without power, a king of platitudes, a king who makes no demands. It still fashions crowns for him, crowns of "social justice" or "personal fulfillment," and then when He does not conform to their caricature, they beat Him with it.
The question this passage forces upon us is simple. There are only two groups of people here. There are the soldiers, who mock the king, and there is Simon, who carries His cross. There is no middle ground. You are either in the cohort, spitting and jeering, or you are on the road behind Him, with the splintered wood on your shoulder. You are either crowning Him with thorns, or you are crowning Him with glory and honor. Which will it be?