Ecce Homo

On the morning of the first day of the Passover feast almost two thousand years ago, a large crowd had gathered outside the palace of Pontius Pilate. Earlier that morning the Jewish religious leaders had brought the infamous Jesus of Nazareth to answer charges of treason against Cesar. They claimed that since he proclaimed himself “King of the Jews” he had committed an act of sedition, and could therefore be punished by death under Roman law. The Jews had lost the right to condemn criminals to death with the Roman conquest, for both religious and civil laws. In their own midnight councils, the leaders of Israel had found this Jesus guilty of blasphemy, for claiming to be the Son of God. A sentence of death by stoning under the law was sought after. However, knowing that they had no power to carry out such a punishment they brought the Savior to the Romans. Pilate, the roman authority in Jerusalem, had found no guilt in Jesus, but had consented to scourge him as a troublemaker. Now Pilate stood before the crowd in the early morning light, he presented to the people the object of their protests. Jesus also stood before the crowd, he had been scourged and beaten, the roman soldiers had given him a purple robe to mock him, and a cruel crown of thorns laced his brow.
Pilate had grown impatient with the obvious injustice being carried out before him, he knew he was being used to carry out the agenda of the Jewish leadership. It was here that he plead with the crowd one last time to reconsider what they had requested of him. “Behold the man!” he shouted to the bloodthirsty mob. Not too long afterwards, Pilate consented to have Christ crucified.
“Behold the man!” was the invitation Pilate the pagan had offered the Children of Israel. But what the crowd could not, or would not see, was that before them indeed stood the King of the Jews. The Great I Am. The mighty Jehovah! He who had split the red sea for them and given them dry ground to cross on, who had fed them with manna in the wilderness, who caused the walls to Jericho to tumble to the ground, who had been with Gideon, Saul, David, and Solomon. He whose finger it was that wrote the law for Moses in the stone, whose glory rested on the tabernacle by night and who covered the children of Israel in clouds by day. The Shiloh, the Messiah, now stood before his chosen people beaten and mocked. Even now he was delivering these very people from their sins. They, for all their pride and professed knowledge of the gospel could not see the Lord. They did not behold the man.
Have we “[beheld] the man”? Our invitation does not come from Pilate, but nevertheless we have been given one. “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” says the prophet Isaiah . The prophet Nephi says “[He] inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him.” But how to we behold the Savior? Very few individuals in the scriptures have actually beheld the Savior face to face. We read of Enoch, Moses, Isaiah, the Brother of Jared, Nephi, Lehi, Jacob, Alma the younger, the multitudes in the New World, and Moroni. We read of Peter, Paul, Thomas, and Mary. We also know of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith amongst many others. All these people have beheld with their own eyes the Savior of the world. Many of them have felt the prints of the nails in His hands, and have washed his feet in their tears. They have seen his glory and He has called them by name. They have born their testimony to us that “hat he lives! For [they] saw him . . . and . . . . heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father.”
Can such a sacred experience be given to each of us? The Lord has promised that eventually all “his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face” But does one need to actually, physically behold the Savior’s face to behold him? The answer is no. There are dozens of instances in the scriptures where ordinary people have “beheld the man”. For the Lord means for each of his disciples to bear testimony that “He lives!”
As an unnamed woman walked to Jacob’s well near Samaria, she saw a man sitting at the well. As she lowered her vessel to the cool waters below the man turned to her in the heat of the day and said, “Give me to drink.” The conversation that ensued between them was to change her eternal life forever. The man spoke of living water, that if a man should drink of it, should never thirst, but would have eternal life. He told the woman things that no man knew except for her. She considered him a prophet. They talked further about the nature of God and about the Messiah. “The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.” The spirit had touched her heart and she ran to tell others of this man, the Christ. Although she saw him with her natural eyes then, it wasn’t until she had walked the path of repentance and had been washed of all her sins that she came to know the Christ and actually beheld him. She knew him when her heart came to “sing the song of redeeming love.”
Each of our hearts can be touched by the spirit, in a meeting or in a conversation with the Lord’s servants, or when reading His holy word. But will we take that seed, that imprint of the Spirit on our spirits, to fruition? Will we take the song of redeeming love into full chorus, or only hum a few bars under our breath?
Jesus sat in the court of the temple. There was dust on the ground from the recent construction of this holy place. He sat alone, in quiet thought. His solitude was shattered by the clamor of a crowd drawing closer to him. The form of a woman was hurled through the dust to his feet. “Master,” they said, “this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? . . . But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.” That mighty finger, which had once engraved the law these Pharisees were citing, now drew idly in the dust, but Jehovah, he who maketh the law, was about to pass judgment: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The pricked consciences of the wicked Pharisees caused them to shrink from the Master’s presence one by one until He who truly was without sin and the woman were left alone.
“Woman,” the master said addressing her with love and dignity, “where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?”
The sin racked woman looked up from the tear marked dust and looked to the Son, “No man, Lord.”
“Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” It was now up to the woman to heed the command of the Savior. She would have a long process before her but it was possible through He who truly is without sin. No sin is unforgivable. And this woman when her soul was made white and pure again in the blood of the Lamb could say “He Lives!” She beheld the man!
Two men knelt before the gathered mob. They were bound and faced condemnation by fire. They were jeered and mocked and humiliated for what they had been teaching others. One man stepped out from the crowd, fully confident in his own intellectual prowess. “Now Zeezrom was a man who was expert in the devices of the devil, that he might destroy that which was good; therefore, he said unto Amulek: Will ye answer the questions which I shall put unto you?” Before he began his atheistic inquisition he offered his subjects, Alma and Amulek, gold if they would deny the existence of God. They would not. Zeezrom began his tirade against the humble servants of God. They answered him in all his questions.
Then something happened that Zeezrom did not expect. The spears of truth pierced the hardness of his pride and intellectualism. The testimony of men who knew and the mere mention of the divine mission of the Savior and his central role in the great plan of happiness was enough to make this once proud man tremble. “And Zeezrom began to inquire of them diligently, that he might know more concerning the kingdom of God” Soon Zeezrom was silenced the inquisition was taken up by others, but Zeezrom continued to listen and Alma and Amulek continued in their testimony: “But God did call on men, in the name of his Son, (this being the plan of redemption which was laid) saying: If ye will repent and harden not your hearts, then will I have mercy upon you, through mine Only Begotten Son; Therefore, whosoever repenteth, and hardeneth not his heart, he shall have claim on mercy through mine Only Begotten Son, unto a remission of his sins; and these shall enter into my rest.”