<p>19:9 <em>And he went back into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus: Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer</em>- Pilate took the Lord back inside, away from earshot of the Jews, to ask Him more about this &quot;Son of God&quot; claim; for it had touched his conscience. This question is strange. It leads nowhere really, if asked from a purely secular perspective. I suggest that the conscience of a man as hardened as Pilate was being touched, and he sensed that the Lord was indeed from God, or had Divine origins. Hence his question. The Lord's silence was because His whole personality was an answer to the question, for He had shown in His life and showed in His whole personality that He was God's Son.</p><p>Because the Lord was so excluded from society (see on Jn. 8:42), He would have been so focused upon His Heavenly Father. And that would have been felt and perceived. Reflect how the Centurion muttered: &ldquo;Truly this was the Son of God&rdquo;. The Lord&rsquo;s creation of a new family was radical then; and it&rsquo;s just as radical today. In passing, the Lord must have been so tempted to say that Joseph was his father. It would&rsquo;ve made things <em>so </em>much easier for Him. Just as we are tempted to effectively deny our Heavenly Father, and act like we&rsquo;re just the same as this world. According to the rabbinic writing <em>Qiddusin</em> 4:2, a fatherless person must remain silent when asked &ldquo;Where are you from&rdquo;. And this is exactly what Jesus did when asked this very question here in Jn. 19:9. This refusal to call Joseph His father cost Him His life. He refused to call Himself the son of Joseph. Indeed, E.P. Sanders makes the point that the fatherlessness of Jesus not only meant that He would not have been counted as a child of God or son of Abraham; because of these exclusions, He would have been put in the category of &ldquo;a sinner&rdquo;. If Joseph did indeed abandon Mary, she would have been classified as &ldquo;a whore&rdquo;, and Jesus would have been the &ldquo;son of adultery&rdquo;, putting Him in the same &ldquo;sinner category&rdquo;. In this we see a wonderful outworking of how God having a son resulted in that Son being counted as a sinner, even though He was not one. He was treated as &ldquo;a sinner&rdquo;, and thereby He came to know how we feel, who truly are sinners. &nbsp;</p>