This was a most natural and fitting response of the Nazarene to the Roman. It was necessary first to understand the exact nature of the question before an appropriate answer could be made. Jesus simply wished to know whether the question was asked from a Roman or a Jewish, from a temporal or a spiritual standpoint. If the interrogation was directed from a Roman, a temporal point of view, His answer would be an emphatic negative. If the inquiry had been prompted by the Jews, it was then pregnant with religious meaning, and called for a different reply; one that would at once repudiate pretensions to earthly royalty, and, at the same time, assert His claims to the Messiahship and heavenly sovereignty. "Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: What hast thou done?" To this Jesus replied: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."[83] This reply of the Master is couched in that involved, aphoristic, strangely beautiful style that characterized His speech at critical moments in His career. Its import is clear, though expressed in a double sense: first from the Roman political, and then from the Jewish religious side. First He answered negatively: "My kingdom is not of this world." By this He meant that there was no possible rivalry between Him and Cæsar. But, in making this denial, He had used two words of grave import: My Kingdom. He had used one word that struck the ear of Pilate with electric force: the word Kingdom. In the use of that word, according to Pilate's reasoning, Jesus stood self-convicted. For how, thought Pilate, can He pretend to have a Kingdom, unless He pretends to be a king? And then, as if to cow and intimidate the prisoner, as if to avoid an unpleasant issue of the affair, he probably advanced threateningly upon the Christ, and asked the question which the Bible puts in his mouth: "Art thou a king then?" Rising from the simple dignity of a man to the beauty and glory and grandeur of a God, Jesus used the most wonderful, beautiful, meaningful words in the literature of the earth: "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice."[84]