Luke 23:13-25 Jesus before Pilate
part II. Parallel passages Matthew 27:11-26, Mark 15:1-15, John 18:28-29:16.
Having failed to avoid responsibility for dealing with Jesus, Pilate now had to
make a decision. Luke records Pilate's attempt to use a customary once-a-year
pardon of a prisoner in an effort to get Christ released. This custom in itself
has little explanation - why was Pilate obliged to release one prisoner to the
Jews? Perhaps it was a Roman means of pacifying an occupied people, to let them
think that they had some humaneness or mercy in their administration of the
occupied territories. Pilate perhaps thought that the people would want Jesus
released and he would thereby have some cover for refusing the priests' desire
to have Jesus executed. It didn't work - most likely the priests had foreseen
this possibility and worked out in advance how to get the people to ask for the
release of Barabbas. From a strictly political view, Barabbas was probably more
dangerous to the Romans, as a fomenter of rebellion, than Jesus, a teacher of
unorthodox religion. So executing Barabbas and freeing Jesus would have been
Pilate's preference. This gambit did not work.
Matthew
records some details not in Luke's account. Pilate's wife sent him a message
telling him not to have anything to do with Jesus' death. (Matthew 27:19) The
extent to which Pilate weighed his wife's concerns against his political duties
is not told, only that the political necessities outweighed her advice. How
often do we find ourselves in a situation where the advice of our spouse runs
directly counter to what the world is telling us? How do we weigh conflicting
advice? How often do we make the wrong decision?
Matthew
also records Pilate's ceremonial washing of his hands of the blood of Jesus.
This was such a hypocritical farce that 'washing one's hands of the matter' is
to this day a euphemism for trying to escape the responsibility for something
that one has control of and refuses to accept responsibility. The peoples'
response? “His blood shall be on us and on our children!” And to this day many Christians believe that the Jews are
guilty of crucifying Christ. The point, of course, is that we must have the
blood of Christ on us if we are to be freed from the guilt of our sins. In this
sense, we are all guilty of His blood because all of us have sinned. (See
Hebrews 9:14, one of several relevant verses.)
John
records a conversation between Jesus and Pilate about Jesus' royalty. Jesus
quickly turns it to a discussion about truth. Pilate, being a politician and a
pragmatist, simply had no belief that truth has any meaning. (John 18:38) It's
all relative. It's all about what works.
Expediency. Of course he had no idea that a few hours earlier Jesus had
explained to His disciples that He was the way, the truth, and the life. (John
14:6). And here Jesus also explains the consequences of accepting or rejecting
the truth.
In
the end, Pilate delivered Jesus to their will. Whether his reluctance to
execute Jesus had come from a genuine desire for justice or from political
pragmatism is in the end irrelevant. He was out-maneuvered by the priests, who
had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. And Pilate reckoned that a frenzied crowd
and populace was more dangerous to Roman occupation than a miscarriage of
justice.
How
often do people get pressured by the opinions and verbal protestations of those
that they theoretically are leaders of? Does that really matter? Pharaoh was
apparently not subject to any public pressure, but he served God's purpose by
hardening his own heart. So Pilate served God's purpose here. These two
examples might lead us to a kind of extreme Calvinism, that we are God's
puppets and have no say in the matter. Jesus' words in John 19:11 suggest that,
but Jesus only said that God had given Pilate authority; He did not say that
God had forced Pilate to use his authority in a particular way. That was up to Pilate. Yet in God's
foreknowledge, He knew what Pilate would do with the authority he was given.
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