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Pilate saw the mob, with Our Lord in the midst of them, returning from Herod and approaching his palace. It is so difficult to wash one’s hands of Christ. Obliged to sum up the case before the people, Pilate returned to the primary charge that He had been perverting the people, and proclaimed:
I examined Him in your presence,
And could find no substance
In any of the charges you bring against Him;
Nor could Herod,
When I referred you to him.
It is plain that He has done
Nothing which deserves death.
LUKE 23:14, 15
Apparently both judges were convinced that, regardless of the report that had been circulated, the Prisoner was guiltless. For a second time, He was declared innocent. Pilate, knowing that the Jews had delivered Christ out of envy, sought another escape from condemning Him. The Sanhedrin actually supplied the excuse by reminding him that it was the custom at the Passover to release a prisoner. There was languishing in jail at the time a “notable” prisoner, Barabbas. This man was a leader of the Jewish underground against the Romans. For both sedition and a murder committed while leading a revolution against Rome, he was put in jail.
Pilate was very clever; he sought to confuse the issue by choosing a prisoner who was guilty of exactly the same charge they brought against Christ, namely, sedition against Caesar. In a few minutes, two figures stood before the multitude on the white marble floor of the praetorium. Pilate sat on a raised platform, surrounded by the imperial guard. Barabbas, on one side, blinked in the sunlight. He had not seen it in months. On the other side stood Christ. Here were two men accused of revolution. Barabbas appealed to national grievances; Christ to conscience. The trumpets sounded. Order was restored.
Pilate stepped forward and addressed the mob:
Whom shall I release?
Barabbas, or Jesus Who is called Christ?
MATTHEW 27:17
The question of Pilate had all the air of democracy and free elections, but it was only its cheap facsimile. Ponder his question. Consider first the people to whom it was addressed, then the question itself. The people themselves were not inclined to put Our Lord to death. For that reason some demagogues:
Had persuaded the multitude to ask for Barabbas.
MATTHEW 27:20
There is always a ragtag, bobtail group, careless and thoughtless, who are ready to be at the mercy of that kind of oratory which has been called “the harlot of the arts.” The people can be misled by false leaders; the very ones who shout “Hosanna” on Sunday can shout “Crucify” on Friday.
What happened on that Good Friday morning was that through propagandists the people became the masses. A democracy with a conscience became a mobocracy with power. When a democracy loses its moral sense, it can vote itself right out of democracy. When Pilate asked:
Whom shall I release?
MATTHEW 27:17
he was holding a fair democratic election. He was assuming that a vote means the right to choose between innocence and guilt, goodness and evil, right and wrong.
In answer to Pilate’s question the masses thundered back:
Barabbas.
MATTHEW 27:22
Pilate could hardly believe his ears. Barabbas could hardly believe his ears either! Was he about to be a free man? For the first time, he became aware that he might now carry on his revolt. He turned his swollen burning face toward the Nazarene. He meant to measure his rival from head to foot, but his glance no longer dared to rise. There was something about His eyes which read his soul, as if that Nazarene was really sorry for him because he was free.
But the whole concourse raised the cry,
Away with this Man;
We must have Barabbas released.
LUKE 23:18
Once more Pilate answered them,
What would you have me do, then,
With the King of the Jews?
MARK 15:12
He of erred to set Jesus at liberty;
But they continued to answer with shouts of,
Crucify Him, crucify Him.
LUKE 23:20, 21
Then for the third time he said to them,
Why, what wrong has He done?
I can find no fault in Him that deserves death;
I will scourge Him, and then He shall go free.
But they, with loud cries, insisted, on their
Demand that He should be crucified;
And their voices carried the day;
Pilate gave his assent that their
Request should be granted, releasing
The man of their choice who had
Been imprisoned for revolt and murder.
LUKE 23:22–22
The majority is not always right. Majority is right in the field of the relative, but not in the absolute. Majority is a legitimate test so long as voting is based on conscience and not on propaganda. Truth does not win when numbers alone become decisive. Numbers alone can decide a beauty queen, but not justice. Beauty is a matter of taste, but justice is tasteless. Right is still right if nobody is right, and wrong is still wrong if everybody is wrong. The first poll in the history of Christianity was wrong!
Barabbas was freed because of Christ, political freedom though it was. But it was a symbol that through His death men were to be made free. It happened at Passover time when a lamb was substituted for the people and went to death in atonement for their sins. The Savior should suffer and the sinner go free. The Book of Exodus had proclaimed that the sinner was to be redeemed with a lamb, but the Lamb could not be redeemed. The Savior could not be released, but the sinner could.
Pilate, still anxious not to condemn Christ, with a most peculiar turn of mind said:
I will scourge Him,
And then He shall go free.
LUKE 23:16
Scourging was always inflicted by the Romans before crucifixion, but this scourging was not such a punishment. As Lysias later on had no hesitation to scourge Paul without an offense being proved, so Pilate inflicted a punishment in the hope of moving the crowd to pity. Naturally it was no surprise to Our Lord, Who had foretold that He would be scourged and crucified. Pilate had made three attempts thus far to free Our Lord; one by declaring Him innocent, another by releasing a prisoner at the Passover, and the final one by scourging.
THE SCOURGING
Pilate tried to strike a balance between satisfying the Sanhedrin and his own conscience. But Pilate was wrong in thinking that the drawing of blood would calm their passions and melt them to pity. Such compromises in the face of justice rarely achieve their ends. If guilty, Pilate should have condemned Him to death; if innocent, he should have released Him.
Our Lord looked forward to giving His life as a ransom for sin; He had described Himself as having a baptism wherewith He was to be baptized. John gave Him the baptism of water, but the Roman soldiers now gave Him His baptism of blood. After opening His sacred flesh with violent stripes, they now put on Him a purple robe which adhered to His bleeding body. Then they plaited a crown of thorns which they placed on His head. How the soldiers cursed when one thorn plucked their fingers, but how they sneered when the crown of thorns crowned His brow! They then mocked Him and put a reed in His hand after beating Him on the head. Then they knelt down before Him in feigned adoration. As Isaias had foretold:
Our weakness, and it was He Who carried
The weight of it, our miseries,
And it was He who bore them.
A leper, so we thought of Him,
A man God had smitten and brought low;
And all the while it was for our sins
He was wounded, it was guilt of ours
Crushed Him down; on Him the punishment fell
That brought us peace, by His bruises we were healed.
ISAIAS 53:4, 5
After the scourging, Pilate brought the bleeding Christ before the mob saying:
See, I am bringing Him out to you,
To show that I cannot find any fault in Him…
See, here is the Man.
JOHN 19:4, 6
You see the kind of man that you are accusing. Behold Him not decorated with ermine, with no other crown but thorns, with no other mark of Kingship than red blood and with no other sign of authority than a reed. Be assured that He will never again assume the title of a King which has cost Him so dearly. I had hoped to find some spark of humanity in you, and that is why I yielded to your wishes.
But when the leaders of the people saw Him, they cried out:
Crucify Him, crucify Him.
Pilate said:
Take Him yourselves and crucify Him.
The people answered:
We have our own law, and by our law
He ought to die,
For pretending to be the Son of God.
JOHN 19:6, 7
Pilate said that He was a “man” they said, “the Son of God.” Pilate had declared that He was innocent before the Roman law. They answered that He was guilty before their law. When Pilate heard them calling Him “the Son of God”:
He was more afraid than ever.
JOHN 19:8
Superstition goes hand in hand with skepticism. Herod did not believe in the Resurrection; nevertheless, when he heard of Our Lord preaching in his territory, he thought that Christ was John the Baptist who was risen from the dead. Pilate did not believe that He was the Son of God; nevertheless, he wondered at this strange Being before him, Who spoke no words in His own defense. Deeply shaken and fearful that probably Christ was some messenger from the gods, Pilate called Him inside to his judgment chamber and said to Him:
Whence hast Thou come?
JOHN 19:9
Pilate did not ask, “Who art Thou?” or “Art Thou the Son of God?” but “Whence art Thou?” The Lord’s Galilean origin did not interest him, for he had already sent Christ as the Galilean to Herod. He perceived Christ to be something more than a man. If He was really from heaven he would not crucify Him; therefore, he asked privately for His real origin. Pilate had already asked six questions. There remained only one more which he would ask.
But Jesus refused to answer the question. Pilate had already turned his back on truth. Five times during the trial Our Lord had kept a mysterious silence, before the high priest, the Sanhedrin, Herod, and twice before Pilate. The silence might have meant that bearing the sins of the world He had nothing to say in His own defense. When He spoke it was as a shepherd; when He was silent it was as a “sheep,” as Isaias had foretold:
A victim? Yet He Himself bows to the stroke;
No word comes from Him.
Sheep led away to the slaughter-house,
Lamb that stands dumb while it is shorn;
No word from Him.
ISAIAS 53:7
Pilate had treated Christ as a subject of speculation for he availed himself not of the truth before him. To such men, there is no response from the heavens. In the depths of his own mind, Pilate had reached the conviction of innocence, but he did not act upon it. Therefore Pilate deserved no answer and received none. He had forfeited his title to any further revelation from the Prisoner. Every soul has its day of visitation, and Pilate had his.
CLAUDIA
It may have been at this moment that Claudia, the wife of Pilate, sent her message to her husband.
Claudia was the youngest daughter of Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus. Julia had been married three times, the last time to Tiberius. Because of her dissolute life, Julia was exiled when she bore Claudia to a Roman knight. When Claudia was thirteen, Julia sent her to be brought up by Tiberius. When she was sixteen, Pontius Pilate, himself of low origin, met Claudia and asked Tiberius for permission to marry her. Thus Pilate married into the Emperor’s family, which assured his political future. On the strength of his marriage, Pilate was made the Procurator of Judea.
Roman governors were forbidden to take their wives with them to the provinces. Most politicians were very happy about this, but not Pilate. Love broke a stern Roman law. After Pilate had been in Jerusalem six years, he sent for Claudia who was more than eager to face the loneliness of life away from the capital of the world amidst an unknown and alien people.
We may reasonably conclude that Claudia must have heard of Jesus, perhaps from the Jewish maid who prepared her bath, or the stewards who brought news about Him. She might actually have seen Him, for the Fortress of Antonia where she lived, was near the temple of Jerusalem and Jesus was often there.
She might even have heard His message, and since “No man ever spoke as this man,” her own soul was stirred. The very contrast between Him and His ideas of the world she knew and the thoughts she thought, deepened His appeal. How little did the women of Jerusalem who saw Claudia looking out through the lattice, who tried to catch the flash of gems on her white hands, or mark the pride of her patrician face, ever guess how deep were her thoughts, how intense her sorrow, how profound her yearning?
There was almost a Prussian submission to law among the Romans. No woman was allowed to interfere in the processes of law, nor even to offer a suggestion concerning legal procedure. What made Claudia’s entrance onto the scene all the more remarkable is that she sent a message to her husband Pontius Pilate the very day he was deciding the most important case of his career, and the only one for which he ever would be remembered—the trial of Our Blessed Lord.
To send a message to a judge while he was in court was a punishable offense, and only the awfulness of the deed she saw about to be done could have moved Claudia to it.
And even as he sat on the judgment seat,
His wife had sent him a message,
Do not meddle with this innocent man;
I dreamed to-day that I suffered much on his account.
MATTHEW 27:19
While the women of Israel were silent, this heathen woman bore witness to the innocence of Jesus, and asked her husband to deal with Him in a righteous way.
The message of Claudia was an epitome of all that Christianity would do for pagan womanhood. She is the only Roman woman in the Gospels and she is a woman of the very highest rank. This dream was an epitome of the dreams and longings of a pagan world, its age-long hope for a righteous man—a Savior.
What the dream was we know not, but a modern writer, Gertrud von Le Fort, has guessed at it. Good Friday morning, as Claudia awoke, she seemed to hear voices in the catacombs saying: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate” then later on in Roman temples turned into churches: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate” then gathering like the roar of the sea, the voices multiplied and chanted in churches that rose up like pinnacles in the sky: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate.” But whatever was the dream, the intuitive woman was right, the practical man, wrong. Pilate, finding the Prisoner still silent, was full of wrath, for he was accustomed to seeing the accused crawling in dread before him.
What, said Pilate, hast Thou no word for me?
Dost Thou not know that I have power
To crucify Thee, and power to release Thee?
JOHN 19:10
Pilate spoke of his power to release or to condemn. But if the Prisoner before him were innocent, Pilate had no power to crucify; if he were guilty, he had not power to release. The judge is judged, Our Blessed Lord spoke at once, reminding Pilate that any judicial authority which he had came not from Caesar but from God. Pilate had boasted of the arbitrariness of his power, but Christ referred him to a power that is delegated to men.
Thou wouldst not have any power over Me at all,
If it had not been given thee from above.
JOHN 19:11
The power that Pilate boasted was “given.” Whether a governor, king or ruler knows it or not, all earthly authority is derived from on high. “By Me kings reign,” said the Book of Proverbs. But Our Lord immediately ascribed a greater sin to both Judas and the high priest.
That is why the man who gave Me
Up to thee is more guilty yet.
JOHN 19:11
Pilate, the Gentile, did not know that his power came from God, but Caiphas did; so did Judas. This superior knowledge made each more guilty than the Roman. Pilate sinned through ignorance; Caiphas sinned against knowledge; so did Judas.
CONDEMNATION
This bold rebuke of Pilate, reminding him of his dependence upon God and charging him with the lesser, but nonetheless real, sin, stirred his efforts more than ever toward “releasing Him.” Pilate went outside to meet the mob and reaffirm the innocence of the Prisoner. But the mob had their clever answer ready:
Thou art no friend of Caesar,
If thou dost release Him;
The man Who pretends to be a King
Is Caesar’s rival.
JOHN 19:12
Pilate was frightened! If he released the Prisoner, complaint would be made to the already suspicious Emperor that he was guilty of conspiracy and treason. If so, he might lose both his governorship and his head. It was very strange that the mob who despised Caesar for his massacres, for all the harm that he had done them, and for his prostitution of the temple, now proclaimed that they had no king but Caesar. By proclaiming Caesar as their king, they renounced the idea of a Messias and made themselves vassals of the Empire, thus preparing for the Roman armies that swallowed up Jerusalem within a generation. The terrors of Tiberius seemed more real to Pilate than the denying of justice to Christ. But in the end, those who fear men rather than God lose that which they hoped men would preserve for them. Pilate later was deposed by the Roman Emperor on a complaint by the Jews—another instance of men being punished by the very instruments in which they confided. When Pilate heard the threat to inform Caesar of his partiality to a man whom they accused of being an enemy of Caesar, Pilate sat down in his judgment seat. Pointing to the Prisoner robed in dried blood, crowned with thorns and a scarlet cloak, he said to the people:
See, here is your King.
But they cried out,
Away with Him; away with Him, crucify Him.
JOHN 19:14, 15
Pilate asked:
What, shall I crucify your King?
The chief priests answered:
We have no King, except Caesar.
JOHN 19:15
And the king took them at their word! As once before, in the days of Samuel, they rejected the government of God in order to have a king which God gave them in anger, so now, as they rejected the Kingship of Christ they would be ground to the earth under the kingship of Caesar. It was a Roman custom when a criminal was condemned to death to take a long stick, break it in two, and throw it at the prisoner’s feet. Pilate followed this custom, and the broken pieces on the marble floor formed the figure of a cross.
Ibis ad crucem (“Thou shalt suffer the Cross”) was the Latin edict, followed by the order: I, Lector, expedi crucem (“Go, Lector, prepare the Cross”).
Thereupon Pilate gave Jesus up into their hands,
To be crucified.
JOHN 19:16
Pilate in the delivery of the Prisoner to Crucifixion could never have pleaded that he was powerless; a moment before he had boasted of his power to condemn and to release. Nor could he excuse himself on the ground that he lacked courage to oppose those who willed Christ’s death, for a short time later, when they asked that the superscription over the Cross be changed, he proved how stubborn he could be. Pilate was playing a double role. He did not wish to offend those whom he was governing lest he be reported to Caesar, nor did he wish to condemn innocent blood.
The guilt for the Crucifixion is not to be fixed upon any one nation, race, people, or individual. Sin was the cause of the Crucifixion, and all mankind had inherited the infection of sin. Jew and Gentile shared in the guilt, but what is more important is that the Heavenly Father also delivered Him to death, and both Jew and Gentile share in the fruits of Redemption:
He did not even spare His own Son,
But gave Him up for us all.
ROMANS 8:32
Pilate then:
Sent for water and washed his hands
In full sight of the multitude,
Saying as he did so, I have no part
In the death of this Innocent Man;
It concerns you only.
MATTHEW 27:24
Pilate was certainly unconscious of a mysterious rite ordered by Moses, but the people who saw Pilate declaring himself innocent must have thought of it. Moses had commanded:
And the elders of this neighboring city,
Close to the dead man,
Will wash their hands over the heifer that lies
Slain in the glen, protesting,
Not ours the hand that shed this blood;
Our eyes never witnessed the deed;
Be merciful, Lord, to Israel, the people
Thou hast claimed for Thyself;
Do not charge Israel, Thy own people, with guilt
Because it is stained with an innocent man’s blood.
DEUTERONOMY 21:6–6
Now the role was reversed. It was Pilate who declared himself innocent; it was the followers of Moses who did the opposite. The ceremony of Moses prefigured being made innocent by blood, which was the manner of Christ’s death. Pilate, however, sought his innocence in water as Mohammed sought his in sand. Spenser in his Faery Queene described Pilate all the rest of his life as continually washing his hands. Lady Macbeth did this, but as water could not wash Pilate’s heart, so Lady Macbeth complained:
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No…
Though the cowardly Governor washed away symbolically the responsibility for his perversion of justice, history has rung with the cry: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
Judas confessed that he had betrayed “innocent blood” Pilate repeatedly “found no fault” in Him; Herod neither; Claudia Procula regarded Him as a “just man” the thief on the cross later would say that He had done no wrong; and the centurion would finally proclaim:
No doubt but this was the Son of God.
MATTHEW 27:54
But now when Pilate declared himself innocent of His Blood, the people cried out:
His Blood be upon us, and our children.
MATTHEW 27:25
That Blood could be upon them for destruction, but it was still redeeming Blood. Though they attached a curse to themselves, the One Whom they crucified had not ratified their sentence. In the end they will repent. Before the end, there is always the remnant that will be saved. Even now, there was not a single woman mentioned among them as desiring His death. Then, too, among them in this hour were noble souls like Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, the steward of Herod’s house, and in a few years Paul. But at that moment when He was given over by earth, after He had been given over by heaven, to be crucified, there followed another mocking:
Stripping Him of the scarlet cloak,
They put His own garments on Him.
MARK 15:20
There was nothing said about taking off Him the crown of thorns, though they did take off the robe in which He had been mocked and derided as a false King. His own raiment is put on, which would probably include His outer and inner garments, as well as the seamless tunic, for which the soldiers later on would cast lots. He would go forth in His own garments and be identified as the One Who had preached to His people and walked among them as the Messias.
They led Him away to be crucified.
MARK 15:20
He was led out of the city, which was the custom in all executions. Leviticus had ordered that blasphemers be put to death outside the city. Stephen, when he was stoned later on as the first martyr, was led beforehand outside the city. The law also ordained that the scapegoat, on whom the hands of the priest had been laid as if to impute the sins of the people, should be led outside the city to signify that the sins of the people might be carried away. The Epistle to the Hebrews described this symbolism:
When the high priest takes the blood of beasts
With him into the sanctuary,
As an of erring for sin, the bodies of those
Beasts have to be burned, away from the camp;
And thus it was that Jesus, when He would
Sanctify the people through His own blood,
Suffered beyond the city gate.
HEBREWS 13:11, 12
They willed now that He should die, but what He was and what they hated could never die.
So Jesus went out, carrying His own cross,
To the place named after a skull;
Its Hebrew name is Golgotha.
JOHN 19:17
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