John 19:4-7 4Pilate came out again and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold, the Man!” 6Then when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify, crucify!” Pilate said to them, “You yourselves take him and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and by that law he ought to die because he made himself out to be the Son of God.”
These verses give the second scene of Jesus’ trial before Pilate after he interrogated and had Jesus flogged. Pilate may have thought he had the situation figured out and solved: beat Jesus and placate the Jews. Pilate once again steps out in the balcony of the praetorian to address the gathered crowd of Jews. The irony is that he had Jesus beaten but at the same time pronounced him innocent. If Jesus was indeed innocent, then why beat him? Pilate was fickle and insincere, just trying to wiggle his way out of a tight corner. He tried to wash his hands but actually condemned himself by both what he did and did not do.
Pilates short proclamation to the crowd did not match the appearance of Jesus, who came out bleeding from the crown of thorns and scourging that he had experienced, wearing the purple robe of mockery placed on him by the soldiers. Pilate was mocking both Jesus and the Jewish crowd. His heart was hardened to any grace he might have received. The guilt on him was great.
The chief priests were also majorly guilty with their shout of Crucify! Their animosity against Jesus had been brewing since he went in to be questioned by Pilate. They had schemed to the point of having a plan. Crucifixion was the typical punishment for Jews convicted of serious crimes. The Romans had gotten the method of cruelty down to a science. It was not only one of the most painful ways to die, it was also shameful with the victims hanging on the cross often naked or left to hang after death to be eaten by bugs and birds. Pilate tried to placate his conscience once more by passing the blame onto the Jews for their own crazy idea. Pilate may have professed that he found nothing wrong with Jesus, but his actions speak differently.
The Jews’ real accusation and problem with Jesus finally comes out in verse 7. They appeal to a law that supposedly condemned the heretical idea of someone claiming to be the Son of God, but do not state what this law was or give any quotation from the Old Testament. They may have had a passage like Leviticus 24:16 in mind, which speaks of blaspheming the name of the Lord. They realized that blaming Jesus for being a fake king did not get anywhere with Pilate, so they tried another tactic. Jesus had been accused of blasphemy before, mentioned in 5:18; 8:58, 59; 10:33, 36. Jesus makes significant claims about himself in John’s Gospel. The listeners (readers) could either accept these as true or harden their hearts in disbelief. Sadly, the Jewish leaders chose the latter. The same choice confronts all who read this Gospel. Will we accept the claims about Jesus’ identity, or will we join Pilate and the Jews in mockery and condemnation?
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