The Characters of Easter by Daniel Darling

Author:Daniel Darling [Darling, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Agonizing Choice

So when we open the gospels and read about Pontius Pilate, it’s good to remember that there is a history that informs and influences the decisions he makes. He’s a man hanging onto his position, who despises the people he is tasked with leading. He has a tenuous alliance with the religious leaders, but you can hear the desperation in his voice and see the uneasiness with which he handles the trial of Jesus. He both disdains these people and is scared of what will happen with his position.

Jesus’ trial was in three parts. There was the religious inquisition, first by Annas and Caiaphas, then the full Sanhedrin, and finally the legal proceedings in front of Pilate. The religious trial was for blasphemy and happened in front of both Annas, the retired high priest who was a sort of godfather figure among the Sanhedrin, and Caiaphas, the actual chief priest, appointed by Pilate but beholden to Annas. Jesus was also given a hearing before the full Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council.

The religious leaders needed the Roman government in this case because they didn’t just want to reprimand Jesus. They wanted Him dead. Blasphemy, according to Jewish law, should result in stoning. But while Rome sometimes looked the other way when the chief priests sought to put people to death (John 10:31; Acts 7:58), only Rome had the authority to carry the kind of state execution they wanted to see Jesus suffer.

But why did they hate Him so much?

There are many reasons for the religious leaders’ animus toward Jesus. One was His claims of deity, though His works fulfilled the Scriptures’ definition of a Messiah. But it’s more likely that they saw Jesus as a threat to their way of life. This arrangement with Rome gave them power. And Jesus directly criticized and exposed the religious leaders’ hypocrisy. So it seems they wanted a state execution as a kind of national rejection of Jesus. Perhaps they thought the execution and shameful death of their leader would quash the Jesus movement. After all, the law held that a person who was put to death by hanging was “cursed” (Deut. 21:22–23). In their thinking, no true Messiah would submit Himself to such an ignominious death.

And yet this very method of death would become an apologetic for Jesus’ divinity. One of the most observant Jews of this period, who studied under the best teachers, would later convert to the Jesus movement and write, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Gal. 3:3 ESV).

In order to see their nemesis put to death in the most cruel and shaming way, they dragged Jesus to Pilate’s Jerusalem palace, the Praetorium near the temple. They couldn’t enter, so they negotiated with Pilate outside his palace, petitioning the governor to execute Jesus by crucifixion. Their charge recorded by Luke: subversion. He was a threat to the Roman

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