Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Psalm 5, 38, 41-42
19 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him in the face.
4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
7 The Jews insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10 “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
Pilate does not want to have to decide what to do with Jesus.
He's between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, he knows Jesus is innocent. He knows He`s not an insurrectionist. His wife tells him she`s had a dream about this and to have nothing to do with Him. He knows Jesus has done nothing deserving death.
On the other hand, he`s been in trouble with the Jews (and therefore, with Rome) before, and he knows he`s on thin ice. He knows if he goes against what the Jewish leaders want they will appeal to Rome and he will definitely lose his job, and likely, his life.
He's forced into the position of having to choose between saving his neck, or saving his soul.
But he really doesn`t want to choose. He tries to get out of it by sending him to Herod, but Herod just sends Him right back. He tries to get the Jewish leaders to judge him themselves, but they have no authority to execute anyone, only Rome does, so that doesn't work either. He knows he's in a quandary because he believes Jesus to be innocent of all the trumped up charges by the Jewish leaders. So He tries to appeal to the crowd who had so recently shouted "Hosanna!", likely thinking they would support Jesus and choose Him over Barabbas. But the crowd is fickle. Mob mentality takes over and, stirred up by the Jewish leaders, they choose Barabbas and demand Jesus`crucifixion. He thinks, maybe if he just beats Jesus, that`ll be good enough for the crowd and they`ll let him go.
On a side note - this wasn`t just a beating. This was a scourging. They took a thick stick, wrapped in leather with leather thongs at the end that held bits of brass, lead and bone filed to sharp points. Then the victim was lashed with the scourge 40 times in the back, causing the back to become so shredded that sometimes even the entrails and internal organs were exposed. This was torture so severe that it was illegal to perform on a Roman citizen, no matter their crime.
Oh, how Jesus suffered for my sin. Watching The Passion of the Christ drove that home for me more than anything else has - seeing for myself the agony that Jesus went through because of me. And as gory as it was, and as graphic as it was - it was probably, if anything, worse in reality - even based solely on the description of the scourging He would've endured. And I think that forcing ourselves to watch that brutality drives home the seriousness of our sin like perhaps nothing else can. It drives home the contrast between God`s absolute holiness, and our depravity, and the exorbitant price our depravity cost our holy God so that we could be redeemed and restored to relationship with Him. Oh, how He loves us!
But not even the brutal scourging is enough for the fickle mob.
And so, finally, Pilate chooses to save his neck and in so doing, he chooses to reject Jesus.
God will bring all of us to the same point as Pilate. We will be forced into a decision. And even if our decision is not to make a decision, that`s still a decision. Any decision other than the one to accept Jesus, is to reject Him.
Will we choose to save our necks and live for our flesh?
Or will we choose to save our souls and live for Jesus?
Tomorrow's scripture focus: John 19:17-27
1 comment:
Excellent post. I felt the same about The Passion of the Christ. It was definitely very hard to watch, as I think it should be, but even more so because it was for me.
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