The Judgment of the King

This morning, we pick back up in the story of Jesus’s trial and execution with his trial before the Roman governor, Pilate. Let’s begin by reading Mark 15:1-15. From this text, see two points: The Case against the King, and the Collapse of Moral Judgment.

First, from verses 1-5, see the case against the king. When last we saw Jesus, he was on trial before the Sanhedrin, which was the high court of the Jews, a judicial body of seventy elders. They held that trial at night, against the wisdom of Rabbinical teaching, and they violated the OT law by bringing witnesses who could not agree. In a last-ditch attempt to convict Jesus, the high priest asked him directly, “Are you the Messiah?” This is the only question Jesus would answer, and he took it further than the high priest could ever hope by answering, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” In this answer, he affirmed that he was the Messiah but went further to claim equal standing with God. This was all they needed to condemn him, but they still have a problem. They could try Jesus for religious heresy all they wanted. And, contrary to modern opinion, they could actually execute him for this heresy. The Romans didn’t always care about mob justice. It is true that the Roman governor held the power of the sword, and the Jews were not supposed to exercise capital punishment. But, this was something they regularly did anyway. The crowds had already tried to kill Jesus several times. In Nazareth, they tried to throw him off a cliff. Twice, at the temple, they had picked up stones to kill him. So, there was always the option for mob violence. And, the Sanhedrin was known to use this method of execution. In Acts 7, the Sanhedrin executes Stephen by riling up the crowd.  When Paul returned to Jerusalem after his conversion to Christianity, the Jews nearly executed him.

It would seem that the Sanhedrin had all they needed. They arrested Jesus under the cover of darkness to manage perceptions. They provoked a condemning response from Jesus – the highest offense he could offer. As we see even in this passage, they could easily whip up a mob on this blasphemy. But, instead, they go, first thing in the morning, to the palace of the governor of Palestine, Pilate, to seek his judgment. Certainly, from a legal sense, they didn’t have the authority to execute, as John 18 tells us. But, that doesn’t stop them in other cases. I think they go to Pilate because they want to ensure that Jesus’s claim to the throne of David is completely nullified. If they take him out and stone him, his disciples could spread the word that they had unjustly killed the rightful heir of king David. They need Rome to do this dirty work for them.

It’s clear that this is the charge they bring to Pilate, because verse 2 says that Pilate asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate could care less if he blasphemed the God of Israel. The only charge that could hold any sway in his court was that of treason, and to be the king of the Jews would certainly fit that charge. Here, Jesus returns to his silence. The only answer he will give is “You have said so.” Even when Pilate presses him, he gives no answer. So, why did Jesus answer so directly to the high priest, even going further than he had to, but here, in front of Pilate, he will not give a shred of evidence? I think there are a number of reasons for his silence. For one, if Jesus is truly the King of the Jews (which he is), then Pilate, as a governor, has no authority to judge him. John’s account gives us an idea of this. He reveals that when Pilate asked him if he was the king of the Jews, Jesus said, “Did you come up with that on your own, or did others tell you to ask it?” John also tells us that Jesus gave Pilate a lesson in authority, telling him, “You would have no authority unless it was given to you from above.” But, I also think Jesus remains silent because of his resolve to face the cross. All of the Gospels give us the sense that Pilate was looking for any reason to let Jesus go, and he tried several times to find a way out of this. Jesus could have easily given him that way out. But, he had to face the cross because it was his father’s will.

It strikes me, then, that there really is no case against Jesus. Pilate obviously doesn’t perceive Jesus to be a threat. As we will see in a moment, he is even willing to stack him up against a hardened criminal like Barabbas. John tells us that he sought a means of releasing him. So, he doesn’t believe the charges, and even if he did, what kind of threat would an itinerate preacher who didn’t even own a home be to the Roman Empire? At every turn, this case should have fallen apart, and yet it continues to progress, not because of the will of man, but because it was God’s purpose.

With that, consider my second point: The Collapse of Moral Judgment, from verses 6-15. The text gives us evidence of just how badly Pilate wanted to let Jesus go. Verse 6 tells us that Pilate remembered a privilege Roman governors enjoyed. They were given leeway to release prisoners as a means of currying favor with the locals, and it was the practice of the governors of Palestine to release prisoners before Passover as a sign of good will. So, Pilate decides to lean on this practice in an effort to set Jesus free. This is a very risky gamble for Pilate. It’s risky for two reasons. First, he wrongly assesses the priorities of the Jewish people. He thinks that Jesus, when stacked against a hardened criminal, is the easy choice. He fails to recognize that the Jews despised blasphemy above all else.

It’s also risky because of who he puts up against Jesus. He proposes a choice between Jesus and Barabbas. Barabbas was a rebel who had committed murder in the insurrection. This would mean he was a zealot, which was a quasi-political movement built on terrorism, much like Hamas or Hezbollah in our day. They were known for keeping knives strapped to their forearms, and when in a crowd with Roman soldiers, they would ease their way beside the soldier, knife him in the side, and fade away into the crowd. Pilate had recently put down a rebellion, led by the zealots, and it is likely that Barabbas was one of the rebellion’s ring leaders. So, this proposal is risky for Pilate among the soldiers and other Romans who would have hated Barabbas.

Pilate grossly underestimated the chief priests and the crowd, because no sooner had he presented this choice, than the crowd began to cry out, “Give us Barabbas” and “Crucify him.” Pilate is shocked by this, and so, in verse 14, he asks, “Why, what evil has he done?” What a powerful and condemning question! Here is Pilate, a pagan who knows nothing of the law of God. He doesn’t understand why the priests are mad. He can’t fathom why the crowd would want to crucify a homeless preacher over a murderer. And yet, his measure of good and evil is better than that of the priests. He puts things in perspective when he asks, “What evil has he done?” He can see that Jesus is not a hypocrite, like the chief priests who were clearly jealous of him. He can see that Jesus is not bloodthirsty, like the crowd that is crying for his death. He can see that Jesus is not wicked, like the zealot who killed his soldiers. Pilate’s assessment reveals the collapse of morality among the Jewish people. They ignored the law of God to gain a conviction. They chose a murderer over an innocent man. This was more than injustice. This was evil.

But, before we think too highly of Pilate, Mark tells us that he grants the will of the crowd anyway. Why does he do this when he knows that it is all evil and unjust? Verse 15 says he did so because he wished to satisfy the crowd. At the end of the day, Pilate was a politician who wanted to keep his constituents happy. Of course, it was easy enough to justify it. If he did not let this innocent man die, it could incite another rebellion. He had to keep the peace, I’m sure he thought, and what is one life when facing a rebellion?

So, he orders Jesus to be scourged and crucified. We will go through the details of crucifixion next week, but the penalty of scourging itself was a death sentence. In fact, the Romans administered scourging so that crucifixion would be more effective. Roman scourging was carried out by a professional soldier trained in its art. They invented a special tool for this punishment, called the flagrum (we call it a “cat of nine tails” today). The flagrum was a whip made of strands of leather. In each strand of leather was tied bits of bone, metal, and rock, so that when the whip hit its victim, it would bruise and embed. The soldier would whip across the abdomen so that the strands of the whip would grab hold of the victim’s side, and then he would pull. This would gash the person, pulling skin and muscle off as the soldier drew it back. Because it was weighted, the whip could easily break ribs as it hit.

I tell you all this, not to be unnecessarily gory, but because I want you to feel the weight of the moment. There is no point to this sermon other than this. Jesus willingly faced the judgment of wicked men. He was willingly betrayed by his own people, who chose a murderer over the righteous son of God. He was condemned by a pagan ruler who had no authority other than what had been granted by God. And he did all of this that he might redeem us. We should sit in that grief over the next few weeks, especially as we lead up to Easter. And, we should feel the weight of it all, not because we should feel shame or guilt – we’ve been redeemed from that, after all. But, because we should understand the heavy price that was paid for our redemption. As Isaiah 53:4-6 says, “Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”