H. Jesus before Pilate (23:1–5)
H. Jesus before Pilate (23:1–5)
The Jewish leaders had condemned Jesus from a variety of motives. The Pharisees saw him as a blasphemer and they smarted under his biting rebukes of their hypocrisy. The high priests doubtless found their revenues hit when he cleansed the temple and Caiaphas pointed out that his existence was politically inexpedient: he might cause the Romans to take away what little liberty remained to them. So for more than one reason they wanted him executed. But they lacked the power (John 18:31). Obviously Rome could not allow a subject people to use their own legal processes to kill off her supporters, so the power to inflict the death penalty remained with the governor. In this case the trouble, from the Jews’ point of view, was that Jesus’ crime was blasphemy, the claim to be the Son of God. This was not in Roman eyes an offence that merited the death penalty. So the Jews had to draw up their accusation in terms that would seem serious to the Romans. They did this by accusing Jesus of being a king, a political revolutionary.
1–2. The depth of feeling that gripped the Sanhedrin is seen in that the whole company of them brought Jesus to Pilate. This was not a matter for a few representatives, though, of course, the formal charge would have been laid by only one or two of them. They accused him on three counts: perverting our nation (a curiously unspecific charge which probably means sedition; cf. JB, ‘inciting our people to revolt’), forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar (shades of 20:25!), and saying that he himself is Christ a king (though Jesus had refused to use the term in their examination of him, 22:67ff.). Both the second and third charges were serious and Pilate could be expected to take a dim view of anyone guilty of either.
3. Pilate’s first question of Jesus is identically worded in all four Gospels and in all four his you is emphatic. What the Jews had said had prepared him to meet a resistance fighter, but one glance at Jesus was enough to show the utter absurdity of such an idea and it wrenched this incredulous question from his lips. Once again Jesus used an answer which signifies reluctant assent (see on 22:70). He was King of the Jews (a note Luke stresses) and thus could not give a direct negative. But he was not king in the sense Pilate meant.
4. Luke has greatly abbreviated proceedings. Pilate certainly asked more than one question, but Luke passes over the detailed examination and comes to the moment when the governor announced his verdict to the chief priests and multitudes (i.e. it is a public statement, not simply a private communication to those who brought Jesus to him). I find no crime in this man, he said. Pilate discerned that it was the malice of the Jews and not any capital charge that was the occasion of Jesus’ appearance before him.
5. But this did not suit the high priests. They were urgent, which points to vehement protest. They complained that Jesus stirs up the people, another indefinite complaint. They stress the extent of his influence and include all Judea as well as Galilee.