Jesus Sentenced To Death
JESUS SENTENCED TO DEATH
LUKE 23:13-26
Read these verses and listen to the raging cries of the frenzied mob: would you have been among them?
Luke only, of the four evangelists, tells of the visit to Herod, and records it as an acquittal. He had some first-hand source of information (see 8:3), from which he derived such details as these, and those of Acts 12:20 and 13:1.
The struggle between Pilate and the priests is intensely dramatic and is told in Luke’s most vivid manner. In Acts he is eager to show that Roman magistrates, as well as experienced local rulers, found nothing subversive in Christianity. His treatment of the trial of Christ clearly anticipates this preoccupation of his later work.
Pilate stresses the dual acquittal, and should have released his prisoner under safe conduct. In 23:16 his streak of cowardice is visible. There was no case for scourging if the prisoner was innocent. Scourging is what is meant here by chastisement, and it was a shocking punishment, ending often in death. Nor need he have given any indication that the release was the customary Passover favor.
Observing the hesitation, the priests, shrewd and ruthless men aware of their advantage, renewed their clamor. The chanted chorus: “Crucify! Crucify!” drove Pilate to a weak reopening of the case. “What evil has he done?” It was a case for peremptory dismissal, and a calling out of the guard, and this could have been done before the mob, abroad now in the streets, took up the cry for Barabbas.
To call for Barabbas, the terrorist, was illogical enough in those who had brought Jesus before the Procurator on a charge of subversion and disturbance of the peace. It was a significant choice. It was still not too late for the nation to choose the way of peace, and escape the holocaust towards which the land was moving. Midnight struck when they chose Barabbas. It was no longer the eleventh hour. It was too late.
Notes Rome prided herself on her justice, Jewry on her religion. Here both reveal fatal flaws, yielding to the pride and fear of sinful men. 23:13: at Gabbatha, the Pavement. 23:18: Barabbas—“son of a rabbi.” 23:26: Simon of Cyrene—see Mark 15:21, and, possibly, Romans 16:13. He may have come for the Passover—Acts 6:9 shows that the Jews of Cyrene had their own synagogue in Jerusalem.