Why Pilate?

“Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.” Mark 15:1

The Jewish Sanhedrin had held an illegal court and found Jesus to be guilty of breaking their law. According to the Jewish law anyone who was found guilty of blasphemy was to be put to death. According to their illegal court Jesus was guilty of blasphemy and should be stoned to death. However, there was one problem. The Jews did not have the legal right to put anyone to death so they needed the help of the Romans.

Normally the Jewish leaders would have nothing to do with the Romans but this was a special situation. They needed the Romans to pronounce death on Jesus. They couldn’t go to Pilate the Roman governor with a charge of blasphemy. Pilate would have told them to deal with it themselves and would send them away. They needed a charge against Jesus that Pilate could not dismiss.

The Jewish leaders brought Jesus to Pilate because he was the only one who could pronounce sentence upon a criminal. They needed Pilate to help them with their trumped up charges against Jesus. The charges they decided to bring to Pilate were charges of treason. A governor could not ignore charges of treason against the nation for if he did then his own life would be on the line. They came to Pilate and told him that Jesus was setting Himself up as another king to rival Caesar. Pilate knew immediately that this charge was ridiculous and he decided to dismiss the charge and release Jesus.

However, Pilate had a problem. He was not secure in his own position and the Jewish leaders knew that. They knew that if word got back to Rome that Pilate had ignored a charge of treason then he would be banished from Rome forever. Pilate was caught in their trap. He tried to reason with the people. He tried to bargain with them but they ignored his efforts to release Jesus and demanded that Pilate sentence Him to death. Finally, Pilate succumbed to their pressure and going against the advice of his wife sentenced Jesus to death. Forever Pilate sealed his own place in history as the Roman governor that sentenced God to death.

Such is the snare of men. Pilate knew what he was doing was wrong but the people he didn’t respect trapped him. Because he was looking for a way out of Palestine he knew that he could not allow any unfavourable information to be sent back to Rome. Therefore, against his own conscience and against the advice of his wife he handed Jesus over to them to be executed. In signing Jesus’ death sentence he forever condemned himself as an example of a man whom was too weak to follow his own convictions.