Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 301
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Very early in the morning the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law—the entire high council—met to discuss their next
step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman
governor.
Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus replied, “You have said it.”
Then the leading priests kept accusing him of many crimes, and Pilate
asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer them? What about all these charges
they are bringing against you?” But Jesus said nothing, much to Pilate’s
surprise.
Now it was the governor’s custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner—anyone the people requested. One of the
prisoners at that time was Barabbas, a revolutionary who had committed
murder in an uprising. The crowd went to Pilate and asked him to release
a prisoner as usual.
“Would you like me to release to you this ‘King of the Jews’?” Pilate
asked. (For he realized by now that the leading priests had arrested Jesus
out of envy.) But at this point the leading priests stirred up the crowd to
demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. Pilate asked them, “Then
what should I do with this man you call the king of the Jews?”
They shouted back, “Crucify him!”
“Why?” Pilate demanded. “What crime has he committed?”
But the mob roared even louder, “Crucify him!”
So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered
Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman
soldiers to be crucified.
The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor’s headquarters
(called the Praetorium) and called out the entire regiment. They dressed
him in a purple robe, and they wove thorn branches into a crown and
put it on his head. Then they saluted him and taunted, “Hail! King of the
Jews!” And they struck him on the head with a reed stick, spit on him, and
dropped to their knees in mock worship. When they were finally tired of
mocking him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on
him again. Then they led him away to be crucified.
A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from
the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross.
(Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) And they brought Jesus to
a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”). They offered
him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it.
Then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. They divided his clothes and
threw dice to decide who would get each piece. It was nine o’clock in the
