Pilate
Luke 23:1-25
Pontius Pilate
- 56 times in the NT:
- 52x in the 4 gospels
- 3x in Acts
- 1x in 1 Timothy 6
- Procurator/Governor/Prefect
- Judea from 26-36 AD
- Appointed by the Emperor Tiberius Caesar, then fired by Emperor Caligula
6 trials of Jesus:
Three trials before religious leaders:
Annas (John 18:13-23)
Caiaphas (Mt. 26:57-68; Mark 14:53-65)
Sanhedrin (Luke 22:66-71)
Three trials before political leaders:
Pilate (Mt. 27:11-14; Luke 23:1-7)
Herod Antipas (Luke 23:8-12)
Pilate (Mt. 27:15-26; Luke 23:18-25)
Luke & John’s gospel accounts record that Pilate declared and/or inferred that Jesus was innocent multiple times:
verse 4 “I find no guilt in this man”
verse 14 “I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges you make against him”
verse 15 “nothing deserving death has been done by him”
verse 16 “I will release him”
verse 20 “wanting to release him”
verse 22 “why, what evil has this man done? I have found in him no guilt demanding death; therefore, I will punish and release him”
John 18:38 Pilate *said to Him, “What is truth?” And after saying this, he came out again to the Jews and *said to them, “I find no grounds at all for charges in His case.”
John 19:4 Pilate came out again and *said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.”
John 19:6 Pilate *said to them, “Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him.” The chief priests and the officers answered him, “Crucify, crucify!”
Luke 23: 1-25
- God often uses unlikely people and undesirable events to accomplish His purposes.
- A dismissal of truth undermines the possibility of justice.
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
Winston Churchill
“Our world is so exceedingly rich in delusions that a truth is priceless.”
Carl Gustav Jung
“People thought that postmodernism promised a brave new world of knowledge, but they are suddenly beginning to realize it is a highly manipulative and very dangerous world. And when you see the dangers, suddenly you see the enormous significance of the words of Jesus: ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ There is no freedom without truth.”
Os Guinness
Luke 23: 1-25
- God often uses unlikely people and undesirable events to accomplish His purposes.
- A dismissal of truth undermines the possibility of justice.
- Leadership often requires the courage to be ok with not pleasing everyone.
- Although it is often costly, we should always seek to please God.
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful until it became risky.”
C. S. Lewis
“As men poured out their wrath upon Christ at His trials and His death, God’s wrath against sin was completely released upon Christ at the cross. All the wrath of God was poured out on Christ at that moment when He bore our sins in His body on that cruel cross.”
Charles Swindoll
“Are you the king?”
“What is truth?”
John 18: 33, 38
“You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how. And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone.”
Matthew 27:65-66
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.
John 14:25-26
“Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.”
Jonathan Edwards
