Pontius Pilate may seem like a strange character in the story of Good Friday. He does not appear during the early days of Jesus' ministry, like the religious leaders. He meets Jesus after Gethsemane, after the religious leaders have put him on trial and declared he deserves to die for saying he is the Christ. As we see in Mark 15 and Matthew 17, Pilate had a strange job: to put a man on trial whom people wanted to execute, but he could not see a reason to do so. Both he and the King of Judea, Herod Antipas, saw no reason to execute Jesus. Pilate's attempts to give people another man up for execution, a criminal named Barabbas, failed poorly.
So, what was going on? Why did Pilate let Jesus be crucified, and does he really fit into the Easter story?
Table of Contents
- When Does Pilate Meet Jesus on Good Friday?
- Why Did Pilate Crucify Jesus?
- Why Did Pontius Pilate Wash His Hands?
- Was God Surprised When Pilate Put Jesus on Trial?
- Does the Bible Give an Accurate View of Pilate?
- What Else Should We Know about Pontius Pilate?
When Does Pilate Meet Jesus on Good Friday?
It can be confusing to tell when Pilate met Jesus, since they in fact met twice on that Friday. Doug Bookman's chronology of Good Friday shows what happened and what important Easter events were happening at the same time:
A. Stage #1 of Roman Trial: Jesus Before Pilate for the First Time
Scripture: Luke 23:1-5; Mark 15:1-5; Matthew 27:1-2, Matthew 27:11-14; and John 18:28-38
Notes: In order to avoid defiling themselves by entering a Gentile domicile, the Jewish leadership (who were going about the greatest crime in the history of mankind) had induced Pilate to set up his court on the pavement (i.e., outside). The Roman procurator was contemptuous of the Jews and all of their issues, but this Nazarene had fomented much trouble over the last years, and especially during this very volatile week of Passover. Thus, he consents to hear the case. Notice that the Sanhedrinists try to bluff Pilate into condemning Jesus simply because they demanded it, but Pilate would have none of that. It is at this time that Pilate takes Jesus alone into his palace for a private interview (John 18:33-37). It is here that Pilate for the first of five times declares Jesus innocent (John 18:38; Luke 23:4).
Questions/Observations: It is interesting to consider the impact that Jesus had upon Pilate. Note especially Paul's injunction to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:12. Evidently, Jesus's "confession" before Pilate was well remembered by the early church, and they found in that confession a model of how to live out the truth of God's Word before a hostile and dangerous world.
B. Meanwhile, Judas Commits Suicide
Scripture: Matthew 27:3-10
Notes: Judas was a thief; he loved his sin more than he loved what he knew to be the truth. He was ever more enslaved to sin until He committed the most awful treachery in man's sorry history. But with all of that he could not escape the undeniable truth of Jesus's person and work; thus, his tragic and pitiful end.
C. Stage #2 of Roman Trial: Jesus Very Briefly Before Herod Antipas
Scripture: Luke 23:6-12
Notes: In the first stage of the trial (above), Pilate heard Jesus's accusers claim that He had begun His ministry in "Galilee." Pilate's jurisdiction did not include Galilee, and the governor of Galilee was in town (probably in the same palace) for the feast. So, Pilate tries to get Herod (the governor of Galilee and Perea and son of Herod the Great) to deal with this unspeakably difficult issue.
D. Stage #3 of Roman Trial: Jesus Before Pilate Again
Scripture: Matthew 27:15-26; Mark 15:6-15; Luke 23:13-25; and John 18:39-40
Notes: Pilate did not want to execute Jesus. He made several attempts to placate the hatred of the Jewish leadership and release Jesus (including the scourging), but was frustrated in every one. When the Jews (probably by this time both the leaders and the city, which was waking up) threatened to tell Caesar that Pilate was willing to tolerate a seditionist in his province, Pilate capitulated and turned Jesus over to be crucified. (Pilate had used up all his favors in Rome and knew he would probably not survive that sort of a report.) Thus, about 6:00 a.m., Jesus is condemned to die by Roman crucifixion.
Questions/Observations: Notice that it is at this stage of the trial that Jesus is again taken in the palace for a private interview with Pilate (John 19:8-13). Contemplate carefully the statement of Jesus to Pilate in John 19:11; it is a "good confession."
E. Jesus Is Abused as the Cross Is Prepared
Scripture: John 19:16; Mark 15:16-20; and Matthew 27:27-31
Notes: This doubtless occurred at the hands of the Roman soldiers, as the place of crucifixion was made ready, and perhaps as they waited for the city to awaken in order to witness the awful spectacle. The Romans had framed crucifixion primarily as a means of putting down sedition. With that in mind, they were anxious for it to be witnessed widely in order that any impulse to revolt would be suppressed.
Adapted from the Life of Christ study notes of Dr. Doug Bookman, professor of New Testament Exposition at Shepherds Theological Seminary (used by permission).
Why Did Pilate Crucify Jesus?
Doug Bookman discusses misconceptions we have about the charge that Pilate tried Jesus for, and why it led to a death penalty.
(Transcribed of the video above, edited for readability)
"There is a great deal of confusion as to why Jesus was crucified. And I want to be very, very surgical here because the impression is, and what you often hear, is that Jesus was crucified as a seditionist, and the Bible is explicit that that is not the case. Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman prefect, the Roman authority in Jerusalem at time, and accused of sedition. The only hope they had of being rid of Jesus was to take him to the Roman authorities. They had to have an indictment, they had to have a char.ge The one that they thought would work was sedition. By the way, early on the morning before the crucifixion, when they had him on trial. And they asked him, 'Tell us, are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?' And Jesus responded to their surprise and delight, 'I am,' they thought they had him.
They had 70 or so witnesses who had heard him openly confess to being Christ. Christ means King. Rome has no room for that. And so that's why Jesus is taken early on that morning to Pilate and the charge is he's a seditionist. After hearing all the witnesses, after examining the evidence, Pilate again and again pronounces Jesus absolutely guiltless.
Now, the interesting thing is that the last time he does that— it's in John 19—after having scoured him and after having stood him before the crowd and said, 'Behold the man. Give me a break. Are you telling me that this man is a threat to the Roman Empire?' And they continue to cry, 'crucify him.' Pilate had said, this is John 19, 'You go crucify him.' And then the Jewish authorities said—and this is so important—they said, 'Well, if you won't crucify him as a seditionist, then we have a law and he ought to die because he makes himself to be the son of God.'
Now, the reason Jesus was crucifiable was because he claimed to be the son of God. Let me say two things about that. Number one, it's hard for us to imagine how absolutely radical, how absolutely mind-numbing, that charge was to a Jewish audience. And at a certain level, you can hardly blame them. We have the benefit of the resurrection. We have the benefit of 2,000 years of Christian teaching, and we say, 'Jesus was the Son of God, amen and amen.' And amen and amen. There is nobody on the earth who more strongly believes that than I. But by the same token, it's hard for us to appreciate how radical that was, and how heretical it sounded and how heretical was . . . except in the one remarkable instance where it just happened to be the truth. So the point is that it was by reason of Jesus' claim to be the Son of God, that the Jewish authorities finally said, 'all right, you won't crucify him as a seditionist. He needs to die because he claimed to be the son of God.'
According to John 19, the reason he was crucified was because he claimed to be the son of God. And Paul says that when he came alive from the dead, he was declared—he was horizoned is the word he uses, the message was spread across the horizon. He was declared to be the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). So those two realities that number one, he was crucified, explicit in the record because he claimed to be the son of God. That's why the Jews insisted he had to die. And the fact is that the resurrection was God's grand message to make the point, God's grand declaration, that he was everything he claimed to be and therefore he could do everything he claimed he had."
(First published on Christianity.com as "Exactly Why Was Jesus Crucified?" on September 1, 2010)
Why Did Pontius Pilate Wash His Hands?
After the people refuse Pilate's offer to crucify Barabbas instead, Pilate gives them their choice.
"When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. 'I am innocent of this man’s blood,' he said. 'It is your responsibility!'
All the people answered, 'His blood is on us and on our children!'
Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified." (Matthew 27:24-26)
Stephen Davey suggests that there is something telling about this action:
"I want you to hear the final, desperate attempt of Pilate here. Matthew records it just before he turned Jesus over to the screaming mob. He does something very interesting. It's a basin of water there. He washes his hands and then he dries them and he says, what? 'I am innocent of this man's blood.'
I want you to understand that's fascinating because that is not a Roman custom. It's a religious Jewish ceremony. Pilate is getting religious here. See, there's an old Mosaic law that allowed the elders if they were unable to render justice, they could wash their hands with water and say a prayer, and the case would be dismissed forever and they would not be guilty. Pilate goes back into Jewish ceremonial law and he becomes guilty of the same thing the leaders were. He becomes a religious man. He washes his hands, he dries them. He says this prayer, and he thinks his guilt is absolved. Externally clean, inwardly guilty. That's religion."
(First published on Christianity.com as "Why Did Pilate Wash His Hands?" on July 1, 2010)
Was God Surprised When Pilate Put Jesus on Trial?
Given what a bizarre trial this was, and Pilate saying multiple times that he saw no charge that Jesus should be killed for, we may wonder whether this event was unexpected. The Bible affirms again and again that the strange and often horrible events of Good Friday all fit into God's larger plan. Greg Laurie summarizes how this strange trial fit into a larger design:
(Edited transcript of the video above, edited for readability)
"God himself was put on trial. Here was a long-awaited Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world. God and human form come to us, and man has this idea. Let's put him to death, but check this out. Man's worst mistake was at the same time God's master plan, because the Bible says 'it pleased the Father to bruise him.' Whereas another translation said, 'when God the Father sees all that is accomplished in the anguish of Jesus, he will be satisfied. And because of what he's experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all of their sins.'
You see, that is why the Bible says Jesus was crucified from the foundation of the world. What does that mean? That means that the crucifixion of Jesus was not a mistake, nor was it an afterthought. It was part of the plan of God from the very beginning. Before there was a solar system, much less a planet called Earth or a garden called Eden, or a couple known as Adam and Eve, a decision was made in the councils of eternity that God himself would come to the earth as a man and would go to a cross and die in the place of all sinners. Why? So men could be put into contact with God."
(First published on Christianity.com as "Why Did Jesus Have to Suffer?" on July 15, 2010)
Does the Bible Give an Accurate View of Pilate?
Skeptics have sometimes argued that there are problems with the Gospel account of Good Friday because Pilate does not behave like the man we see in ancient Roman records. Doug Bookman addresses these concerns:
(Transcript of the video above, edited for readability)
"Pontius Pilate was the prefect in Judea and Samaria. He was the Roman officer assigned the jurisdiction of Judea and Samaria from 26 to 36 AD. there are many ways in which this rather rogue and thuggish and insensitive Pilate that we read about an extrabiblical history, that record seems dissonant with what we read in the gospels where he seems . . . He rolls over, he's quite sensitive to [people], that he's willing to dance to the tune that they're piping. And it seems strange. I think perhaps the best way to explain this is to understand that there was a man who was very, very important to Pilate. The man's name was Sejanus, and he was captain of the Praetorian. Sejanus was pilot's sponsor quite clearly. Seginus had maneuvered Pilate into this role, and because Pilate had this very powerful friend and mentor and sponsor back there in Rome, he seems to have felt entirely at liberty to abuse all sorts of responsibilities and protocols and so on.
And the interesting thing is that in 31 AD, October of 31 AD, Sejanus had been executed. He had been discovered to be behind a plot to assassinate Tiberius, and he was executed. It's a little bit mysterious to know how it was that Pilate survived because many of those closest to Sejanus were rounded up and executed as well. One of the first things he did was to annul many of those antisemitic policies, which had been put in place by Sejanus and to restore the Jewish people to their place of some prestige, if you don't mind, in the Roman Empire.
So, here you have Pilate, who is in Jerusalem, and he knows that he has no protector back there in Rome. And I think that's the most important factor perhaps in understanding why the gruesome Pilate that we have come to know in extrabiblical history is, in this particular scene, so pliable, and is willing to cooperate with the Jews.
Now, he does find, and one of the most remarkable things about Pilate is that he does find a reserve of character that nobody knew he had. And I do not regard Pilate as a primary villain in the account of Jesus' passion. In point of fact, Jesus does not regard him as the primary villain. He says that in John 19, when he says, 'the one who brought me to you is the one who has the greater sin,' but Pilate refuses to simply crucify Jesus. He takes heroic steps really to try to avoid crucifying Jesus again and again, and this becomes important to the narrative and what's unfolding there.
Pilate announces that Jesus is absolutely guiltless of that which he's being charged. But ultimately, when the Jews say, 'If you don't crucify him, we will tell Caesar you're not his friend,' he knew he had used up all of his coupons in Rome, and he knew that if the word got back, that's all it would take. And so Pilate does in fact wash his hands and out of a heart of cowardice, turn Jesus over to be crucified. But the Pilate of scripture is in fact, historically accurate. I think there's good historical reason to explain why at some points that record, the biblical record, seems slightly dissonant with the extrabiblical record."
(First published on Christianity.com as "Why Does Pilate Seem Different in History?" on September 20, 2010)
What Else Should We Know about Pontius Pilate?
The following articles provide a more in-depth look at Pilate's life and interactions with Jesus.
Pontius Pilate: His Role and Significance in the Bible
How Was Pontius Pilate's Wife Connected to Christ?
What Is the Meaning of INRI on Jesus' Cross?
Why Did the Romans Care about Jesus?
Why Did the Crowds Yell "Crucify Him" and Turn on Jesus?
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Learn more about the meaning and significance behind the Easter holiday and Holy Week celebrations:
What is Lent? and When Does Lent Start?
What is Ash Wednesday? and When is Ash Wednesday?
What is Palm Sunday?
What is Maundy Thursday?
What is Good Friday? and When is Good Friday?
What is Holy Saturday?
What is Easter? and When is Easter Sunday?
Easter Bible Verses
The Resurrection of Jesus
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