As Jesus stood in front of the Roman governor, Pilate asked him, “So, you are the king of the Jews?”
Jesus answered, “You have just spoken it.” Then he was accused by the chief priests and religious leaders, but he remained silent.
Pilate said, “Don’t you hear these allegations?” But Jesus offered no defense to any of the charges, much to the great astonishment of Pilate.
Now, every year at Passover it was the custom of the governor to pardon a prisoner and release him to the people—anyone they wanted. And at that time, Pilate was holding in custody a notorious criminal named Jesus Barabbas. So as the crowds of people assembled outside of Pilate’s residence, he went out and offered them a choice. He asked them, “Who would you want me to release to you today, Jesus who is called Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Anointed One?” (Now, Pilate was fully aware that the religious leaders had handed Jesus over to him because of their bitter jealousy.)
Just then, as Pilate was presiding over the tribunal, his wife sent him an urgent message: “Don’t harm that holy man, for I suffered a horrible nightmare last night about him!”
Meanwhile, the chief priest and the religious leaders were inciting the crowd to ask for Barabbas to be freed and to have Jesus killed. So Pilate asked them again, “Which of the two men would you like me to release for you?”
They shouted, “Barabbas.”
Pilate asked them, “Then what would you have me to do with Jesus who is called the Anointed One?”
They all shouted back, “Crucify him!”
“Why?” Pilate asked. “What has he done wrong?”
But they kept shouting out, “Crucify him!”
When Pilate realized that a riot was about to break out and that it was useless to try to reason with the crowd, he sent for a basin of water. After washing his hands in front of the people, he said, “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man. The responsibility for his death is now yours!”
And the crowd replied, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”
So he released Barabbas to the people. He ordered that Jesus be beaten with a whip of leather straps embedded with metal, and afterward be crucified.
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