The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSample

Friday, April 3, 33 AD

Pilate stares at sleep-deprived Jesus’s bruised face and starts Rome’s official examination by asking the defendant flat-out if he is the king of the Jews.

This is an excellent question. Jesus can’t lie—he really does believe he is the king of the Jews—but he can’t simply say yes because the answer is far more nuanced than Pilate can imagine. So Jesus neither confirms nor denies the accusation, essentially pleading no contest.

One would think the chief prosecutor would be Caiaphas the high priest, but all three synoptic gospels say the chief priests bring multiple charges against Jesus (Mark 15:3; Matthew 27:12; Luke 23:4–5).

Jesus responds to none of them. Pilate yells to Jesus, “Don’t you have an answer?!”

Still nothing. Pilate is amazed at the rabbi’s composure. He brings him inside for private questioning, once again asking, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus answers the question with a question. “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” (John 18:34). Pilate likely laughs. “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”

Jesus repeats what he’s been saying the whole time, assuring the Roman that he poses zero threat to their earthly political order. “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Pilate likely laughs again. “So you are a king?”

“You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate answers cynically, “What is truth?”

The perfect returns to Annas’s mob outside and announces, “I find no guilt in him” (John 18:35–38).

But the crowd is insistent and presses the political angle: “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:5).

Pilate’s ears perk up when he hears Galilee. This fellow is Galilean? Perfect. Galilee is the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, and the half-Jew client king is in town as we speak. Let him deal. The temple guards cannot be happy with the decision, but it pleases Pilate, who hates Antipas. The religionists have no choice but to once again drag Jesus across town.

Herod Antipas the Tetrarch-Fox is delighted to see the famous rabbi. He’s been wanting to meet him for a long time and is hoping to see a miracle (Luke 23:8). But today he is sorely disappointed. He plies Jesus at length, but the exhausted rabbi refuses to answer. Not content with a second of silence, the chief priests and their lawyers vehemently hurl their baseless accusations at the sleep-deprived defendant (Luke 23:10). As with Jesus’s kinsman John the Baptizer before him, Herod’s admiration quickly turns to contempt. But he decides not to behead Jesus, because the rabbi hasn’t committed any crime (Luke 23:15). Plus, Antipas doesn’t need the political headache of killing two desert apocalypse preacher-cousins.

If the Galilean will not play court magician, Antipas will make him play court jester. He tells his soldiers to dress up the rabbi in kingly clothing (Luke 23:11) and send him back to Pilate. Pilate thinks this royal dress-up gag is hilarious. The two former enemies actually bond over the joke and later become friends (Luke 23:12). Still, this Galilean rabbi is clearly not guilty of anything warranting Roman execution.