Mark 15:1-15English Standard Version (ESV)
Jesus Delivered to Pilate
15 And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. 2 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” 3 And the chief priests accused him of many things.4 And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” 5 But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified
6 Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7 And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. 8 And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. 9 And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. 12 And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13 And they cried out again, “Crucify him.”14 And Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
Accompanying John MacArthur sermon: Pilate Before JesusAccompanying Robert Rayburn sermon: Jesus Judged
Filling in for Miriam for the next little while.....
I'm going to let Rayburn do the talking here....
many of the participants in this historical episode did not understand what they were actually doing or what was transpiring before their very eyes. They had no grasp that the salvation of the world was taking place. They did not understand that Jesus Christ was the maker of heaven and earth, that he was their own Lord and their only hope of peace with God. They did not appreciate that they were, for all the wrong reasons, contributing to the redemption of mankind by sending Jesus to the cross....
Only from the vantage point of faith can one see what is really happening here. A murderer, a guilty man, was set free and an innocent man was punished. There was a substitution here that illustrates the meaning of Jesus’ death. ....As we know from the teaching of the entire Bible, the essential thing in Christ’s death was that in dying he was suffering the penalty, the judgment, the condemnation that is due to sin. But in suffering that penalty he was enduring condemnation not for his own sins – for he had none – but for the sins of others. Pilate’s role, in the providence of God, was to ensure that Jesus was condemned in a court room, by a judge, and sentenced to be executed for crimes that he had not committed. Pilate, however unwittingly, played his role to a “T.” He condemned Jesus to death without once suggesting that he thought Jesus had actually done anything deserving punishment of any kind, much less death.
To take away our condemnation, it was not enough that Jesus should die in any manner whatsoever. To make satisfaction for our sin and guilt, to suffer vicarious punishment for sinners, a particular form of death was necessary. If Jesus had died in his bed from disease, or if he had been killed in an accident, or if he had been murdered by thieves or killed in a riot, there would have been no demonstration, no evidence that his death was substitutionary, vicarious, and penal, that is a judgment for sin. But because Jesus was arraigned before a judge, accused and condemned as a criminal, and sentenced to die, we know that he took the role of an evildoer. He was, as the prophets foretold, “numbered with the transgressors.” The death he died was the death of a guilty man, a criminal....
His being condemned to the worst form of punishment then known, the most terrible and disgraceful method of execution, demonstrated, as the rest of the NT will confirm, that Jesus fully satisfied the most rigorous demands of the law and that he had fallen under God’s curse, all so that he could remove that curse from us.
In other words, Pilate serves to ensure that the death Jesus died was a death for sin, but not for his own sin. It was a judgment for crimes, but crimes that he had not himself committed. For this demonstration of this most important of all historical truth we have, in the providence of God, Pontius Pilate’s sniveling cowardice, timeserving, and dereliction of duty to thank. And, on top of that, Pilate, for the worst reasons, lets a guilty man go and punishes the innocent, a perfect demonstration of what the cross of Jesus actually achieved: escape from the very punishment that men deserve....
He died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Those who trust in Jesus may see themselves in Barabbas, being set free because Jesus took his place; the guilty released, the innocent condemned and executed. The great substitution complete.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Mark 15:16-21
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