The trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a difficult section of Scripture to read. Usually I find myself just hanging on through it all until the joy of the empty tomb. But as I was going through the end of John's gospel a little thing stuck out at me from the trial before Pilate.
John records several encounters between Jesus and the Roman governor. At one point it says that Pilate was convinced Jesus was innocent and tried to free him. As a last ditch effort he had Jesus flogged then presented him to the crowds and said "behold, your king."
I don't know if he was trying to make them feel sorry for Jesus or what - but it seems as if his aim was to get the crowd to go along with him and release Jesus. But the chief priests said something amazing in response:
"We have no king but Caesar." It's so familiar that it doesn't sound odd to us, but you have to remember that most of the leadership in Israel at the time hated Rome with a passion and were fiercely independent. They were so difficult to deal with that Rome had a hard time keeping things under control. History tells us that Pilate was already in trouble for not keeping the peace there in Palestine.
It's just interesting to me that these men would do anything to get rid of Jesus, who was threatening their power. They would even pledge their allegiance to a hate foreign occupier rather than bend their knee and acknowledge that Jesus was indeed King of Kings.
The same holds true for many people today. They would rather give their lives and allegiance to anyone or anything other than to Jesus Christ.
It's so sad that in doing so they gave up the one chance to find real escape from their real oppressor - sin. Please don't make that same mistake.
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