Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pirate! What a cluster of association gathers round that name! The Roman Procurator, Czsar’s representative, the special selection of the Emperor Tiberias, because his relentless temper seemed to fit him to cope with the Jewish people. His rule was as devoid of mercy as it was of justice. Venality, violence, and robbery, malicious insults, and judicial murders without even the formality of trial, ploodthirsty cruelty which mingled the blood of the sacrificers with the blood of the victims they sacrificed — such was the dark and terrible record of his three years’ reign!
Former governors to some extent had respected the religious scruples of the Jews. They even removed the Emperor’s image from the Roman standards before marching their soldiers into Jerusalem, so as to avoid the semblance of worshipping Cesar; but Pilate ignored the most sacred feelings of the Hebrew race, and forced upon them the hated emblem. It was before
such a man that “Jesus Christ witnessed the good 73 6 — (2516) confession.” To this fact the heathen historian Tacitus bears unhesitating witness.
It is probable, since his wife was with him, that on this occasion the Governor was occupying, not the fortress of Antonia, but the magnificent palace built by Herod the Great at the north-western angle of the Upper City. It was thither, about six o’clock in the morning of the most fateful day of Pilate’s life that the Jewish leaders brought the bound Christ.
He was not wholly ignorant of the motives by which they were actuated. ‘‘ He knew that for envy they had delivered Him up.” It is probable, also, that between the granting of the Roman guard on the previous evening and the morning appearance of accusers and accused, he had had a profound talk with his wife Procula, who is described in one Apocryphal Gospel as a convert to Judaism, and at least had a tolerably accurate knowledge of the Person and Claims of Jesus. This probably accounts for the strange reluctance which, at the beginning of the trial, made him so unwilling to proceed, and withheld him from having anything to do with that ‘“just man.”
Pilate stands on the plains of time, as Lot’s wife stood on those of Sodom — a warning in stone to those who know what they ought to do, and try to do it, not straightforwardly, but obliquely, not by meeting high-handed wrong with a resolute front, but by cajoling it, and fencing with its malicious demands. They say, Don’t do thus and thus, it is inexpedient, here is a wiser course, let us advise you for your good to follow it: but in saying this, they desert the one impregnable fortress against which the gates of hell cannot prevail! Christ had never been crucified under Pontius Pilate, if at the first enunciation of their clamorous demands, like Gallio afterwards, he had driven the Jewish leaders from his judgment seat, indignant at their suggestion to soil Roman Justice with so base a crime.
He assured himself that this King of the Jews meditated no treason against his Imperial master. He seemed to be a visionary, a dreamer of dreams, a brainless fanatic, at the worst. From this private inquiry he returned to the Jews, whose passion was rising swiftly with every hour’s delay, with the verdict, sustained by every evidence of truth, ‘“‘I find in him no fault at all.”
Then the full fury of the pitiless storm surged up to his feet, and broke over him. Hell was let loose! He sent the prisoner bound to Herod — but why bound! He placed Jesus and Barabbas side by side in the vain hope that rather than have the criminal let loose among them, they would demand the release of Jesus! He tried to appeal to their pity by submitting their victim to the awfully cruel torture of scourging — surely that would be penalty enough! He expostulated, reasoned, and appealed. The more he opposed the popular frenzy, the more vehement it grew.
The Lord never hesitated to bear witness. To the Truth, to His own Divine Nature, and to the only absolute source of Power, He bore unflinching testimony. He was by royal pre-eminence “the faithful martyr” (Rev. i., see Greek): but in bitter contrast, Pilate, who paltered with truth, ultimately denied it, and finally drifted into doing the very deed which even his black soul loathed. ““Go, soldier,” said he, in the usual language of the criminal court, ‘‘ fetch a cross.” And thus it came to pass that our Lord “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”