Political Expediency

Political expediency

“Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied. 
When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.  
Then Pilate asked him, “Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?”  
But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor. 
Now it was the governor’s custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas.  
So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?”  
For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him. 
While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.” 
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. 
“Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor. “Barabbas,” they answered. 
“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!” 
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” 
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” 
All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” 
Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” 
Matthew 27:11-26
Here is the trial or what passed for one before the Roman governor Pilot.
Pilot could have let him go. He himself knew Jesus was innocent. His wife even said to him,
“Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”
Pilot was as they say between a rock and a hard place.
The religious leaders were whipping up the crowd to have Jesus crucified he may have even thought that were they not to get their way they would riot. That was something Rome would not want.
So he gave into the crowd. Matthew records,
“...he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” 
At that moment Pilot was as guilty of killing Jesus as was the Jewish leadership of the day and the crowd.
Jesus knew such a thing would happen to him. That’s one of the reason I believe he truly was the Christ. The Son of God.
If he wasn’t the Son of God then he was insane and he has fooled people now for two millennia.
C.S. Lewis wrote this of Jesus,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him (Jesus): I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. 
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. 
You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 
Think about it.