Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross.  It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.  Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.  The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

- Matthew 27:37, Mark 15:26, Luke 23:38, John 19:19-22 (emphasis mine)

As always, the will of Rome was carried out.  The local ruler of the backwater Hebrew nation considered this prophet that had the Jews in an uproar, and didn’t quite know what to do with him.  In the end, Pilate just wanted to be rid of him.  Pilate tried to pawn this Jesus of Nazareth onto Herod, but that hadn’t worked.  He tried to talk some sense into the local religious leaders, but they were determined that the man they brought before him should be put to death.  Bleeding, bruised and bearing the marks of abuse, this man Jesus was obviously no normal man, but he also did not deserve the sentence that the Jews demanded.

This puzzled Pilate all the more.  It wasn’t even a week ago that these people were welcoming Jesus as their King.  He heard the reports, that they were begging, crying for this Jesus to save them.  Pilate knew that crowds had their own mind, and could be turned easily, but something else was at work here. Something deeper…bigger.  Even his own wife warned him to distance himself from this young prophet because of her dreams.

In the end, Pilate acquiesced to the leaders and the crowd.  Let them have their Barabbas; the criminal would probably be back in custody within a month, two at most.  One man’s life for order in Jerusalem was an unthinkably small price to pay.  Then, the Sanhedrin had the audacity to demand he change the sign above the Nazarene, demanding that it state that this Jesus only claimed to be their king.

But Pilate wanted the message to be unmistakable: here is your King, and this is what you did with Him.

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The above scripture is from an NIV Bible with the verses arranged in chronological order.  I’m still working my way through Genesis, and will have another post from that the next time the Spirit moves.   I wanted to take a moment and write about something Easter-oriented.  I was asked to read something for our Good Friday service, and this leaped out at me.

After reading the passage at the top, I couldn’t help wonder: If the world placed a sign above my head, what would it say?  Would it read “This man followed Christ”, or “This man claimed to follow Christ.”  The world knows the difference between the two.