The Trial Before Pilate

185:3.1Pi­late took Je­sus and John Zeb­e­dee into a pri­vate cham­ber, leav­ing the guards out­side in the hall, and re­quest­ing the pris­oner to sit down, he sat down by his side and asked sev­eral ques­tions. Pi­late be­gan his talk with Je­sus by as­sur­ing him that he did not be­lieve the first count against him: that he was a per­verter of the na­tion and an in­citer to re­bel­lion. Then he asked, “Did you ever teach that trib­ute should be re­fused Cae­sar?” Je­sus, point­ing to John, said, “Ask him or any other man who has heard my teach­ing.” Then Pi­late ques­tioned John about this mat­ter of trib­ute, and John tes­ti­fied con­cern­ing his Mas­ter’s teach­ing and ex­plained that Je­sus and his apos­tles paid taxes both to Cae­sar and to the tem­ple. When Pi­late had ques­tioned John, he said, “See that you tell no man that I talked with you.” And John never did re­veal this mat­ter.

185:3.2Pi­late then turned around to ques­tion Je­sus fur­ther, say­ing: “And now about the third ac­cu­sa­tion against you, are you the king of the Jews?” Since there was a tone of pos­si­bly sin­cere in­quiry in Pi­late’s voice, Je­sus smiled on the procu­ra­tor and said: “Pi­late, do you ask this for your­self, or do you take this ques­tion from these oth­ers, my ac­cusers?” Where­upon, in a tone of par­tial in­dig­na­tion, the gov­er­nor an­swered: “Am I a Jew? Your own peo­ple and the chief priests de­liv­ered you up and asked me to sen­tence you to death. I ques­tion the va­lid­ity of their charges and am only try­ing to find out for my­self what you have done. Tell me, have you said that you are the king of the Jews, and have you sought to found a new king­dom?”

185:3.3Then said Je­sus to Pi­late: “Do you not per­ceive that my king­dom is not of this world? If my king­dom were of this world, surely would my dis­ci­ples fight that I should not be de­liv­ered into the hands of the Jews. My pres­ence here be­fore you in these bonds is suf­fi­cient to show all men that my king­dom is a spir­i­tual do­min­ion, even the broth­er­hood of men who, through faith and by love, have be­come the sons of God. And this sal­va­tion is for the gen­tile as well as for the Jew.”

185:3.4“Then you are a king af­ter all?” said Pi­late. And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, I am such a king, and my king­dom is the fam­ily of the faith sons of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For this pur­pose was I born into this world, even that I should show my Fa­ther to all men and bear wit­ness to the truth of God. And even now do I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who loves the truth hears my voice.”

185:3.5Then said Pi­late, half in ridicule and half in sin­cer­ity, “Truth, what is truth—who knows?”

185:3.6Pi­late was not able to fathom Je­sus’ words, nor was he able to un­der­stand the na­ture of his spir­i­tual king­dom, but he was now cer­tain that the pris­oner had done noth­ing wor­thy of death. One look at Je­sus, face to face, was enough to con­vince even Pi­late that this gen­tle and weary, but ma­jes­tic and up­right, man was no wild and dan­ger­ous rev­o­lu­tion­ary who as­pired to es­tab­lish him­self on the tem­po­ral throne of Is­rael. Pi­late thought he un­der­stood some­thing of what Je­sus meant when he called him­self a king, for he was fa­mil­iar with the teach­ings of the Sto­ics, who de­clared that “the wise man is king.” Pi­late was thor­oughly con­vinced that, in­stead of be­ing a dan­ger­ous sedi­tion­mon­ger, Je­sus was noth­ing more or less than a harm­less vi­sion­ary, an in­no­cent fa­natic.

185:3.7Af­ter ques­tion­ing the Mas­ter, Pi­late went back to the chief priests and the ac­cusers of Je­sus and said: “I have ex­am­ined this man, and I find no fault in him. I do not think he is guilty of the charges you have made against him; I think he ought to be set free.” And when the Jews heard this, they were moved with great anger, so much so that they wildly shouted that Je­sus should die; and one of the San­hedrists boldly stepped up by the side of Pi­late, say­ing: “This man stirs up the peo­ple, be­gin­ning in Gal­i­lee and con­tin­u­ing through­out all Judea. He is a mis­chief-maker and an evil­doer. You will long re­gret it if you let this wicked man go free.”

185:3.8Pi­late was hard pressed to know what to do with Je­sus; there­fore, when he heard them say that he be­gan his work in Gal­i­lee, he thought to avoid the re­spon­si­bil­ity of de­cid­ing the case, at least to gain time for thought, by send­ing Je­sus to ap­pear be­fore Herod, who was then in the city at­tend­ing the Pass­over. Pi­late also thought that this ges­ture would help to an­ti­dote some of the bit­ter feel­ing which had ex­isted for some time be­tween him­self and Herod, due to nu­mer­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings over mat­ters of ju­ris­dic­tion.

185:3.9Pi­late, call­ing the guards, said: “This man is a Galilean. Take him forth­with to Herod, and when he has ex­am­ined him, re­port his find­ings to me.” And they took Je­sus to Herod.