I Am Barabbas (66 of 70)
Series: Mark - God's Message for Today
Jerry Watts
Mark 15:1-15
The decision had been made to have Jesus killed. The religious leaders have had enough, seen enough, and heard enough to know that Jesus had to die. The one problem that they faced and that was that they, as the religious leaders, didn't have the authority to put someone to death. Because the Romans were really the Jewish people were forbidden by law from condemning anyone to death. Now it makes sense while the disciples had difficulty believing Jesus when he said that he would be handed over to the Jewish leaders and be killed, there was a law against it.
However, the religious leaders may not have had the authority to condemn Jesus but where there is a will there is a way and they knew the man who did have the authority, his name was Pilate. But they had another problem because they knew that Pilate would not invoke the death penalty on Jesus for religious reason. This meant they had to come up with some charges that would lead Pilate to condemn Jesus to death. They had to show Jesus as a literal ''clear and present danger'' to Rome as well as an opponent to Caesar. Certainly, charging Jesus was proclaiming himself as the ''King of the Jews'' would do the trick. While Mark tells us that ''the chief priest accused Him of many other things,'' Luke adds that they laid a threefold indictment on Him, ''Misleading the nation, forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that He is the Christ, a King.''
So now that they had presented sufficient charges against Jesus Pilate was faced with the dilemma. We must understand that Pilate was placed in this position to keep the peace for Rome in Jerusalem and he was already under the gun for a past failure with a group of insurrectionist and a man named ''Barabbas.'' And for Pilate, Barabbas might be the answer to this problem.
From the scripture we know that Pilate knew the right thing to do because three times he pro ...
Series: Mark - God's Message for Today
Jerry Watts
Mark 15:1-15
The decision had been made to have Jesus killed. The religious leaders have had enough, seen enough, and heard enough to know that Jesus had to die. The one problem that they faced and that was that they, as the religious leaders, didn't have the authority to put someone to death. Because the Romans were really the Jewish people were forbidden by law from condemning anyone to death. Now it makes sense while the disciples had difficulty believing Jesus when he said that he would be handed over to the Jewish leaders and be killed, there was a law against it.
However, the religious leaders may not have had the authority to condemn Jesus but where there is a will there is a way and they knew the man who did have the authority, his name was Pilate. But they had another problem because they knew that Pilate would not invoke the death penalty on Jesus for religious reason. This meant they had to come up with some charges that would lead Pilate to condemn Jesus to death. They had to show Jesus as a literal ''clear and present danger'' to Rome as well as an opponent to Caesar. Certainly, charging Jesus was proclaiming himself as the ''King of the Jews'' would do the trick. While Mark tells us that ''the chief priest accused Him of many other things,'' Luke adds that they laid a threefold indictment on Him, ''Misleading the nation, forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that He is the Christ, a King.''
So now that they had presented sufficient charges against Jesus Pilate was faced with the dilemma. We must understand that Pilate was placed in this position to keep the peace for Rome in Jerusalem and he was already under the gun for a past failure with a group of insurrectionist and a man named ''Barabbas.'' And for Pilate, Barabbas might be the answer to this problem.
From the scripture we know that Pilate knew the right thing to do because three times he pro ...
There are 9020 characters in the full content. This excerpt only shows a 2000 character sample of the full content.
Price: $5.99 or 1 credit
