Sharing Bread Matthew 27:24-26

SHARING BREAD

²⁴ 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!”

²⁵ All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”

²⁶ Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

Matt 27:24-26 (NIV)

The repeated assertion of our Lord’s unspotted innocence clearly intimates that He died to satisfy the sins of others.  No one could show any evil He had done.  No deceitful words, no despicable actions could be attached to Him – indeed, He was the Lamb without blemish.  The Lamb, as the Baptist stated “Who takes away the sin of the world!”  Yet that fact did not appear to affect the crowds who continued in mob like fashion constantly screaming forth that He must be crucified.  A man in whom no fault was found should not have been crucified on pretense alone – certainly, it was an unjust thing done.  Christ died for the disease of man’s sin cankered soul and numbed senses and this scene was a perfect picture of it.  I am reminded of the prophecy from Isaiah:

⁴ Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. ⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.   Isaiah 53:4-6 (NIV)

The crowds were quickly becoming unruly; uproar was rising to a fevered pitch.  Pilate was getting nowhere fast.  Threats were being made by the Jews towards Pilate if he remained unwilling to gratify their demands.  John tells us these religious zealots stated to Pilate that if he were to let Jesus go he would certainly be no friend of Caesars.  Jesus had claimed to be a king and that, of course, would be held in opposition to the powers that be and certainly not music to his ears!  Bullies love to threaten yet they are usually just a bunch of thunderous clouds sans rain – puffs of hot air, useless.

¹² From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”  John 19:12 (NIV)

Pilate sought to use the example of the Jews own law by washing his hands in front of them supposedly clearing him of the guilt and placing it upon them.  He did this more to demonstrate the conviction he was under of Jesus’ innocence in what appeared to be a vain attempt to affect the crowds.  What nonsense for Pilate to condemn Jesus yet in the same breath state that he was innocent of His blood.  To protest against a thing and then practice it proclaims one is sinning against their own conscience.  Pilate then shifts the guilt of our Lord’s death to the crowd’s responsibility before God and the world.   These feigned religious characters had prior blamed Judas and now Pilate was blaming them.  Pathetically, in the heat of their rage they consented to take the guilt not only on themselves but also upon their children. 

"No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve."    Thomas Carlyle

Talk about some sick parenting!  They imprecated wrath and vengeance upon themselves as well as their offspring.  It was madness to put it on themselves but the height of barbarity to pass it on to their posterity.  What were they thinking in their blind, jealous rage?  Perhaps they weren’t.

Barabbas is then released and Christ condemned.  The upright became a ransom for the transgressor, the just for the unjust.  Our Lord was then flogged and handed over to be crucified – to make His death - in the highest degree - terrible and miserable.

“A cross was set up in the ground, to which the hands and feet were nailed, on which nails the weight of the body hung, until it died of the pain.  It was a bloody death, a painful, shameful, cursed death; it was so miserable a death, that merciful princes appointed those who were condemned to it by the law, to be strangled first, and then nailed to the cross.”   Matthew Henry     

²² For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.” ²³ But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. ²⁴ So Pilate decided to grant their demand. ²⁵ He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.   Luke 23:22-25 (NIV)

What I glean from this:

·       Jesus was a Lamb without blemish.

·       Jesus was pierced for my transgressions.  ³ For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.   Romans 8:3-4 (NIV)

·       Pride, rage and sinful hearts are capable of barbarous acts and bullies are to be pitied.