Matthew 27:22, commentary and pictures

Pilate asked what should be done with Jesus who is called Christ, and the crowd answered with one voice that He should be crucified. Pilate knew He was innocent and just and found no fault deserving death, yet washed his hands and delivered Him to be crucified. The people standing beside Him chose Barabbas the notorious murderer and robber to be released, thereby rejecting the Holy One and Prince of Life, at the stirring of the priests and rulers and of Satan working through them. His enemies thought that by taking His life they could prevent His becoming king, but by murdering the Son of God they brought about the very thing they sought to prevent, making Him the Redeemer and ruler over the whole world. That choice between Christ and Barabbas is set before every person today as the choice between Christ who is the Truth and Satan the rebel, liar and murderer, so that rejecting the message of mercy is joining the cry to crucify Christ.

Pilate's Question and Setting

Pilate asked what should be done with Jesus who is called Christ, and the crowd answered with one voice that He should be crucified. The question was put after the priests and rulers had persuaded the people to choose Barabbas, and their answer led to Jesus being delivered to be crucified. Pilate knew Jesus was innocent and just, for witnesses had shown the charges were false and made for envy, and he had received light through his wife. He knew by Christ's power even bound and accused that He was God and no common man, yet he was too weak to obey and failed his official duty to do justice while wishing to avoid appearing guilty.

Pilate repeatedly declared he found no fault in Jesus and found no charge deserving death, washed his hands as innocent of His blood, yet delivered Him to be crucified. To avoid condemning Jesus he invoked the Passover custom of releasing a prisoner, proposed punishing and releasing Him, and had Him scourged to satisfy the crowd. He asked what evil He had done, but by putting the decision to an enraged crowd he yielded his judgment and compromised his authority. He lost control and was swayed by them, surrendering justice to a lawless mob while intimidated by the priests.

The scene took place in Pilate's judgment hall in Jerusalem among professedly pious Jews, Christ's own nation. Many demanding His blood had hailed Him as king only days before when He rode into Jerusalem, showing fickle acclaim because praising Him had been popular. Those He had healed and raised from the dead bore witness to His works and questioned why He was treated as a criminal. When Pilate asked what evil Jesus had done, the crowd only cried the more for crucifixion. Their voices were like bellowing wild beasts in satanic madness and frenzy.

Choice of Barabbas

Jesus stood side by side with Barabbas, the Prince of Life bearing the seal of heaven set against a notorious thief, robber, murderer and hardened rebel noted for cruelty. He was the sinless Lord of glory, full of goodness, mercy, truth, compassion and holy teaching, with the divine impress shining through His humanity even as He stood beside Barabbas. The contrast before all was open light against darkness, sin against righteousness, truth against falsehood.

Barabbas was a pretended Christ who did great wickedness through satanic agencies by theft and robbery and murder, claiming religious power and right as Christ to establish a different order of things and to set the world right. He stands for Satan personified, the rebel, liar and murderer, while Jesus is the Son of God who made the world and all things in it. The roaring demand for Barabbas chose Satan before Christ and exalted Satan.

The people chose Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified, thereby preferring the society of a murderer. In doing so they rejected the Holy One, the Holy One of Israel, the world's Redeemer who came to save the people. Their demand expressed the rulers' hatred of His righteousness and rebuke, and their choice of disobedience over the eternal life offered through obedience to Him.

The rulers' demand went on while the Passover ceremonies went on as usual. Their imposing religious dress and rites covered hearts full of selfishness, fraud, discontent and unholy passion, and their life and character contradicted their ceremonies. Profession of piety, love for God, and knowledge of Scripture did not make them God's children or lead them to reflect His character.

Hands Behind the Cry

The priests, rulers, elders, rabbis and scribes persuaded and instructed the crowd against Jesus and stirred and inflamed them to demand His death. They acted from envy, malice, jealousy and bigotry, fearing He would draw attention away from themselves because He did greater works than they could perform and would rise higher in authority and even become king. They hired false witnesses to testify falsely in order to condemn Him, and that false testimony stirred the mob into frenzy.

Satan prompted the cry for crucifixion, working through the religious element in bigotry and prejudice and using priests and people and evil angels as his agents to stir their passions. He stood at the head of those who reviled and crucified Christ, having consulted with his angels to inspire the demand for blood and to heap cruelty and scorn upon Him. His influence turned people into liars and murderers, and their cry exposed his malice and revealed the character of the great deceiver.

Apart from God's Spirit, humanity under the powers of darkness rejected the innocent Jesus in the crisis, choosing the thief and murderer Barabbas instead of Christ and showing what people may do in a great crisis. His pure life and holy teaching convicted the crowd of sin and condemned them, producing the same hostility that leads many to hate God's word because it exposes sin.

Pilate knew Jesus was innocent yet yielded his judgment and compromised his authority, and by his wavering he allowed the priests to intimidate him and to carry their purpose through a lawless mob. In this way Jewish priests and rulers prevailed upon the Roman governor to carry out their will, an example of corrupt human power opposing righteousness.

What the Rejection Accomplished

Jesus came to save the people and to win immortality for humanity, yet when asked what should be done with Him He was rejected and a murderer was chosen in His place. He was delivered to crucifixion though pronounced innocent, because He was the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. He foresaw this rejection and the cross, and knew that through His death as a propitiation for human sin His kingdom would be perfected and extend throughout the world, bringing salvation to people of every nation.

His enemies feared losing their authority and seized Him privately with false witnesses, thinking that by taking His life they could prevent His becoming king. By murdering the Son of God they brought about the very thing they sought to prevent, making Him the Redeemer of mankind, the Saviour of the fallen race, and ruler over the whole world. As Joseph by being sold by his brethren into Egypt became saviour to his father's family, God's providential hand controlled the crucifixion for His own glory and man's good, yet their crime was just as heinous as though God had not overruled events.

The cry for crucifixion was the climax of Satan's cruel warfare upon the world's Redeemer, prompted by him and carried out through priests and people as his agents with unsleeping malice hunting Jesus from place to place. Satan so acted because Christ's mercy and love and compassion and pitying tenderness were representing the character of God to the world. Together with the demand for homage on the mountain summit and the temple pinnacle and the urging to cast Himself down, this warfare unmasked the character of the great deceiver, exciting the amazement and indignation of heavenly angels and the whole loyal universe, while Heaven gazed in silent horror and pent-up envy and malice and hatred and revenge burst forth on Calvary against the Son of God.

Angels looked on the choice with sorrow and indignation but did not interfere, because in the great controversy between good and evil Satan had to be allowed to reveal his character and the principles of his rule, so the heavenly universe and humanity could see the righteousness of God's purposes. By submitting with perfect calmness to the coarsest insults and outrage in His cruel death of shame on the cross of Calvary, the Redeemer proved the falsity of Satan's charges against God and vindicated God in the sight of the angels in heaven as willing to make the greatest sacrifice for man.

Satan and his angels consulted together and decided to inspire Christ's own nation to cry eagerly for His blood and to invent cruelty and scorn to heap upon Him. They hoped such treatment would make Jesus resentful, cause Him to abandon humility and meekness, provoke Him to retaliation, or drive Him to perform a miracle to release Himself and thus break up the plan of salvation. But his cunning and hatred did not break up the plan, and the time drew on for the accomplishment of the object for which Jesus came into the world.

The hour when the multitude that had hailed Jesus as their king hissed at Him and reviled Him and demanded His crucifixion was a great trial and horror for the disciples that threatened their faith and their fondest hopes with fear, grief and disappointment. It was a place where faint-hearted and undecided followers would have sunk and their apostasy would have carried the rest with them, as disappointed hopes and worldly ambitions tested all. Jesus foresaw this betrayal and death with the agony in Gethsemane and deliberately brought an earlier sifting crisis while still present to comfort, strengthen and prepare His faithful few. Having already seen followers turn away and experienced the fickleness of popular favor and desertion by professed followers, they were not to be overwhelmed with surprise when the jeering crowd scorned Him doomed to the cross, and were not to hang their faith upon the opinions of others.

Judgment Foreseen and Foretold

The answer, let him be crucified, pronounced upon Jesus the doom of crucifixion, and that same doom afterward came upon the Jews themselves. At the destruction of Jerusalem multitudes of Jews perished by crucifixion, and crosses stood on Calvary as thickly as forest trees. Soon after Jesus was crucified the Romans in Judea had stopped using the cross as an instrument of death because they were terrified by the priests' malignity, the people's rage, the convulsions of nature, and the supernatural darkness at His death, but at Jerusalem's destruction crucifixion was revived for a time against the Jews.

Jerusalem's choosing of Barabbas and rejecting of Christ brought humiliation and ruin on the city. By refusing to submit to God's way and accept His mercy the people were left to carry out their own rebellious purposes, and God's heavenly protection was withdrawn. This warns that those who exalt themselves and persist in disobedience face the consequences of rejecting mercy. After His death many voices that had united in the cry for crucifixion realized the calamity that had fallen upon them and would have as eagerly cried for Jesus to be given back had He still been alive. Their mourning over the sick and dying with no one to save them brought home to thousands that a great light had gone out of the world, leaving a blank which could not be supplied.

As Jesus neared the cross the disciples would hear His own nation clamor for His blood and see Him condemned to die as a criminal, though He was the one in whom their hopes of eternal life rested. Witnessing this rejection and death would give them cause to mourn and fast, and their hope and courage would fail. The rulers permanently chose Barabbas and, while the Passover ceremonies went on as usual, joined the demand for crucifixion and called His blood upon themselves and their children. Their imposing religious dress and rites covered hearts full of selfishness, fraud, discontent and unholy passion, and their life and character contradicted their ceremonies. By that joining they brought that blood and the blight of God's curse upon themselves, and those words would never cease to torture their hearts, while the character they chose in Barabbas would ever remain their character.

Hypocrisy cloaked by a garment of religion is hated, though the true penitent is never spurned. Rejecting heaven's light is casting Him out, crying for His death, and choosing Barabbas instead, which rejects the only means of cleansing from sin. It is as if crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting Him to open shame, and God will avenge His death. At the final judgment the lost will recognize the sacrifice made for them and hear the question of what should be done with Jesus answered by the demand to crucify Him. They will understand that their own choice stands with His condemnation.

Compelled to look upon Him who clothed His divinity in humanity and still wears that humanity, sinners will remember that choice with indescribable confusion, remembering how His love was slighted and His compassion abused. Every insult offered to Christ and all suffering caused to His disciples will be as fresh as when done. His voice heard in entreaty and gracious solicitude in synagogues and streets will sound again distinctly in their ears, making them realize what they might have been had they received Christ and improved the opportunities granted them.

Choosing Christ Today

The same decision stands before people today between the side of Christ and the side of the apostate rabble, with two distinct parties set over against each other. By life and character every person individually demonstrates whom he will have as king, and the choice between Christ and Barabbas is still being made. Barabbas stands for Satan personified, while Jesus is the Son of God who made the world and all things in it, so the roaring demand for Barabbas chose and exalted Satan before Christ. That choosing of Barabbas and rejecting of Christ to crucify Him is repeated in the world today, and people must answer to God if their example encourages transgression.

The choice between Christ and Barabbas is a symbol of the choice in earth's closing scenes to accept Christ who is the Truth or Satan the rebel, liar and murderer. Rejecting the message of mercy about God's commandments and the faith of Jesus means accepting Satan's falsehoods, joining the disloyal and turning from the Son of God. The choice is repeated whenever people reject Christ and choose another leader, for refusing light brings deception, darkness, false witness and rebellion. Those who turn from truth act as though crying to release Barabbas and crucify Christ, and Christ is betrayed when His saints are betrayed. By rejecting the light of heaven they cast Him out, refuse the only provision for cleansing from sin, and choose another in His place.

Rejecting Christ means rejecting the only means of cleansing from sin, as if crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting Him to open shame. Those who reject Him will have to answer for that choice at the final judgment as though they had cried for His death and chosen Barabbas instead, and God will avenge His death. Finite man rejected the Prince of Life and cast Christ out, while the heavens received Him and God the sovereign Ruler received and exalted Him. Man crowned Him with a crown of thorns, and God crowned Him with a crown of royal majesty. To the rejector of His mercy His death brings the wrath and judgments of God unmixed with mercy, the wrath of the Lamb, but to all who receive and believe Him it is hope and eternal life.

People may condemn the Jews for rejecting and crucifying Jesus while professing love for Him, yet reveal their love is not genuine when they reject the message about His coming. This blindness came because they overlooked the word of Life and failed to search the Scriptures, and the same neglect in the last days causes many to be weighed in the balances and found wanting. Minds engrossed with things of little importance set aside elevating, sanctifying truth that would refine and fit for immortality. Those who cling to earthly things and reject the life offered through Christ act in the same spirit contrary to God's desire. By persisting in resisting the Spirit they become spiritually blind, misread evidence and counsel, and finally choose what is wrong while rejecting truth.

Near the end of earth's history people deceived by Satan will repeat that rejection, crying for Christ to be crucified. Disloyal people who reject their Saviour would have joined that demand had Christ been on earth in human form. The greater the position and light given to one who becomes disloyal and denies Christ, the greater that person's future punishment. That same eager cry for blood is repeated by powerful enemies seeking to silence a fearless witness for truth and take his life. The demand of the Roman zealots that Luther be put to death is like the crowd clamoring for Christ's blood, since both opposed those they believed threatened their cause. The Jewish scribes and elders having Christ crucified while professing great zeal for the honor of God proves Satan's delusive power to make people believe they serve God while opposing Him. As Korah, Dathan and Abiram in rejecting Moses rejected Christ and insulted the Spirit of God, so rejecting God in Christ was rejecting Christ and insulting the Spirit of God, exposing a spirit that follows its own will in opposition to the will of God still existing in human hearts.