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THE CHOICE OF THE CENTURIES Matthew 27:11-26 “Are you the king of the Jews?” is what Pilate asked Jesus as He was standing before him. When He told Pilate that He indeed was the king, Pilate had no reason to make Jesus a prisoner. Whenever people today are questioned about whether or not we believe in the Lord Jesus, we are supposed to say that we do, and to take whatever comes our way. We are not supposed to deny it, because that would be wrong. God said that we should tell people that we do believe in Him, and not to deny it. When Pilate then asked Jesus if He had heard what the chief priests and the elders had said about Him, He didn’t answer. This is saying that Pilate knew that Jesus had done nothing wrong. After Pilate was done interrogating Jesus, he went out to the crowd that had gathered, and asked them who they wanted to be set free. When he asked the question, he had already known that the people were envious of Jesus. As people of the Lord, we are supposed to be envious of Him because He is perfect and we should want to be just like Him. Pilate then went back in and sat down on the judge’s seat to think everything over before deciding what to do. His wife sent him a message telling him to not have anything to do with Jesus. When Pilate went back out to the crowd, to ask who they wanted him to release, he felt bad, because he wanted to release Jesus and not Barabbas. So, in the end, Pilate washed his hands clean of Jesus, and handed Barabbas over to the people, because he didn’t want to get fired from his job or lose his reputation. He did the wrong thing when he did this, because he didn’t care about Jesus or anyone that believed in Him. All he cared about was himself, and what he could get out of letting Barabbas go. As the people of God, we should let Jesus go free to work within us, because He did nothing wrong and we shouldn’t care about our reputation. When Jesus was crucified, He didn’t get Himself down from the cross, because He knew that it would tell God, His Father, that all He cared about was He, Himself. He, instead, believed that God would save Him and that He would live forever. We should do the same thing that He did, and stand up for what we believe is right, instead of doing what the people of this world want us to. ~ Heather Barden, age 14
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