Accusations

 Hello everyone.

We are moving into Luke 23 today, as Jesus moves toward the Cross.  In my previous post I mention that in the course of this one night, Jesus moves from trial to trial, six in all.  Luke 23:1-5 covers his first trial before Pilate.  Here is my translation:

1 The whole group got up and led him off to Pilate. 2 They began to make accusations about him, saying, “We find that this man misleads our people, forbidding them to pay taxes to Caesar, and claiming himself to be the Messiah, a king.”
3 So Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus replied, “So you say.” 
4 Pilate, then, said to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no reason to charge this man.” 
5 But they insisted, saying, “He stirs up the people all over Judea with his teaching, beginning in Galilee and now here.”  

The leaders among the Jews would have loved to just kill Jesus, but they did not have the authority to do so.  They needed the Roman leader Pilate to take care of Jesus for them.  The Jewish ruling council was so concerned with getting rid of Jesus that all of them got up and took Jesus to Pilate.  They want to leave nothing to chance, I suppose, and make sure that he gets there.  

Pilate, as we know, had a pretty stern reputation.  The ruling council undoubtedly thought that they would have no problem manipulating Pilate into killing Jesus. Here were the accusations that they brought to Pilate:

• Accusation: He misleads the people.  
• Truth: Jesus wasn’t misleading the people, they were.  Jesus had done nothing but preach and teach spiritual truth and heal people. They, on the other hand had lead people to a lifeless religion far from what God had intended.
• Accusation: He forbids people to pay taxes to Caesar. 
• Truth:  This is an outright lie, but they knew that this would get Pilate’s attention.  Jesus had actually indicated that people should “render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s.” (Luke 20:25) 
• Accusation: He claims to be the Messiah, a king. 
• Truth: Yes, Jesus had certainly implied during his trial that he was the Messiah.  While not implicitly stating it, he had made statements that would back such a claim.  However, for the Jewish leaders here, they were looking for the Messiah.  Jesus just wasn’t their kind of Messiah.  So they used this claim because they knew that Pilate would have to deal with it.  In the Roman Empire there could be no lord but Caesar. 
• More truth:  Jesus is a king, but not in the sense that his audience thought of kings.  

Pilate addressed the charge that would matter most to him.  Whether Jesus was claiming kingship, or not.  He asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?”  Jesus took the same approach with Pilate that he had with the chief priests.  He neither confirms or denies.  He responds with, “so you say.”  So, while Jesus doesn’t deny his kingship, he does not represent any kind of threat to Rome. Pilate does not seem to perceive that Jesus is any kind of threat to Rome. He is unmoved by the charges that have been brought against Jesus, and declares that he finds no reason to bring charges against him.  

Since the first set of charges didn’t land with Pilate, the Jewish leaders brought more charges against Jesus:

• Accusation: His teachings stir up the people, first in Galilee and now in Jerusalem.  
• Truth: Yes, there were a lot of people excited about Jesus.  Many of them,because they misunderstand his message and think that he is going to be an earthly deliverer and king.  The leaders are trying to paint Jesus as a dangerous leader of some sort of rebellion against Rome, but any objective person would conclude that Jesus is not trying to do anything like that. 

So here is where we stand after the first few verses of Luke 23.  The Jewish leadership have approached Pilate with the idea that Jesus is a threat to Rome and that if he is a good governor for Rome, he will not let Jesus go free. They have made accusations against Jesus, some of which are false.  For the accusations that are true, they have bent the truth to fit their dark purposes and present Jesus as something he was not: a threat.