Final Verdict

INTRODUCTION

For the last few weeks, we have been looking at the trial of Christ that took place prior to His crucifixion.

He is arrested by a mob made up of the religious elite, their muscle from the temple and a cohort of Roman soldiers.

Of course, the betrayer Judas was there as well.

Upon His arrest, He is put on trial before the Great Sanhedrin, the highest court in Israel, and He is condemned as a blasphemer.

Last week, we saw Him be sent to Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect over the region of Judea

Pilate found no guilt in Him and sent Him to Herod

Jesus would not even speak in front of Herod–a man He calls a fox and has no respect for

Herod mocks Jesus by putting a robe of royalty on Him and then sends Him back to Pilate

Now we arrive at the end of the trial. It is time for the final verdict.

The enemies of Christ have exhausted all of their avenues.

From the Sanhedrin to Pilate to Herod and now back to Pilate

They must secure a guilty verdict that is punishable by death

They must convince Pilate that Jesus is not just a blasphemer, but an insurrectionist who poses a threat to Rome

And if they can’t, they must use the people to pressure him

And that is exactly what they will do

These passages just keep getting more and more uncomfortable.

We don’t want to see Jesus go through this.

We don’t want Him to die.

We have been studying Luke since July 2020.

We have been walking with Jesus in Luke for 2 and ½ years.

He is the greatest Man to ever grace the earth

God in the flesh

Pure and innocent

Gentle and kind

Fierce and loyal

It doesn’t sit right to see Him treated in this way.

To hear any sense of guilt attached to His name

And yet, we know He must.

We know that if those imprisoned by sin are to go free, they will only go free by the shed blood of the Son of God.

Jesus must die.

And the final verdict this morning removed the final hurdle to the Cross

READ Luke 23:13-25

Luke 23:13–25 ESV

Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. I will therefore punish and release him.” But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas”— a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why? What evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him.” But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will.

THE FINAL INTERROGATION

As you read these verses, it is stunning to see how adamant Pilate is that there is no wrong done by Jesus.

Pilate did not have a reputation as a gentle man or an understanding man.

Early in his office, Pilate caused a full-blown riot in Jerusalem by refusing to be sensitive to the feelings of the Jewish people.

The prefects before him would remove the symbols of Caesar from their cavalcade as they rode through Jerusalem, because it incited the Jewish people to see those images in the city of David’s throne.

Plus it was a transgression of the 2nd commandment.

Pilate refused to remove them and marched through Jerusalem showing off the symbols of Rome and the Jewish people went ballistic

At one point during the riot, hordes of Jewish people laid on the ground baring their necks–showing their willingness to lose their heads over this

In another instance, Pilate executed a raid on the temple treasury, in order to pay for a government-sponsored aqueduct.

How would you feel if the government broke in here this morning, confiscated the offering and used it to build a dam in the York River?

Might you be angry?

As the Jewish people objected, Pilate sent soldiers to beat them into silence

About three or four years after the crucifixion of Christ, Pilate would ultimately lose his position because he sent soldiers to Mt. Gerizim, where a bunch of Samaritans were worshiping.

And he had the soldiers attack them, even though they were unarmed

He claimed he was putting down a riot, but Rome actually stripped him of his position because he was so relentless

Historian Eusebius wrote that Pilate’s existence was miserable after losing his position and he ended up taking his own life

I say all of that to say, Pilate is not Mr. Rogers

It was never a beautiful day in his neighborhood

He was a pathologically brutal tyrant in peaceful Roman clothes

And yet–he insisted on the innocence of Christ and wanted to let Him free

Why?

I think there are a few possibilities here.

First of all, Pilate was still a Roman official.

Romans prided themselves on having an empire of even-handed justice.

It is possible that Pilate just didn’t see anything Jesus had done wrong—even in the eyes of a man who looked for wrong in the Jewish people

He was willing to take action if he needed to, but this all may have seemed like a farce to him from the get go

Secondly, Pilate doesn’t have a great relationship with the religious leadership of Israel.

It is quite likely that he looked at these accusations with a suspecting eye because he didn’t trust the accusers

Thirdly, there is this dream that his wife has. Luke doesn’t mention it, but Matthew does:

(Matthew 27:19 ESV) Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream."

We don’t know anything more about this nightmare than Matthew tells us.

We don’t need to speculate

But whatever it was, it shook her to the point that she sent an urgent message to her husband, telling him to have nothing to do with Jesus.

And she calls Him righteous

And lastly, I don’t think we can downplay the fact that Pilate is rather impressed with Jesus. And who wouldn’t be, unless they come with an agenda.

This is God in the flesh. This is Pilate’s Maker in human skin. And Pilate speaks with Him

He spoke with Him before he sent Christ to Herod

And then John 19 shows us that there was a final interrogation before the situation with Barabbas that we will get to in a moment:

(John 19:9-12a ESV) He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin." From then on Pilate sought to release him…

The words that Jesus speaks to Pilate could have incited him. I mean, Jesus just told him that he has no authority over Him.

You would think that wouldn’t sit well, considering Pilate’s history and reputation

But instead, Pilate’s response to that conversation to determined to see Jesus go free

So with all of this in mind, Pilate calls together the chief priests, the rulers and the people in verses 13-16 and he says:

They brought Jesus to Him as a political terrorist who is a threat to Rome, but after interrogating Jesus twice, he just doesn’t think the charges are true (v. 14)

He makes the point that Herod also found no guilt in Christ (v. 15)

And in light of this, Pilate has no intention of crucifying Him because He doesn’t deserve to die (v. 15)

Instead, Pilate will punish Jesus and release Him

This punishment would have been a scourging.

This was a beating with a Roman whip that had bone and metal woven into the tails

Generally, they would whip someone 39 times with the whip because forty lashes was understood as the amount it would take to kill someone

39 will just bring them to the edge of death

So this is no small slap on the wrist that Pilate wants to give Jesus here

The Romans did this sometimes, if they thought someone was headed down a bad path

The lashes were a message–”You aren’t guilty yet, but you are on dangerous ground.”

But this is not enough for the crowd. They cry out together in verse 18 for the release of this man, Barabbas.

Now you may have noticed that verse 17 is missing.

That is because we are fairly sure it is not canon. It seems like it was added in by manuscript scribes who were too eager to try and explain the custom of a prisoner being released at Passover.

However, we do get explanations from Matthew and Mark that are inspired:

(Matthew 27:15-16 ESV) Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas.

(Mark 15:6-7 ESV) Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas.

So at the feast of the Passover, the Romans would release one prisoner in a sort of celebration of jubilee

Pilate wants to seize that custom as an opportunity to release Barabbas.

Now, if we were trying to harmonize the Gospels into one narrative, it seems like the break in between verses 16 and 18, would’ve been the time when Pilate gets the message from his wife about the dream.

That is where Matthew places it. Right after Pilate decides he wants to release Jesus.

So it seems like he is receiving this message and while he is receiving it, the crowd is whipped up into a frenzy and they take his brief silence as an opportunity to cry out for Jesus to be crucified

Barabbas was a murdering insurrectionist (v. 19).

Jesus was a completely innocent Man.

And in light of this, Pilate pleads with them again (v. 20), but they continue to cry out for Jesus to be taken to the cross (v. 21).

And then, a third and final time, he tries to persuade the people:

“Why? What evil has he done? I have found in Him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release Him.” (v. 22)

But Luke says that they are “urgent.” The Greek word means insistent. It was a word used to describe coals that would not stop burning.

That is the picture Luke is painting of this crowd. They are relentless in their burning anger and it will only be satisfied by seeing Jesus hung on the cross.

Luke says that their voices prevailed and Pilate gives in. He consents to releasing Barabbas and delivering Jesus over to the people to be crucified (v. 23-25).

THE GOSPEL EXCHANGE

Having understood the order of events and why things unfolded the way they did, we now have to stop and see the Gospel in this passage.

Luke wants us to do that.

He wants us to see this exchange that is taking place:

The innocent One is headed to the Cross; the guilty One goes free

The Light and Life of Men will now die; the murderer will now live

The Sinless Savior is going to complete His mission now; Meanwhile, a prisoner like Barabbas goes free

Luke means for us to see the Gospel in this.

To see this unfair situation and realize that it is a picture of what Christ has done for us

We know that Luke wants us to do this because he has gone out of his way to record Pilate’s insistence on Jesus’ innocence.

V. 14– “I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against Him”

V. 15– “Look, nothing deserving death has been done by Him.”

V. 22– “I have found in Him no guilt deserving death.”

And yet, on the other hand, Luke goes out of his way to let us know who Barabbas is:

V. 19– “...a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder”

V. 25– “He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder…”

Luke wants us to see the innocence of Christ, who will die a criminal’s death

And he wants us to see the depravity of Barabbas, who will now live as a free man

We cannot help but relate the scene to our own lives. To our own experience with the grace and love of Christ.

We were born dead in sin, thanks to the spiritual genetics of our father Adam, who rebelled against God in the Garden.

And thanks to that sin, you are much more like Barabbas than you might think

You may not be a murdering insurrectionist, but might you be a lying, thieving, blasphemer?

An adulterous, coveting, idolater?

See, to understand that you are like Barabbas, you cannot compare yourself to him or anyone else. You have to hold yourself up to God’s perfect law.

Have you kept it?

Have you worshiped God perfectly according to His design and loved Him with your entire heart?

Have you ever taken God’s name in vain and used it like a cuss word?

Have you ever dishonored your parents?

Lied? Stolen?

Committed adultery or murder?

Even if you haven’t committed those acts in the traditional sense, Jesus said that if we lust in our hearts, it is adultery.

If we are angry without cause in our hearts with someone, it is murder.

Because God judges the thoughts and intentions of our hearts as much as our actions

Have you coveted what your neighbor had instead of being satisfied with what God has given you?

Surely if you allow your life to be compared to the perfect moral law of God, you will find that you are guilty.

Here is how the Bible talks about those who break God’s laws–sinners like us:

(Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV) And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Dead

Walking in the path of the world

Following Satan

Being controlled by the passions of your body

A child of wrath

This is how the Bible describes the man or woman who has not been born again

This is our state apart from Christ

It is completely hopeless apart from a divine miracle

God warned that if Adam and Eve ate of the tree, they would surely die

We too, will surely die in our sins and spend eternity paying for them, unless God does something

So God puts forth His only Son, the Second and Better Adam, to come and fix what the first Adam broke.

Adam was supposed to live under God’s rule and reign in the Garden, acting as His servant on the earth, carrying out His will with no influence from sin.

Obviously, that ideal was shattered with the eating of the fruit

Christ comes and successfully lives the life that Adam failed to live.

Christ lives under His Father’s rule and reign. He is His Father’s servant on the earth. He carries out His Father’s will and submits Himself to it.

And He did all of it without sinning.

His sinlessness means that Pilate is correct.

Jesus was not guilty of a thing that He is being accused of.

He is not an insurrectionist. If anything, we have just seen Him rebuke one of His disciples for wielding a sword.

He is still accused of this. I heard political commentator, Ben Shapiro, say on a podcast that he thought Jesus was nothing more than an insurrectionist who was crucified for His trouble.

He isn’t a blasphemer. Far from it.

He taught people how to worship God in spirit and truth.

And yet, despite His sinlessness, Jesus is going to die on the Cross that should have belonged to Barabbas.

And He died on a Cross that should have been for me and you.

This exchange where Jesus is condemned and Barabbas goes free points us to the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

That Christ didn’t merely die for sin, but that He died in my place for my sin.

He died in your place for your sin.

He assumed all of our unrighteousness.

He gives us His righteousness.

The Apostle Paul described this Gospel exchange to the Corinthian church:

(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV) For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The Puritan, Stephen Charnock, commented on that verse and said:

He received our evils to bestow his good, and submitted to our curse to impart to us his blessings; sustained the extremity of the wrath we had deserved, to confer upon us the grace he had purchased. The sin in us, which he was free from, was by divine estimation transferred upon him, as if he were guilty, that the righteousness he has, which we were destitute of, might be transferred upon us, as if we were innocent. He was made sin, as if he had sinned all the sins of men, and we are made righteousness, as if we had not sinned at all.

The ways of God are not the ways of man. And if you were ever unsure of that, Jesus’ impending death on the Cross should convince you.

In God’s plan, He has struck a fatal blow to death with the death of His Son.

He defeats death with death.

In God’s plan, He has used sin to defeat sin.

No greater sin has ever been committed on earth than the murder of God’s Son at Golgotha.

And yet, God took that horrific sin and has used it to defeat sin.

In God’s plan, He has elected to suffer humiliation in order to defeat our sinful pride.

We were boastfully obstinate in our opposition to God, but Jesus came in humility to die on the Cross as if He was the boastfully obstinate One.

And in God’s plan, which has the Son of God crucified for sinners right in the middle of it, our sins are removed and cast aside.

(Psalm 103:11-12 ESV) For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

AW Pink poetically said this about God’s plan of substitutionary atonement:

Just as a storm cloud empties itself on the earth and then melts away under the rays of the sun, so when the storm of divine judgment had exhausted itself upon the cross our sins disappeared from before God’s face, and we were received into His everlasting favor.

Everlasting favor.

See, this is the thing about Barabbas.

He was freed for the rest of his life. Or until he did something else evil.

And he was freed for committing acts of treason against an earthly government

But if we are going to use his pardon as a parable for our salvation, we must understand that Christ’s death in our place has secured something far better than Barabbas gets in Luke 23.

Christ has not just freed us from the dominion of sin and death in this life. He has not just absolved our sins against some earthly power like the Roman government. He has freed us from sin and death forever and absolved us in the eternal court of God.

We will never taste the second death. We will never feel the flames of Hell.

Instead, we have been guaranteed an inheritance that cannot be corrupted, that is kept for us in glory.

(1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Jesus’ death has secured you the everlasting favor of God.

By dying in your place, the Son had guaranteed that you experience the same love of the Father that He has experienced.

Because when the Father looks at you, He sees the righteousness of Christ.

CONCLUSION

This is the good news of Jesus Christ. This is the Good News of the Kingdom.

That God has made a way for man to be made right with God.

When Martin Luther marched up to the door in Wittenburg 505 years ago tomorrow, he did it to protest the obscuring of this Good News.

The church was teaching that salvation was not by Christ alone, but by Christ plus works.

They were selling indulgences—letters of pardon that you would buy to earn you forgiveness for certain sins.

Or better yet, you could buy indulgences to shorten your time in purgatory—almost like booking a flight way in advance to get cheaper rates

What were the poor to do? Suffer in their sins?

Save up all their money to have any hope of not suffering in the heat of purgatory?

Of course it just so happens that the church was building the New St. Peter’s Basilica.

And history tells us that the early stages of the building were mostly funded by the sale of indulgences. Imagine that.

You might think, Why didn’t they just read their Bibles and see that there is nothing in there about being able to buy your way out of your sins?

Well the people didn’t have access the Scriptures the way you and I do. They Scriptures were locked up by the clergy and kept the from the people.

Luther could not abide it. And so here is what he said in Thesis 36 and 37 of the 95 Theses

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses Thesis 36

Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses Thesis 37

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

Do you hear what Luther is arguing?

Every single person who repents of their sin and trusts in Christ will be forgiven.

No works necessary. No letters of indulgence.

Every single person who repents and believes gets all of the blessings of Christ, which includes the blessing of having Him suffer for your sin and you getting His righteousness credited to your moral bank account.

Luther himself struggled with this for years before he taught it. He was driven mad by his own sin. He wanted to be right with God and he feared that God would smite him off the face of the earth.

The verse that unlocked peace for his neurotic, guilty heart was Romans 1:17

Romans 1:17 ESV

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

See this verse settled something for Luther.

The young man who had studied law saw a legal dilemma with God that had no way out.

He was a sinner.

God was holy.

He was going to be judged according to God’s Law and he would be guilty.

If God forgave Him without punishment, justice is not done and God is not holy.

Therefore, it was hard for Luther to imagine any way out of an eternity in Hell.

Martin Luther said, “Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of the God and the statement that “the just shall live by faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ has filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in love…If you have true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love.”

Luther understood that when we have trusting belief in the salvation provided by God’s Son at the Cross, we no longer need to fear God as one who will punish us.

Christ has taken the punish.

We can fear Him as reverent worshippers, knowing we stand righteous before Him by faith.

He looks upon us as if we have never sinned.

Justice has been satisfied.

From God, we just receive love now.

Love in provision.

Love in discipline.

Love in growth.

Love in tribulation.

Love in prayer.

Love in blessing.

Love in a thousand different ways each day—but by the blood of Christ, we know God as our loving and caring Father.

As the band comes...Maybe you can identify with Luther this morning.

Driven crazy by your own guilt before God.

Painfully aware that you have fallen short.

You try to numb it with myriad of things like so many do.

Scrolling.

Substances.

Sustenance.

Stuff.

Streaming

All the S’s.

But in the quiet moments of honesty, we know that we are not prepared for judgment on our own

The guilty in our conscience tells us that

In the Gospel, a way has been made for you.

A way has been made for Barabbases from every tribe, tongue and nation to go free—repenting and trusting in God’s Son. Receiving His righteousness.

And that way has been opened by the sinless Savior stretching wide His arms and receiving guilt for sins He never committed.

It is scandalous, but it is the Good News that will save your soul.

The great Gospel exchange.

Believe it. Say with Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

Nowhere else to go. No other way. Nowhere else to find our sin forgiven and our guilt removed.

God help us, it is just Christ. No one and nothing else.

Believe on Him.