Pilate turned to the leading priests and to the crowd and said, “I find nothing wrong with this man!” (Luke 23:4 NLT).

Some of you with Pilate wash your hands,

Showing an outward pity.

Richard II, IV,i, 240

They found no crime for Jesus, yet hours later, they crucified him. Although a week earlier, the crowds were calling Jesus king, one week later, they wanted him to die as a criminal. I don’t understand them and their reaction. Yet, how often do I ignore him? Jesus, who was fully man, was also fully God. I often forget that. He. Was. God.

The crowds treated him like a criminal even though he’d done nothing wrong. Yet it wasn’t the crowds who put him on a criminal’s cross and that he died. It was for my sin. For all humanity’s sin.

This is the part that I am grateful for, yet don’t fully understand. It was God’s plan for the Son of God to die:

But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him
and cause him grief.
Yet when his life is made an offering for sin,
he will have many descendants.
He will enjoy a long life,
and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands (Isaiah 53:10).

Only a perfect man–Jesus could be the perfect sacrifice. So he gave himself to that. Then Jesus, although he died, would defeat death by rising from the dead three days later. No one else could do that.

We celebrate his resurrection this Sunday, and I look forward to it, but today, let’s remember the extreme sacrifice Jesus gave this day.

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