Digging Deeper: The Public Execution of Jesus

The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was trying to prevent Jesus from being executed by the Jewish religious leaders and the mob that had turned against Jesus and had brought him before the judgment seat of Rome.

Pilate takes Jesus and has him flogged. The soldiers twist together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothe him in a purple robe, slap him in the face, and go up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 

Pilate brings Jesus out to the crowd again, insisting that there is no grounds for the death penalty. 

But as soon as the chief priests and their officials see him, they shout, “Crucify! Crucify!” 

But Pilate is like, “You crucify him! I don’t want to!” 

The Jewish leaders insist, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” 

When Pilate hears this, he is even more afraid, and he goes back inside the palace. 

“Where do you come from?” he asks Jesus, but Jesus gives him no answer. 

“Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate says. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” 

Jesus answers, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” 

From this point on, Pilate tries to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders keep shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” 

When Pilate hears this, he brings Jesus out and sits down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement. 

John tells us that it was about “the sixth hour” at this point on the Day of Preparation for the Passover. The sixth hour was 12:00 noon. However, it is possible here that John was using Roman time, in which case the appearance before Pilate would have been at 6:00 A.M. and the crucifixion at 9:00 A.M. which would have been the third hour according to Jewish time.

Pilate says, “Here is your king!” and the people scream, “Crucify!” 

Pilate asks them, “Shall I crucify your king?” 

And the priests cry out, “We have no king but Caesar!”

The chief priests’ emphatic statement that they had no king but Caesar was a direct contradiction of the Old Testament declaration that God alone was Israel’s king.

So finally Pilate hands him over to them to be crucified. 

The practice of crucifixion became widespread under Alexander the Great. It became the common form of execution for traitors, defeated armies and rebellious slaves. Later, under the Roman Empire, only non-citizens, lower class Romans and violent offenders could be crucified. The only possible exceptions were in cases of high treason or desertion during wartime.

Slaves were particularly vulnerable to the imposition of crucifixion. Latin literature reflects the dread slaves felt at the prospect of this fate. It was officially accepted as the most painful and disgraceful form of capital punishment, more so than decapitation, being thrown to wild animals or even being burned alive. For these reasons this heinous penalty was often imposed upon foreigners who were seen as threats to Roman rule.

So the soldiers take charge of Jesus. 

Carrying his own cross, he goes out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 

There they crucify him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. 

Victims were often scourged or otherwise tortured prior to crucifixion. Crucifixions were carried out on either a single vertical stake or on a vertical stake with a crossbeam near or on its top. Sometimes blocks were attached to the stake as a seat or footrest. Depending on the presence of these blocks, the victim might linger, alive, for up to three days. The blocks allowed a victim to rest some of his weight, increasing the chance of breathing and proper circulation. Without the blocks a victim’s weight would rest totally on his arms, which were attached to the crosspiece by ropes, nails or both. This would prohibit breathing and circulation and lead to both brain and heart failure. To end the torture, a victim’s legs could be broken, after which death would quickly follow.

Pilate has a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It reads: JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS.

Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus is crucified is near the city, and the sign is written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 

The chief priests of the Jews protest to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.” 

Pilate answers, “What I have written, I have written.” 

Oftentimes the charge against the guilty party would be written out and nailed to the cross above his head. As a deterrent to would-be rebels and criminals, crucifixions were carried out in highly visible locations.

When the soldiers crucify Jesus, they take his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. 

This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. 

John says that they liked the undergarment so much that they cast lots to see which one of them would get it and that this fulfilled what was prophesied in Psalm 22. 

Near the cross of Jesus stood three Marys - his mother Mary, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 

When Jesus sees his mother there, and “the disciple whom he loved standing nearby (probably John),” he says to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” 

From that time on, John tells us, this disciple took her into his home. 

Later, Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” 

A jar of wine vinegar is there, so they soak a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lift it to Jesus’ lips. 

Jesus says, “It is finished.” And he dies. 

Now the Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, so they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. 

So the soldiers come and break the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. 

But when they come to Jesus and find that he is already dead, they didn’t break his legs. 

Instead, one of the soldiers pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. 

John writes that he himself witnessed this event and he is writing about it so that the reader will come to believe. He makes a special note of seeing the “blood and water” flow from Jesus’ body. This is the basis of his “testimony.”

Later in life, John wrote in his first epistle:

"This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement."

He also says that all these things happened to fulfill what the prophets had said: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” and “They will look on the one they have pierced.” 

Later, Joseph of Arimathea (who was a secret disciple of Jesus) asks Pilate for the body of Jesus. He and Nicodemus come and take the body away and cover it with myrrh, spices, and aloes, and wrap it in strips of linen. 

At the place where Jesus is crucified, there is a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it is the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb is nearby, they lay Jesus there.

During Jesus’ lifetime crucifixion was used by the Romans to exercise and gruesomely display their authority over others. This tortuous execution was viewed by the Jews as a cursed form of death. Deuteronomy 21:23 states that “anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” Documents discovered at Qumran reveal that many Jews of Jesus’ time applied this text to Roman crucifixion.

This perspective of crucifixion demonstrates why the apostle Paul wrote that the cross of Christ was “s stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

Who would have imagined that the Holy One of God would voluntarily take upon himself the curse that should have been ours? This emblem of shame has thus become the symbol of our salvation.