What Shall I Do With Jesus? # 2

What Shall I Do With Jesus? # 2

Pilate was willing to let that gang nail Jesus Christ to the Cross in order to keep their friendship and hold his job. All over the land today there are people who are willing to do the same thing for a trifling reason. Pilate, my friends, asked himself: "What would the Jews say about it?"

Pilate should not have yielded to their clamor, but should have been willing to sacrifice his office and his life to avoid convicting Jesus Christ, an innocent Person. It was that Jewish hierarchy that threatened old Pilate as an officeholder.

Pilate was a stand-pat, free-lunch, pie-counter, pliable, plastic, lick-spittle, rat-hole, tin-horn, weasel-eyed, ward-heeling, grafting politician of his day, pure and simple. Old Pilate was a direct product of the political system of Rome. He was a typical machine politician. And there is no more low-down scoundrel on earth than a mere typical machine politician.

So, "What will the Jews say?"

Listen, "What will Caesar say?" (Caesar's word was law.)

Pilate says: "If Caesar at Rome hears that I have let Jesus go, and by that act admitted that I believe His claims are just, he won't stand for it; so off will come my head; I will surely lose my job. But if Caesar hears that I say this man Jesus is a fraud and that I let them put Him on the Cross, he will know that I am at my job, working for the interests of Rome. I will win Caesar's favor and keep my job.

Oh, he was willing to sacrifice Jesus Christ to please old Caesar and to please the gang that had no use for Jesus Christ. I despise a man like that!! But, hold on! I don't have to go back to old Pilate - I don't have to go out of this city to find people of the same low-down type as was old Pilate!

Pilate often heard of Jesus; no doubt he was prejudiced against Him, and was longing for the chance to pass sentence against Jesus. I have imagined the look of wonder that must have swept over the face of Pilate as Jesus was ushered into his presence. Pilate turned to Him and said: 'Art thou the Son of God?"

Jesus answered: "I am."

He was either the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; or He was a bastard, for He was born out of wedlock. He was either conceived by the Holy Spirit or He was an illegitimate offspring of a Jewish harlot.

Away with your damnable Unitarian theory that makes Jesus a bastard! My mother taught me that the Good Book didn't lie. And if Jesus Christ wasn't the Son of God, it does lie. My mother taught me that a good man didn't lie. And if Jesus Christ wasn't the Son of God, He was a liar, and all the teachings of the Bible are false. Just imagine what a hard time those high priests would have had, had there been a syndicate of newspapers playing upon the front page a three-column display headline about the villainy of that little crowd of religious bigots and crooked politicians who were intent on murdering Jesus Christ, the One who stood for the common people as no other man in history had stood and no other man in history will ever stand!

So Old Pilate called for a basin of water, walked out before the crowd, washed his hands and said: "I wash my hands of His blood. I find no fault in Him." If he had washed his old black heart at the same time, he would have been a clean man.

There has come from across the seas a book bearing the strange title, "Letters From Hell." The introduction was written by George McDonald. In that book Pilate is represented in the lost world bending over a stream of water. (I think the author must have gotten his wires crossed. A stream of water in hell would be the limit, according to my idea. That is just like the average fool novel writer anyway.) Pilate is represented bending over, dipping his hands in the water. Some one touches him on the shoulder and says: "Will they never be clean?" And with a shriek of agony that rang through the lost world he cried: "Oh, will they never be clean! No!"

~Billy Sunday~

(continued with # 3)