"You will not speak to me? Don't you know that it is in my power either to set you free, or to send you to the cross, just as I please?"
"You would have no power over me," answered Jesus, "if it had not been given you from one who is above. God gave you that power to use for the right and not for the wrong. There is one man whose sin is greater than yours; and that is the high priest who brought me to you!" Jesus meant to have Pilate understand that he was only a weak man, yielding to the will of the high priest, and that he as the governor should have a mind of his own and do only what was right in God's sight.
All this made Pilate the more anxious not to put Jesus to death, but to set him free. But the rulers of the Jews shouted aloud to him:
"If you set this man free, who has called himself a king, you are no friend to Cæsar, the emperor at Rome! Anyone who calls himself a king sets himself above the emperor who is over us all!"
Pilate washed his hands, and holding them out, called to the people: "My hands are clean from this good man's blood! This is your doing, not mine!"
Pilate knew that Cæsar the emperor was very jealous and would be very angry if he knew that any man was trying to make himself a king. Very unwillingly, Pilate made up his mind that it would be safer for himself to let Jesus be put to death, rather than to make the emperor at Rome his enemy. So Pilate again took his seat upon the throne, and had Jesus brought before him. It was now the time of sunrise, six o'clock in the morning. Pilate said to the Jews:
"Here is your king!"
"Kill him! kill him!" yelled the Jews. "Crucify him! Crucify him!"