John 19:13-16 - Here is your king

19:13,14

Pilate knew the game was up. Making one last attempt he brought Jesus out to the people. Pilate sits in the judgement seat, signalling that he was going to make a decision, though in fact he made a decision by avoiding making a decision. The day of preparation is the day of preparation of the passover week. Many people make play of apparent inconsistencies between the various gospel accounts of timings of events. A lot of these are explained by two facts. One is that the day began in the evening in Jewish reckoning, and the second is that the Jews and Romans had different ways of referring to time. So one account may be expressing things in Jewish time, another in Roman time.

19:15,16

There was no placating the Jewish leaders. They wanted Jesus dead and that was that. When sin is fully born it will completely take over a man, or group of men, not listening to any reason, and certainly not listening to any righteousness. They then made the ridiculous claim that they had no king but Caesar. Now the Jews were far from keen on Caesar and would have loved to have seen the back of the Romans, but sin will quite happily lie. The only group amongst them who may possibly have legitimately said this were the Sadducees. So Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified. The soldiers had the job of carrying out this order.