"28 Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” 32 This was to fulfil the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber."
John 18:28-40
What Peter's denial illustrates is likewise illustrated by the case of Pilate, from a different viewpoint. In Peter it was the waywardness of sin, but here it is something uglier. Pilate was confronted with truth. He knew it. He knew what he ought to do - release Christ. But other considerations weighed heavily with him. Ambition, questionable diplomacy, and the like, made him convince himself that to agree to the Jews' request would be the political thing to do. Here, then, is an example of the deceitfulness of sin. The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the evil heart of unbelief, and it is seen in Pilate so very clearly. He asked, 'What is truth?'; he was blind to the reality of incarnate Truth standing before him, but it was a willing blindness. How we deceive ourselves in human experience! Well might Jeremiah say, 'The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked'. There is nothing about which we are not capable of deceiving ourselves, if we are determined enough on a particular course of action.
When Pilate said to the Jews that they must judge Jesus according to their own law, they said it was not lawful for them to put any man to death (31). This raises an interesting issue. On the one hand, being under Roman jurisdiction what they said was true; but even if they had been able to, the penalty for blasphemy was death by stoning. And John adds, in effect in 32, 'This could not come about, because God had planned, and Christ had testified, that He would die by being lifted up from the earth' - yet another indication of how sovereignly the divine will was in control of all that was happening. But something else emerges in this matter. We read in Acts that Stephen was put to death by stoning, on a similar charge of blasphemy. This makes us wonder whether in fact the law was quite clear to them. It may be that they were intent - even though conscious that they could have put Jesus to death in the way Stephen was - on forcing the Roman authorities to take the responsibility for what they were doing. This could mean that they had some dim sense of the terrible thing they were doing, and wanted to load the responsibility on Pilate. If this be so, there is a grim irony at work in the story, for we are told elsewhere (in Matthew) that this is also what Pilate tried to do, when he washed his hands of the whole matter. Not thus easily, however, could either he or they absolve themselves of their dastardly and impious crime.