POLITICS AND RELIGION #3

After Jesus was arrested he was eventually taken into the court of Pilate (Pontius Pilate was the sixth Roman procurator of Judea). There we have the famous exchange between Jesus and Pilate: “Are you the King of the Jews?” 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.” It still isn’t.

It appears Pilate was satisfied with our Lord’s answers but the religious Jews were not. As the Jews pressed in for the death sentence, Pilate would have nothing to do with it and “washed his hands” of the whole mess.

As the soldiers took Jesus into custody, they began to mock him and dressed him in a phony robe and placed a cruel crown of thorns on his head and a reed staff in his hand and “And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” The soldiers continued to mock, spit in his face and taking his reed staff began to beat Jesus on the head. They stripped him of his clothes and took him away to crucify him. “And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Later in the same chapter he is called the “King of Israel.” They could not leave politics out of it.

This is the result and fruit of mixing politics and religion then and now.

“Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus