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Luke 23 — The trial, the cross, and the death that changed everything
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This is the chapter where it all happens. Everything has been walking toward since he set his face toward — it arrives here. A rigged trial. A spineless governor. A screaming crowd. A .
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There's no way to make this chapter easy. And we shouldn't try. What you're about to read is the most consequential sequence of events in human history, and — the careful historian — recorded it with unflinching detail. So slow down. This isn't something you skim.
The religious leaders had already decided was guilty. They just needed someone with the authority to execute him. So they dragged him before , the Roman governor, and started throwing accusations:
"We caught this man misleading our entire nation. He's been telling people not to pay taxes to Caesar. And he's been calling himself the Messiah — a king."
Two of those three charges were flat-out lies. Jesus never told anyone to stop paying taxes — in fact, he'd said the opposite. And "misleading the nation"? That was a matter of opinion, and theirs was motivated by jealousy. The third charge — that he claimed to be a king — was technically true, but not in the way they made it sound.
Pilate turned to Jesus and asked the only question that mattered to :
"Are you the King of the Jews?"
"You have said so."
That's it. No defense. No explanation. No lawyer. And Pilate — the Roman governor, the man with the power — turned back to the crowd and said plainly:
"I find no guilt in this man."
That should have been the end. It wasn't. pushed harder, claiming Jesus had been stirring up trouble from all the way to . They couldn't win on evidence, so they escalated on volume.
Some things don't change. When people can't argue with the truth, they just get louder.
When heard the word "," his ears perked up. Galilee was jurisdiction, and Herod happened to be in for the festival. So Pilate did what people in power have always done when they don't want to make a hard call — he passed the problem to someone else.
Herod was actually excited when arrived. He'd been hearing stories about this teacher for a long time, and he was hoping for a front-row seat to a . Ask some questions, maybe get a sign, enjoy the spectacle. It was entertainment to him.
He questioned Jesus at length. But Jesus gave him nothing. Not a word. Not a sign. Nothing.
Meanwhile the chief and stood by, throwing accusations from every angle. And when Herod realized he wasn't going to get his show, he and his soldiers mocked Jesus, dressed him in an elegant robe like a joke king, and shipped him back to Pilate.
Here's an odd detail includes: Herod and Pilate had been enemies before this. But that day, they became friends. Think about that. Two powerful men who couldn't stand each other found common ground — and the common ground was their shared dismissal of Jesus. There's something unsettling about that. People who agree on nothing can still agree to push Jesus aside.
gathered everyone together — the chief , the rulers, the people — and made one more attempt to end this:
"You brought me this man, claiming he was misleading the people. I've examined him in front of you, and I found no guilt in him. None of your charges held up. Neither did Herod's — he sent him right back. This man has done nothing deserving death. So I'll have him punished and released."
Three times now. Three separate times Pilate said the same thing: this man is innocent. He found no basis for execution. He tried to offer a way out.
But the crowd had already made up its mind.
"Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!"
pauses to explain who was: a man in prison for starting an insurrection in the city — and for murder. Let that settle. The crowd chose to release a violent revolutionary and demanded the execution of the man three authorities had declared innocent.
Pilate tried again:
"Why? What evil has he done? I've found nothing in him deserving death. I'll punish him and let him go."
But they kept shouting: "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
And their voices prevailed. That's how Luke puts it. Not " was served." Not "the evidence was weighed." Their voices prevailed. The loudest voices won. Pilate released a murderer and handed over to be killed.
There's a version of this that still happens constantly. Not with , but with crowds. Public opinion doesn't need evidence. It just needs volume. And the people with the power to stop it sometimes just... don't. They calculate. They accommodate. They wash their hands. Pilate knew the truth. He said it out loud. And then he handed Jesus over anyway.
As they led away, the soldiers grabbed a man named from — he was just coming into the city from the countryside, probably had no idea what was happening — and forced him to carry the behind Jesus.
A large crowd followed. Women were weeping and mourning openly. And Jesus — on his way to his own execution — turned around and spoke to them:
"Daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. The days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the women who never had children, who never nursed a baby.' They'll beg the mountains to fall on them and the hills to cover them. Because if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it's dry?"
Even now, walking toward the cross, he was thinking about them. Not about himself. He was warning them that destruction was coming — and if would do this to an innocent man during peacetime, imagine what they'd do to an entire city in .
(Quick context: about forty years later, in AD 70, Rome besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the . The suffering was beyond description. Jesus saw it coming.)
This is a man who, on the worst day of his life, stopped to care about the people watching.
Two criminals were led out with him. When they arrived at the place called , they — with one criminal on his right and one on his left.
And then — in the middle of the nails, the agony, the humiliation — Jesus said:
"Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing."
Let that sit for a moment. He's asking for for the people who are killing him. Not after the fact. Not from a safe distance. Right there. Mid-execution.
While he hung there, the soldiers divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching. The rulers sneered:
"He saved others — let him save himself, if he's really the Christ of God, the Chosen One!"
The soldiers joined in, him sour wine and mocking:
"If you're the King of the Jews, save yourself!"
There was even a sign nailed above his head: "This is the King of the Jews."
Everyone kept saying the same thing: save yourself. Come down. Prove it. And the thing they couldn't understand — the thing that would take centuries to fully land — is that staying on the was the proof. Saving himself was the one thing he refused to do. Because saving himself would have meant not saving everyone else.
On either side of hung a criminal. Same sentence. Same . Same proximity to the . But their responses couldn't have been more different.
The first one joined the mocking:
"Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself — and us while you're at it!"
But the second one pushed back:
"Don't you fear God? We're under the same death sentence. And we deserve it — we're getting what our actions earned us. But this man? He's done nothing wrong."
Then he turned to Jesus and said something so simple it's almost hard to believe:
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
And Jesus — bleeding, suffocating, dying — said:
"Truly, I tell you — today you will be with me in paradise."
No checklist. No prerequisites. No "let me think about it." Just a dying man asking to be remembered — and the Son of God saying yes, today, you're with me.
This is at its most raw. One criminal spent his final breaths demanding a rescue on his own terms. The other simply asked to be remembered. And that was enough. There was no time for the second man to up his life, join a community, prove himself. There was just an honest request and an immediate yes. If you've ever wondered whether it's too late for you, this moment says it's not.
At noon — the sixth hour — darkness fell over the entire land. Not a cloud. Not an eclipse. The sun's light simply failed. For three hours, from noon until three in the afternoon, the world went dark.
And the curtain of the — the massive veil that separated the innermost room, the place where God's presence dwelled, from everyone else — tore in two. Top to bottom. Not from human hands. The barrier between God and humanity was ripped open.
Then , with a loud voice, cried out:
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
And he breathed his last.
A Roman — a soldier, a pagan, a man with no reason to care about Jewish theology — watched all of this happen. And he said:
"Certainly this man was innocent."
The crowds who had gathered to watch the spectacle? They went home beating their chests in grief. And the people who actually knew Jesus — his friends, the women who had followed him all the way from — stood at a distance, watching. Unable to do anything but witness the end.
There's nothing clever to say here. The died. The sky confirmed it. The Temple confirmed it. Even a Roman soldier confirmed it. And the people who loved him could only stand there and watch.
Then a man stepped forward — someone you might not expect. His name was , from the town of Arimathea. He was a member of the — the very body that had condemned . But is careful to note: he had not agreed with their decision. He was a good and man, and he had been quietly waiting for the .
Joseph went to and asked for the body of Jesus. He took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb carved from rock — a tomb where no one had ever been placed before.
It was the day of Preparation. The was about to begin.
The women who had come with Jesus from followed Joseph. They saw the tomb. They saw how his body was laid inside. Then they went home and prepared spices and ointments to properly care for him.
And on the Sabbath, they rested. According to the commandment.
That's where Luke leaves us. A sealed tomb. Spices waiting to be used. Women planning to return. A Sabbath that must have felt like the longest silence in history. Everything was finished — or so it seemed. The story pauses here, in the quiet, in the grief, in the waiting. But if you know what's coming next, you know this isn't the end. It's the hinge.