Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. (2) And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe, (3) And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands. (4) Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.
Everything in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ is interesting, and merits our closest regard. To a child of God, whose eyes are opened to behold in some measure or degree, the wonderous things of God's law, here is a subject, which at every step we take, shews us yet more and more, how the Lord was carrying on his own design, and they who were the actors of it, the most unconscious creatures what they were doing. What could Pilate mean by scourging Jesus? Some say it was with a view to soften the minds of those savages, who pushed him on to exercise an unjust sentence against Christ, at which his own conscience revolted. I cannot say that I think so. He was a mere instrument in my view to do that, which all along had been determined by Jehovah to be done, to fulfil that scripture in relation to his Church; By his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5. And the soldiers, what did they do? Certainly, they had no consciousness what they were about, when they put the thorny crown upon his divine head, and clothed him with the purple robe. But here they literally fulfilled what God had said in the curse: Thorns and thistles the earth was to bring forth to the man. And here Christ the God-man, as if to shew his pre-eminency in suffering as in glory, shall be crowned with them. Genesis 3:18; Colossians 1:18. And they bow the knee in mockery as they meant, but in reality fulfilling the prophecy; for Jehovah had said ages before, though the kings of the earth, like Pilate and Herod, and the rulers, like the Chief Priests, and Scribes, and Pharisees, are all agreed against the Lord, and against his Christ; yet in the very moment of their most violent outrage, the Lord then sets his King upon his holy hill of Zion. For never was the kingly office of Christ more blessedly shewn than in that day, when those soldiers said, Hail, King of the Jews! and Pilate, the unjust judge was compelled to declare, that in Him he could find no fault. Sweet and precious testimony from the mouth of an enemy, to the holiness of Christ! Psalms 2:1-6.