Shall I crucify your king?— According to most commentators, Pilate said this mocking them; but it is more agreeable to his general behaviour in this affair to suppose, that he spoke it with a view to move the populace, who, he knew, had once held Jesus in great esteem as the Messiah: for we are told, in the 12th verse, that he sought to release him. The chief priests replied to him, We have no king but Caesar; in which reply they publicly renounced their hope of the Messiah, which the whole oeconomy of their religion had been calculated to cherish. Likewise, they acknowledged publicly their subjection to the Romans, and, by so doing, condemned themselves when they afterwards rebelled.
The unwillingness which the governor shewed all along to pass the sentence of death upon Jesus, has something very remarkable in it; for, by the character which he bears in the Roman history, he seems to have been far from possessing any true principle of virtue. To what then could it be owing, that so wicked a man thus steadily adhered to the cause of innocence, which he defended with an uncommon bravery, till the threatenings of the grandees vanquished him? And when he did yield, taking from our Lordhis life, how came he to leave him his innocence? Certainly this can be attributed to no other cause than the secret powerful direction of the providence of God, who intended, that, at the same time, his Son was condemned and executed as a malefactor, his innocence should be made to appear in the most public manner, and bythe most authentic evidence; even by the testimony of his judges, Herod and Pilate; the latter of whom frequently declared him innocent in the course of his trial.