Pilate tried to let Jesus go free

1Pilate told the soldiers to take Jesus away and hit him a lot with whips.

2The soldiers also made some prickly branches into a headband that looked like a crown, like a big boss wears. And they put it on his head.

3and they walked around him and made fun of him. They kept on saying, “Hey, you reckon that you are great. And you reckon that you are the big boss over the Jewish people. But you are not.” And they kept on hitting him.

4After that, Pilate went out of his house and said to the Jewish leaders, “Look, I’m bringing Jesus out to you now, and I say he is not guilty. He has done nothing wrong.”

5Then the soldiers brought Jesus out. He was wearing the prickly headband and the long purple coat. And Pilate said, “Look, here he is.”

6The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies and their soldiers saw Jesus, and they shouted, “Kill him. Kill him. Nail him to a cross and let him die there.” But Pilate said, “No. You take him and kill him on a cross yourselves. I reckon he is not guilty.”

7The Jewish leaders said, “But this man said that he is God’s son. Our law says that if somebody says that, they have to die.”

8Pilate heard them say that, and he was even more frightened.

9He went back inside and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus didn’t answer him.

10Pilate asked Jesus, “Why don’t you answer me? I have the power to let you go free, and I have the power to kill you.”

11Jesus said, “Yes, but you only have power over me because God gave it to you. So the man that sent me here is more guilty than you are.”

12After Pilate heard this, he tried again to let Jesus go free, but the Jewish leaders shouted, “But he is trying to be our big boss. And anyone that tries to be the big boss over a nation is going against Caesar, the big boss in Rome. So if you let this man go free, you are not Caesar’s friend.”

13When they said that, Pilate went into his house and got Jesus, and he took him to the place outside called the Stone Floor. (In the Jewish language it was called Gabbatha.) And Pilate sat down there on the judge’s seat.

14It was the time of the Passover ceremony, and it was the day when Jewish people got ready for their rest day, and it was about the middle of the day. Then Pilate said to the Jewish leaders, “Look, here is your big boss.”

15They shouted, “Kill him. Kill him. Take him away and nail him to a cross.” Pilate asked, “Do you really want me to kill your big boss?” The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies shouted back, “He is not our big boss. Caesar is our only big boss.”

16Then Pilate did what they wanted, and he told the soldiers to take Jesus away and nail him to a cross to kill him.

They put Jesus on a cross to kill him

17Then the soldiers got a big wooden cross, and they forced Jesus to carry it out of the city to a place called Skull Place. In the Jewish language, the name of that place is Golgotha.

18Then the soldiers nailed Jesus’s hands and feet to the cross, and they stood the cross up so that Jesus was high up off the ground. And they also did that to 2 other men. They put one of them on each side of Jesus.

19Pilate told one of his men to write some words on a flat bit of wood, to say why they were killing Jesus, and to nail it to the cross. He told that man to write, “Jesus, from Nazareth, the big boss over the Jews.”

20Pilate wanted everyone there to understand it, so he told that man to write it in the languages of the Jewish people, the Roman people, and the Greek people. And those crosses were near the Jewish city called Jerusalem, so a lot of Jewish people read that sign.

21The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies told Pilate to change the sign. They said, “Don’t write, ‘The big boss over the Jews.’ You have to write, ‘This man said that he is the big boss over the Jews.’”

22But Pilate said, “No, I will not change what I wrote.”

23After the soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross, they split up his clothes into 4 parts, and each soldier got one part. There was also a long shirt that didn’t have any joins in it,

24and they said, “If we cut this up into bits, then it will be no good any more.” So they didn’t cut it up, but they gambled for it. A long time ago, one of God’s men wrote about this, and it is in God’s book. He wrote, “They split my clothes up among each other, and they gambled for my shirt.” When the soldiers did that, it happened just like that man wrote in God’s book.

25There were 4 women standing near Jesus’s cross. They were his mother, and her sister, and Mary Magdalene, and another Mary that was the wife of Clopas.

26Jesus saw his mother standing there, and also the follower that he liked a lot. So he said to his mother, “Look at that man near you. He is your son now.”

27And he said to his follower, “Look at that woman near you. She is your mother now.” So that follower took Jesus’s mother back to his house, and from that time he looked after her, like she was his own mother.

Jesus died

28After that, Jesus knew that he finished everything that his father asked him to do. Then he said, “I’m thirsty.” So one of the soldiers got a long stick, and he tied a sponge to it. He put it into a pot of sour wine, and then he lifted it up to Jesus’s mouth, for him to drink. When that happened, they did what God’s men wrote in God’s book a long time ago.

30Jesus tasted the sour wine, then he said, “I’ve finished my work here on earth.” Then he put his head down, and he let his spirit go, and he died.

31All this happened on the day before the Jewish people’s rest day. And it was going to be a really special rest day, because it was the time of the Passover ceremony. The Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies to be on those crosses on their rest day, and in their culture a new day started when the sun went down. It was already afternoon, so they asked Pilate to get the soldiers to break the legs of the men on the crosses, so those men can die more quickly, and then they can take their bodies down before the sun went down.

32Pilate agreed, and he told the soldiers to break the men’s legs. They broke the legs of the men on each side of Jesus.

33Then they came to Jesus, and they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs.

34But one of the soldiers poked a spear into Jesus’s side, to make sure that he was dead, and straight away blood and water came out.

35There was a man there that saw all this happen, and he told everyone about it. He knows what really happened, and what he says is true. He tells everyone about it so that you can believe in Jesus too.

36And, you know, a long time ago, one of God’s men wrote in God’s book about what those soldiers were going to do to Jesus. He wrote, “They will not break any of his bones.” And another one of God’s men wrote, “They will look at the man they stabbed with a spear.” And those things happened when Jesus died.

They put Jesus’s body into a cave

38There was a man there that was called Joseph. He was from a place called Arimathia. He believed in Jesus, but he didn’t want the Jewish leaders to give him any trouble, so he didn’t tell anyone about it. When Jesus died, Joseph went to see Pilate and asked him, “Can I get Jesus’s body to take care of it our way?” Pilate said, “All right.” So Joseph went and got Jesus’s body.

39Nicodemus was with Joseph too. He was the man that visited Jesus one night a long time before. He got about 30 kilograms of special cream to put on Jesus’s body. It was made from plants called myrrh and aloes, and it smelled really good.

40Together Joseph and Nicodemus put that cream all over Jesus’s body, then they wrapped it in long bits of cloth. That’s how the Jews buried their dead people.

41There was a garden near the place where Jesus died, and in that garden there was a special cave to put dead bodies. It was a big hole, like a little room that somebody cut in the rock. It was a new cave, so there were no bodies in it yet.

42Joseph and Nicodemus put Jesus’s body in that cave, and they blocked that cave with a big stone. You see, the sun was starting to go down, and soon the Jewish rest day was going to start, so they had to be quick, and that cave was close to the place where Jesus died.