마태복음 Chapter 27

Translation: ESV

1

When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.

Key Message

The conspiracy to kill Jesus was dressed in the forms of legal procedure — a reminder that injustice often wears official clothing.

▸After the night's illegal interrogation, a formal morning session is convened to pass the official death sentence.

After the night's illegal interrogation, a formal morning session is convened to pass the official death sentence. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin tractate) required capital verdicts to be issued during daylight. The council's morning consultation provides a veneer of legal procedure over a verdict that had already been determined. The machinery of institutional religion is now fully deployed against its own Lord.

Related Verses

Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death.The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed.
3

Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders,

Key Message

Remorse without repentance spirals downward into despair rather than upward toward restoration.

▸Judas, seeing the irreversible consequence of what he set in motion, experiences a change of mind (μεταμεληθεὶς).

5

And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

Key Message

Guilt without grace leads to destruction; the same weight that could drive us to God's mercy can, if resisted, drive us to despair.

▸Judas hurls the money into the temple sanctuary (ναόν — the inner sanctuary itself, not the outer courts) and goes out and hangs himself.

11

Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus said, "You have said so."

Key Message

Jesus affirmed his kingship even before the Roman governor — a king whose kingdom is not of this world but is no less real for that.

▸Before Pilate, the charge is political: 'King of the Jews?' — a claim that would constitute treason against Rome.

22

Pilate said to them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" They all said, "Let him be crucified!"

Key Message

Jesus died as a substitute for the guilty — Barabbas goes free, Jesus is crucified, the innocent bearing the sentence of the guilty.

▸Pilate's question — 'What shall I do with Jesus?' — is the most important question any person can face, and every generation faces it anew.

24

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves."

Key Message

Moral responsibility cannot be washed away by symbolic ritual; complicity in injustice carries accountability regardless of public disclaimers.

▸Pilate's handwashing is one of history's most famous gestures of moral evasion.

26

Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

Key Message

Jesus bore the full weight of physical suffering before the cross even began, carrying our punishment in his own body.

▸The flogging (flagellatio) was a standard Roman prelude to crucifixion — a brutal beating with a whip (flagellum) whose leather straps were embedded with metal balls or bone fragments that tore the skin and deeper tissue.

29

and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!"

Key Message

The world's mockery cannot strip the King of his true identity; ironically, the soldiers' parody proclaimed the very truth they intended to deny.

▸The Roman soldiers mock Jesus with the full regalia of a parody king: a crown of thorns, a reed scepter, a purple robe (v.

32

As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross.

Key Message

God sometimes calls people unexpectedly into the way of the cross — what begins as compulsion may become the most significant encounter of one's life.

▸Simon of Cyrene is pressed into service to carry Jesus' crossbeam — a detail that reveals Jesus' extreme physical weakness after the flogging.

35

And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

Key Message

Every detail of the crucifixion — even the casting of lots for clothing — was within God's foreknowledge and fulfilled ancient Scripture.

▸The soldiers divide Jesus' garments by lot — a detail that fulfills Psalm 22:18 with remarkable precision.

37

And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."

Key Message

What Rome intended as mockery, God intended as proclamation: the titulus on the cross is the truest thing ever written about Jesus.

▸The titulus — the charge written on a placard — read 'The King of the Jews.

45

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.

Key Message

The darkness over Golgotha was creation's lament as Jesus, bearing the world's sin, entered the realm of God's judgment in our place.

▸From noon until 3:00 PM, a supernatural darkness covered the land.

46

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Key Message

Jesus experienced the God-forsakenness that sin deserves so that those united to him by faith will never experience it.

▸This is the most mysterious cry from the cross — the cry of dereliction.

50

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

Key Message

Jesus' death was not an execution that overpowered him but a voluntary surrender — he gave his life; no one took it from him.

▸Jesus' death is not the collapse of a spent victim but an active, voluntary act.

51

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

Key Message

The tearing of the temple curtain announces that Jesus' death has permanently removed the barrier between God and humanity.

▸At the moment of Jesus' death, the temple curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was torn from top to bottom — God tearing it from above.

54

When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

Key Message

The cross, which the world sees as shame and defeat, is the place where Jesus is most powerfully revealed as the Son of God.

▸A Roman centurion — a Gentile, a professional military man, an outsider — becomes the first person to confess Jesus as Son of God under the cross.

57

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus.

Key Message

God uses hidden disciples at critical moments; Joseph's act of courage fulfilled ancient prophecy and honored the Lord who had died.

▸As the Twelve have fled and even the women can only watch from a distance, a secret disciple — Joseph of Arimathea — steps forward at enormous personal and social risk to claim Jesus' body from Pilate.

62

The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate

Key Message

The enemies' attempt to prevent the resurrection ironically provided the strongest evidence that it really occurred.

▸On the Sabbath — the day after the Preparation — the chief priests and Pharisees come to Pilate to request a guard for the tomb, citing their memory of Jesus' resurrection prediction.