“And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.”
Christ being bound before the judgment seat of an earthly judge, in open assembly is condemned as guilty unto the death of the cross, not for his own sins, (as appeareth by the judge’s own words) but for all ours, that we most guilty creatures being delivered from the guiltiness of our sins, might be quitted before the judgment seat of God, even in the open assembly of the Angels. It was not lawful for them to put any man to death, for all causes of life and death were taken away from them, first by Herod the great, and afterward by the Romans, about forty years before the destruction of the Temple, and therefore they deliver Jesus to Pilate. Cross references: : Matt. 27:1 ; Luke 22:66 ; John 18:19