When Pilate examined Jesus he couldn't find anything wrong with Him. When he told the chief priests and the rulers that he didn't find anything in Jesus that deserved death they insisted that He should be crucified. Pilate thought he would have Jesus beaten and let go. In the meantime his wife sent him a message pleading with him not to have anything to do with Jesus because she had been troubled about Him in her dreams. When Pilate asked Jesus if He was a king He replied that His kingdom was not of this world because otherwise His soldiers would be fighting for Him. But He did not utter a word when the chief priests and rulers were accusing Him. Pilate wondered at this and reminded Jesus that he had the power to punish Him or let Him go. Jesus' reply was that he would not be able to do anything to Him unless God permitted it. Pilate was becoming scared, and he wanted to let Jesus go somehow. So he went to the people who had gathered there asking whether they wanted him to release Jesus for them or a criminal called Barabbas. But this crowd had been incited by the chief priests and the rulers to ask for Jesus' death. So they asked Pilate to release Barabbas, and continued to cry out asking for Jesus to be crucified. The Jewish leaders also told Pilate that if he let Jesus go, who had announced Himself as King, he would find himself in trouble with Rome.

Realising that there was too much pressure on him to crucify Jesus, Pilate tried to appease his own conscience by taking some water and washing his hands in front of the people, symbolically washing his hands off the guilt. Then he handed Jesus over to the soldiers to crucify Him.

The soldiers beat Him in such a way that His flesh was getting torn off from His body. Afterwards they took off His clothes, put a purple robe on Him, placed a crown made of thorns pressed down on His head, gave Him a reed to hold in place of a sceptre and mocked Him by pretending to bow before Him.