The Chief Priests and other officials who brought Jesus to Pilate in the final chapters of John were clearly amateurs in the art of persuasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Upon receiving Jesus as a bound prisoner, Pilate asked the priests, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” (John 18:29)<\/p>\n\n\n
They seemed unprepared for the most obvious question they were going to face from the Roman government! Here is their brilliant answer: “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” (18:30)<\/p>\n\n\n
Seriously? This amounts to nothing more than “Trust us – he’s a bad guy. Would we be bothering you if he wasn’t?”<\/p>\n\n\n
Pilate was unpersuaded.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In fact, his response to this was downright dismissive: “Take Him yourselves and judge Him by your own law.” (18:31)<\/p>\n\n\n
To this they responded, “But we have no right to execute anyone.” (18:31)<\/p>\n\n\n
The Chief Priests were demanding Pilate carry out the most serious punishment possible, but still offering no particulars as to what Jesus had done to warrant execution.<\/p>\n\n\n
Now, eventually, they found an approach that actually worked. Do you remember how they were able to persuade Pilate to kill a man whom he knew to be innocent?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It is the most basic and powerful tactic in the persuasion handbook.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chief Priests and other officials who brought Jesus to Pilate in the final chapters of John were clearly amateurs in the art of persuasion.\u00a0 Upon receiving Jesus as a bound prisoner, Pilate asked the priests, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” (John 18:29) They seemed unprepared for the most obvious question they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9707,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions\/9707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}