As Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, the crowd wanted blood.

They had made false charges against Him, but they couldn't substantiate them. Pilate had Jesus whipped, and three times he announced that he found no fault in Him.

Each time, the crowd called for Him to be crucified. But only the Romans could inflict capital punishment. So the Jews brought Jesus to Pilate. But there was nothing in Roman law that covered the situation Pilate faced.

So they said, "We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God" (John 19:7). Their words revealed their true motive. "We want to kill Him because He is a blasphemer. He claims to be God."

I want you to think about that phrase—"Son of God"—for a moment. Because you may hear someone say, "Jesus never claimed to be God. He only claimed to be the Son of God."

But that term, "The Son of God," is an expression of the state of being God. The Son of God is God (see John 5:18, 10:30-33 and Philippians 2:6). It's a term of deity used in the Old Testament, and it's applied to Jesus Christ in the passage above.

The crowd wouldn't have wanted to kill somebody who said, "I'm a child of God, like everybody else." That wasn't a capital crime. The reason the Jews wanted to kill Jesus is because He claimed to be equal with God.

As a Roman, Pilate held to the superstitious worldview that messing with a representative of a divine being could get you hurt or killed. Not only that, but his wife had warned him, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man" (Matthew 27:19, ESV). Pilate had already ordered Jesus to be beaten, so when he heard the Jews call Him "the Son of God," "he was even more afraid" (see John 19:8, NIV).

Earlier, Jesus had told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36) and "You say rightly that I am a king" (v. 37). After that, Pilate was determined to let Him go free. "But the Jews cried out, saying, 'If you let this Man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar'" (John 19:12). It was a threat, and Pilate knew it.

"And he said to the Jews, 'Behold your King!' But they cried out, 'Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!' Pilate said to them, 'Shall I crucify your King?' The chief priests answered, 'We have no king but Caesar!'" (vv. 14-15).

That sealed it. The chief priests, who hated Caesar, had said, "We have no king but Caesar."

Luke revealed what was going on in the mind and heart of Pilate, writing, "And the voices of these men and of the chief priests prevailed" (Luke 23:23). He was moved by the crowd, though he knew Jesus was innocent, and he kept saying, "He's not guilty."

The Jews knew it. Pilate, in his pagan, Roman way, knew it. And you know it. Jesus said He was the Son of God, God in human flesh.

And because Jesus is God, when a person looks to Him by faith, believes by faith, and confesses their sins by faith—it's enough.