Good Friday

6 Every year at the time of the Passover the governor would free one prisoner whom the people chose. 7 At that time, there was a man named Barabbas in prison who was a rebel and had committed murder during a riot. 8 The crowd came to Pilate and began to ask him to free a prisoner as he always did.

9 So Pilate asked them, “Do you want me to free the king of the Jews?” 10 Pilate knew that the leading priests had turned Jesus in to him because they were jealous. 11 But the leading priests had persuaded the people to ask Pilate to free Barabbas, not Jesus.

12 Then Pilate asked the crowd again, “So what should I do with this man you call the king of the Jews?”

13 They shouted, “Crucify him!”

14 Pilate asked, “Why? What wrong has he done?”

But they shouted even louder, “Crucify him!”

15 Pilate wanted to please the crowd, so he freed Barabbas for them. After having Jesus beaten with whips, he handed Jesus over to the soldiers to be crucified.

16 The soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s palace (called the Praetorium) and called all the other soldiers together. 17 They put a purple robe on Jesus and used thorny branches to make a crown for his head. 18 They began to call out to him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 19 The soldiers beat Jesus on the head many times with a stick. They spit on him and made fun of him by bowing on their knees and worshiping him. 20 After they finished, the soldiers took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him out of the palace to be crucified.

  

33 At noon the whole country became dark, and the darkness lasted for three hours. 34 At three o’clock Jesus cried in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” This means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

35 When some of the people standing there heard this, they said, “Listen! He is calling Elijah.”

36 Someone there ran and got a sponge, filled it with vinegar, tied it to a stick, and gave it to Jesus to drink. He said, “We want to see if Elijah will come to take him down from the cross.”

37 Then Jesus cried in a loud voice and died.

38 The curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces, from the top to the bottom. 39 When the army officer who was standing in front of the cross saw what happened when Jesus died, he said, “This man really was the Son of God!”

Mark 15 New Century Version