From Mark 15:6-15 / Poison Polls – It is the preoccupation with news gatherers to take polls. To try and get a handle on what the masses are saying. And while there is nothing wrong in that in and of itself, majority opinion alone can never be the final arbiter of right and wrong. Nor can that be left solely to those in power. We see this so graphically in this passage. The public outcry was 100% evil, and needed to be overturned. But Pilate the politician, “wishing to satisfy the crowd” had no means of determining right or wrong beyond himself, and the crowd. If we have no authority above ourselves, all morality and all justice are up for grabs – whatever the whims of the people dictate, and whatever winds move the politicians at the moment. As Steve Brown once quipped, the incarnation teaches us that given the opportunity, man will always murder God. For as in the Garden, we still want to be god – we want to determine right and wrong for ourselves. What grace then that Jesus died according to God’s unchanging justice. That unmoved by fallen human whims, He sent His Son to satisfy all justice on behalf of all who would believe. And contrary to our fallen desires, grants us in the Gospel, what we only come by His grace to see – that eternal satisfaction, for Him and us, is only in the Cross.