EVEN AS JESUS MADE HIS HUMBLE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM on the back of a donkey days before his painful and humiliating crucifixion and death at Calvary, it is believed another famous ruler was simultaneously making his entry into the city in a much grander way: Equestrian Pontius Pilate was arriving on a grand stallion from Caesarea. The contrasts of each man's entry could not have been more different. Though Pilate later, reluctantly let Jesus go to the Cross as the riotous crowd of Jews demanded at His trial, he found no reason to condemn the humble man who he called The King of the Jews.
David Mathius at Desiring God writes,
PASSION WEEK BEGINS WITH PALMS. Branches are cut from trees, hands are raised in praise, and the most important figure in history enters the greatest city in the first century for the most important week that’s ever been.
This unrecognized prince has a rightful claim to the throne of his people as the heir of their most celebrated king. And yet he rides in manifest humility, on the back of a donkey’s colt — like no other ruler in the first century, or the twenty-first century, would dare stoop to do.
And this, of course, is not the extent of his meekness and lowliness. He will stoop yet further this holy week, and then further still when he is “raised up” to the lowest of all places, to the utter shame and ignominy of a brutal public execution, even death on a cross.
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