John 19:6

When therefore the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him! Pilate saith unto them, Take him yourselves and crucify him: for I find no crime in him.

This might be taken in two ways. It looks like a suggestion by Pilate that the Jews go ahead and crucify Jesus without a legal sentence, with the implied promise of the governor to look the other way. Had not Pilate himself just imposed a merciless scourging upon an innocent, and without any legal sentence? Perhaps he was saying, "Look, I have just shown you how I handle things like this. Why don't you do likewise? Why all this bother about trying to get a legal condemnation from me?"

However, Reynolds, Hendriksen, Hovey, and others view Pilate's remark differently.

Take him yourselves and crucify him; that is, if you dare. Go do your deed of blood by your own hands and take the responsibility for it; for I find no fault in him. He thus derides their powerlessness and repeats his verdict of acquittal.[6]

That Reynolds' view is the better one seems proved by what immediately happened. Those evil men, so intent on Jesus' death, were extremely reluctant to reveal their true reason for demanding Jesus' death; and, if there had been any way by which they could have accomplished it without revealing it, they would have done so. But, at this point the governor balked at doing what they wished. No legal reason for Jesus' death had appeared; in fact, his innocence had been established; and, in that situation, those hypocrites had the choice of losing their quarry or producing a capital charge. They chose the latter and, in the next verse, gave the real reason why they condemned him. All kinds of excuses have been offered on behalf of those religious murderers to explain their so long concealment of their actual charge against Jesus; but the best explanation of it is that, in their hearts, they knew Christ's testimony under oath that he was "the Christ, the Son of the Blessed" was the truth of God, and that they dreaded swearing in open court that it was false. That element of self-condemnation within themselves alone explains their reluctance to bring out their charge publicly. Moreover, Satan, so visibly active in the whole drama, was determined, if possible, to murder Jesus upon any other charge than the real one.