Those to whom authority and responsibility are given will be held accountable, and that accountability works outwards to include any who put the authority-figures in the position of doing the wrong thing. Jesus – and John, of course – assume that what Pilate is about to do, sending Jesus to his death, is indeed the wrong thing: it is a ‘sin’. It will be blamed on those mainly responsible, in other words (we assume) the chief priests who have presented Pilate with a strange prisoner and an even stranger set of charges against him.
