No Fault

Pilate several times says that he had found no fault in Jesus (Luke 23:4,14). The word is aition, and contextually refers to the charges that had been made against Jesus, which were charges of sedition and blasphemy. In the same chapter the same word is rendered as cause, but meaning the same thing — “I have found no cause of death in him” (v. 22). The only other time the word is used in the New Testament is in Acts 19:40, when the town clerk of Ephesus was worried about the fact that there was “no cause” for the day’s uproar. The word is used in contexts that mean that there was no fault that was actionable. But of course, for slanderers, anything is actionable at any time.