Who killed Jesus?
Isaiah 53:4 – 6
On vacation I hiked a pass overlooking the Loyalsock Creek in the mountains of Pennsylvania. It was a difficult incline that I estimate in many places to have been 60O. There was a stern warning at the head of the trail that you should not stray from the path. As I climbed, I saw why. In some places, to stray from the path was to take a tumble over a cliff, hundreds of feet down to a rocky, cold water stop at the foot of the hill.
When we can see the danger we are careful. But the path of our souls is not so easy to navigate. Isaiah says it. We have all wandered our own directions. We have all strayed. But the plunge brought on by sin that is a natural outgrowth of that wandering has been laid on the Messiah and He has paid the price.
In our judicial system, if a serial killer is found guilty and is sentenced to death, who kills him?
Different options might be considered:
The executioner doesn’t do it. We might think he does since he administers the injection, but he does not have the authority to decide who he injects and he cannot decide that a person should not be injected.
The judge can’t do it. He can only ensure that all the evidence is presented fairly and legally.
The jury doesn’t do it. They weigh the evidence and decide whether or not the person did the crime. Sometimes they also must decide whether that person fits the categories defined by the law for a particular punishment.
The prosecutor can’t do it. He can only see that the evidence against the defendant is clearly seen.
The law makers don’t decide. They don’t deal with individual defendants at all.
Even the president can save a life, but he cannot take one.
You could say that the people, the ones who elected the legislature and provided the jury are the ones to decide. But that isn’t true either, it all gets washed out when it comes to individuals.
In the end, the person to decide whether they will receive the death penalty is the criminal himself. He has access to the laws of the land and can be aware of the consequences of any action. When he kills multiple people, he is deciding that the consequences of that action are acceptable to him. He is placing himself in a category designed with complete blindness to the individual persons it may affect.
So who killed Jesus?
The Sanhedrin?
We should not blame the Sanhedrin too harshly. They were in a position to interpret the law, not to decide the punishment. The punishment was indicated by the law. They did not create the system. God defined the crime and named the punishment. All they could do was determine whether Jesus was guilty.
In their defense, Jesus did not defend Himself. He did not say, "Yes I am the Son of God, but allow me to prove my claim is valid." He simply affirmed and emphasized their accusation.
Are you the son of God?
Yes
Jesus, said, nobody takes my life, I lay it down. This was true in a cosmic sense, and we understand that. But it was also true in a legal sense. Let’s face it, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were both at His trial, and they believed. If Jesus had taken steps to prove His identity, others could not have helped being swayed.
But He didn’t.
Instead He subjected Himself to the law as it applied to a normal person who would say the things He said. In those circumstances, it is clear who is doing the killing:
It is God.
• He made the laws
• He designed the punishments
• and He knew all along to whom they would apply
Not only that, but Jesus’ claim that He was equal with God made Him part of the process.
He was not choosing to lay down His life that day
He had chosen to do it over a thousand years before that.
So here is the dilemma:
• Blasphemers, those who abuse and take for themselves the identity of God are worthy of death.
• By definition this cannot apply to somebody who has the natural right to assume that identity.
• Jesus had the right, but did not take steps to legally prove it.
We might think He proved it every day of His life, but when it came down to it and it really counted in a legal context, He did not do it. Why?
Isaiah tells us why
Because even though Jesus was not actually guilty of a capital crime, He knew we were and He chose to take the punishment for it.
The sorrow, grief, pain we were meant to have, He lifted up and carried in our place. As He lifted the beam of His cross, buckling under the pain and the load, it was ours. In a spiritual sense,
• It was not a cross He took up, it was our imperfections
• It was not a beam He carried, it was our suffering
There is some debate whether Isaiah is speaking about physical pain or sin. I think it is narrow minded to say we must decide. It can mean either or both. The overall force of the passage though, causes us to look primarily at the spiritual.
• The blame for Jesus’ death does not lay with the Priests, though they certainly played a role
• The blame for Jesus’ death does not lay with the Romans, though Pilate played a part
The blame for Jesus’ death lays with us: every individual regardless of ethnicity or era.
He chose to take the punishment that all humanity deserved. Isaiah tells us how.
he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
The Messiah, the one God said would do more than any anointed one had ever done, would be a substitution for us.
It would be a mistake to try to align His piercing, crushing, punishment and wounds with any particular part of Jesus’ death. Isaiah is using every possible way to say that this person, this Chosen One, would be utterly and completely destroyed. It would not be peaceful and quick, but it would be slow, messy and painful.
• Every gouge from the scourge
• Every strike of a fist
• Every welt from a rod
• Every severed nerve
• Every lacerated muscle
• Every driven nail
• Every open, bleeding gash
• Every puncture of a thorn
• Every taunt
• Every challenge
• Every insult
Was meant for us, and the wounds He sustained from them were His way of intervening in our hour of need. He could do this, because He was without sin in every way.
• If a person is guilty, he will be punished for his own crime
• Only an innocent person can take another’s punishment
There is a twofold action going on here:
Our sins are being accounted for
God made it clear back in the garden that the punishment for sin is death. The ultimate expression of that death is separation from God. Adam and Eve embraced that death and separation rather than obedience, and since then, all our sin builds upon that debt.
When Jesus was tortured, it was the torture that should have been ours.
On a very small scale, we all understand this principle. Imagine a young boy at the store counter. He is buying a small piece of candy. The clerk rings it up and it comes to 20¢.
He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a pile of change that fills his small hand and he begins counting, and the clerk helps.
• He has a nickel, that’s 5¢.
• He has a dime, that’s 10¢ more.
• He has three pennies
• 18¢
You are behind him and reach into your purse and contribute 2 more pennies to the pile. Everyone smiles. The boy gets what he wants, the clerk gets what he needs, and you have paid the price.
You got no candy, you had no drawer to count, and yet that boy’s shortfall, for a moment, became your debt and you paid it. It was your effort and earnings that met the need. You had what he was missing, you provided what he could not.
Our sins require payment to the Judge who holds the balance. Jesus paid that price. Since the cost is an eternal cost, and since we are mortal, we could not pay it, but Jesus could and did.
You need not pay the price for your own sin, Jesus paid it.
Peace has been purchased
Because of sin, we have no peace with God. We cannot walk with Him. We are subject to death.
We saw this year that the Olympics do not truly bring peace to the nations. As the opening ceremonies were beginning, a war was underway in Georgia. The ultimate peace of the Olympics is more personal, the peace between the medal winners and the person draping the medal around their neck.
I am reminded again of one swimming relay race of the 2008 Olympics in China. The Americans won the race and France came in second. It was not only very close, but it was the fastest race in history. The first five teams to touch the wall broke the world record. Switzerland came in fifth and still broke the world record, but they did not win a medal, and they will not get credit for their incredible speed.
They were very good, but they were not good enough.
Sometimes we may think we are not so bad. We may be even morally better than others that we know. Since we go to Church every week, we are better than even some people who are very good.
The fact is, though, the standard is higher than we can reach. Just like the Swiss could not take home a medal, because the medal standard was raised to an amazing pitch. Just so the standard of morality to walk with God is incredibly high.
Even if we are morally better than everyone in the world, the standard is not the world record. The standard is set by God’s righteousness, and we cannot reach it. Thus, we must bear the brunt of our own sin.
At least that would be the case if it were not for the torture and bloody death of Jesus. Though we have fallen morally short, we need not pay the penalty, we can still come to God, because Jesus took the penalty for us.
The guilt and alienation from God that naturally comes with sin leaves our heart in a perpetual state of unrest. We search for anything to calm the longing and fill the void. We will never be able to do it until we accept the peace that is held out by the one who received the punishment and bought the healing of our souls.
It is the source of our great thankfulness and devotion to Christ that He has taken all this so that we would not have to eternally suffer it for ourselves. We need not perish this eternal second death, and we need not live this life at odds with God.
If you have not accepted Him, today is the day
If you have, remember and be blessed
