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Who was
responsible for the death of Jesus, and what purpose did God have
in allowing His death? |
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Many
Christians would be horrified with the thought that God crucified
Jesus. Yet these same Christians would be quite content to say that
God sent His Son to the world to die for our sins. The theological
term for this view is penal substitution, which argues that
God’s justice
demands that an innocent person pay for the sins of the world before
God can forgive sinners. According to this view, God planned and carried
out the death of Jesus so the demands of divine justice could be satisfied.
This whole line of thinking is of course nothing but a horrible distortion
of the biblical message. It starts and ends at the wrong place. It
starts with the assumption that the death of Jesus was meant to satisfy
the justice of God rather than to express the love of God, and it
ends with the conclusion that God crucified Jesus.
The New Testament witnesses that God sent Christ to the world as an
expression of His love (John 3:16). God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).
In addition to Peter’s
statement in Acts 2:36-38, many other passages in Scripture hold human
beings responsible for the death of Jesus. The account of the arrest,
trial, and crucifixion of Jesus places responsibility for the death
of Jesus squarely on the shoulders of human beings, not God.
Consider what Jesus said about the role of Judas: “The
Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who
betrays him”
(Luke 22:22). Now, it is true that this statement and other biblical
passages seem to state that God decreed or predestined Jesus to die.
In their prayer recorded in Acts 4, early Christians said that Herod,
Pilate, Gentiles, and Jews conspired against Jesus to do what God’s
“power and
will had decided beforehand should happen”
(vv. 27-28). But, let us ask, what exactly was it that God’s
power and will had decided should happen? That Jesus die? No! God’s
will was to redeem the world. God could have redeemed the world without
the crucifixion of Jesus. When human beings crucified Jesus, God used
even that dreadful deed to demonstrate His redemptive grace.
As unlikely as it may be, the world could have responded positively
and lovingly to the message of Jesus and the kingdom of God. It was
not God who intended for us to act so violently against His Son. Yet
when we crucified the Son of God, even that horrible act of injustice
did not turn God against humanity. Grace found a way to reverse the
evil that human beings had done. God raised Jesus from the dead, showing
us that grace will always be God’s
way.
When Paul says that Christ became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13),
the context makes it clear that it was not God but the Law that put
Jesus under a curse, and that it was God who redeemed us from the
curse of the Law by raising Jesus from death. In 2 Corinthians 5:21,
Paul says, “God
made him [Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us.”
Here the meaning is that Christ became a sin offering for us. This
does not mean that God crucified Jesus but that when human beings
crucified Him, God turned it into an act of redemption.
What about John 10:17-18, one might ask. Here Jesus says that no one
takes His life from Him but He lays it down of His own accord. The
context of that statement is that He as the Good Shepherd lays down
His life for the sheep, in stark contrast to a hireling who when he
sees the wolf coming leaves the sheep and runs away. Jesus did indeed
see the wolf coming, but He did not run away. If God crucified Jesus,
then God is the wolf, which is nothing but blasphemy. John, in fact,
does tell us who the wolf was in the case of Jesus. When the soldiers
came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, He did not run away
but stood His ground and said to them, “If
you are looking for me, then let these men go”
(John 18:8). Jesus willingly faced the aggressors in order
to protect His sheep, the disciples. And that cost Him His life.
This understanding is reflected in the position of the Church of the
Nazarene concerning the death of Jesus. The sixth Article of Faith
in the Manual reads, in part, “We
believe that Jesus Christ, by His sufferings, by the shedding of His
own blood, and by His death on the Cross, made a full atonement for
all human sin.”—jst |
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This
month’s
Editor’s Forum: |
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jst—Jirair
S. Tashjian
is professor of New Testament and Greek at Southern Nazarene University. |
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