Who killed Jesus?

Who killed Jesus? A fashionable answer is that it was the powers that be, the political and religious elite. Thus, we are told, the death of Jesus shows the bankruptcy of these systems and calls us to oppose them. Now, on one level there is some truth in this. The Jerusalem elites wanted Jesus dead because he threatened their power. To Caiaphas the choice was between the life of one man and the survival of the nation. The fear was that a real live Messiah would destabilize everything and lead to a war with the Romans, a war the Jews could only lose - as it turned out in AD 70. Caiaphas was a politician, and he decided that if one act of injustice was to be the price for national survival, so be it.

Pilate was finally prevailed upon to agree to the crucifixion because the Jerusalem elite convinced him that to do otherwise would be to set himself against Caesar, against the Empire. Imperial peace and stability were what finally led Pilate to agree to what he knew to be an act of injustice. In the case of Pilate and of Caiaphas, while one can argue that they were motivated by self-interest, there is also a plea of 'the greater good'. There is the calculation that it is, in the final analysis, right to sacrifice one man for the lives of thousands.

But what is often overlooked is the common people. Their complaint was that Jesus was not the Messiah they wanted. Faced with the choice of setting free Jesus the Prince of Peace and Barabbas the violent revolutionary, they chose Barabbas. And they chose him freely, because he was the sort of leader they wanted, the leader Jesus was not, the man who promised liberation and victory over the Romans.

Jesus will not serve the Imperial agenda, but nor will he serve the revolutionary. He calls us to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, and to suffer for him. To die for him, not to kill for him. Now the cross is far more than this, but on the side of unbelieving men it is man killing God, because God will not fit in with our plans.

You Don't Need to do Penance!

Evangelicals quite rightly criticize the Roman Catholic Church for its insistence that it is possible for Christians to lose their state of grace through mortal sin, and that the only way to restore such a person is through the sacrament of penance. In our formal theology we insist that there is no need for penance to deal with sins after baptism.

The trouble is, our formal theology is often rather different from our day-to-day informal theology. And this informal theology often assumes that our sins change God's view of us, and in order to be restored to God's favour, we need to do something, or, worse, to feel something. In other words, many Evangelicals are practical Romanists, we feel we need some sort of penance for our sins. Of course, I am not referring to people who make a profession of faith, but have no qualms at all about sinning with a high hand, but to Christians who fall into sin and then feel that God is angry with them because of that sin.

Here is the good news. We have a representative High Priest in heaven for us, Jesus Christ the Righteous, who always appears in the presence of God the Father to make intercession for us. And the fact that He is there means this: God is on our side whether we are victorious or defeated, when we are able to resist temptation and when we yield to it. "If we confess our sins [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." Now, we would expect that text to read, 'He is merciful and gracious to forgive us our sins,' but it does not. Why is this? It is because Jesus died for our sins on the cross, it is because the forgiveness of sins was purchased for us there, and thus if God does not forgive the sins of His people He would be unfaithful to His promise of the forgiveness of sins, and unjust in not pardoning the sins Jesus died for.

Christian, you do not need a penance. The price of sin has been fully paid. You do need a confessional, and you have that in Jesus, the sympathising High Priest who bids you to come unto Him and confess your sins in prayer. And having confessed that you are a sinner, Jesus speaks those wonderful words, "Your sins are forgiven you."