Full Transcript

Did you know the last thing Jesus told his followers was to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel? And more than that, he said, Teach those who receive it all the things I have taught you. We Christians call that the Great Commission. That’s why Share the Word is a Great Commission project. Thank you for joining us for today’s lesson. Now here’s Paul.

Who killed Jesus? John chapter 19. Do you like mystery stories and whodunit movies where you’re drawn into trying to figure out who committed a crime? I hope so, because this podcast we’re going to take a look at the greatest such case in history, the most consequential whodunit ever. When we come to John chapter 19, we come to the awful crucifixion of Jesus Christ. From one perspective, it was not an unexpected turn of events, but I think to many, most actually at the time, it was.

I bet Jesus’ followers likely were in denial at first and then in shock as reality sank in that their Lord had been arrested, summarily tried and convicted, and was now dead. It was suddenly over. I think also the general population in Jerusalem that Passover, who’d welcomed Jesus into the city waving palm branches and shouting messianic slogans at him less than a week before, now learning that he had been killed, had to be in disbelief as well. But make no mistake, this outcome was not a surprise to Jesus. Hadn’t he told Nicodemus at the outset of his public ministry that he would be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness so that whoever would believe in him could be saved? Hadn’t he taught that he was the good shepherd who would lay down his life for the sheep, that no one would take his life from him, but that he would willingly lay it down?

And hadn’t he referred over and over to his approaching hour, and lately upon entering Jerusalem the final time, spoken somberly about how a kernel of wheat must fall into the ground and die in order to bring forth a harvest? Hadn’t they heard him pray, Now my soul is troubled, and what should I say, Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this reason I came, for this hour. What we’re going to discuss today is enough to boggle the most thoughtful minds, but I’m going to tell you as plainly as I can, as true to the whole story of the Bible as I can, and we must start here. Part of this mind-boggling true story John came to believe is that Jesus, who he says is the Logos incarnated in our world as a real man, actually came not only with the knowledge he would one day be arrested and killed, but knowing he’d come into our world for that very purpose.

Yes, it’s quite true that Jesus came out of heaven to show us what God is like, to show us what perfect love looks like, to reveal the absolute truths to us that he revealed when he taught the multitudes publicly or taught his disciples privately. But ultimately, ultimately, the bloody cross was the end goal. The finish line Jesus marched inexorably toward during his public ministry years was the cross of Calvary. So strange is it must have struck his first readers to see Pilate cave and sign Jesus’ death warrant. And to read how the broken and bloodied Jesus was pushed through the streets of Jerusalem and out of the city carrying his own cross, and to hear how he was finally, brutally crucified between two criminals and how he expired on that hill. John, who witnessed all of it after years of reflection, realized that this was really the intended climax.

It was the hour the Son of Man was glorified, the time when Jesus showed him and his fellows the fullest extent of his love, the time when our Creator God, who loved the world so much, gave us his one and only Son. To fully understand the magnitude of what John is presenting to us, we need to think clear back to chapter one, when the prophet John the Baptist first pointed him and Andrew, his brother, to Jesus with the words, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Since the very beginning of the Jewish nation, when it was only one man named Abraham and his family, the practice of animal blood sacrifice for the expiation of sin and maintaining a right relationship with God was at the very heart of their religion.

Referring to that sacrificial system, first on rough stone altars built by Israel’s patriarchs, then at the tabernacle they carried through the wilderness, and finally in their magnificent temples in Jerusalem, the refrain had always been, Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness for sin. Realize just a day before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, John, along with Peter, had been sent by Jesus to the temple to sacrifice a lamb and bring it back to their observance of the Passover meal in the upper room. The Feast of Passover itself commemorated the night the ancient Israelites were instructed by Moses to kill a lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts to mark their homes for safety, for salvation from the death angel. You can read the whole historical context in Exodus chapter 12 in the Old Testament.

Moses promised the people then, when God sees the blood, he will pass over your homes. You will be saved from the judgment that’s coming on the land of Egypt. It’s certainly no coincidence. In fact, it’s exactly amidst this historical and cultural background, at the very heart of Israel’s worship, that what Jesus did that last Passover must be understood. John wants to be sure we see that. He wants us to see in Jesus the perfect Lamb of God whose blood was shed to take away the sins of the world.

After the Roman governor Pilate consented to the death warrant, John actually witnessed all that transpired at Calvary, as the Romans named the execution site. It was a foreboding rocky hill on the north side of Jerusalem, the place the Jews called Golgotha, which meant the place of a skull. John saw Jesus stripped there and laid down on the cross members. He saw the Roman soldiers pin his wrists and ankles to the beams by driving spikes through them into the rough hewn cross. He saw Jesus hoisted up. He felt the cross drop into a deep hole and the loud thud.

He heard the corresponding loud groans let out by Jesus and the others who were crucified that day as their joints and tendons snapped. He watched his friend hung up there to die in the most excruciating, humiliating way men have ever invented. He saw the guards callously gambling over Jesus’ robe, and he heard the mocking of the priests in the background, who actually came out of the city just to sit and watch him die. He heard Jesus’ mother and the other women there, sobbing helplessly at this shocking spectacle. John was there for three hours of suffering that morning, and then three more as the day wore on into afternoon. He saw the sky turn strangely dark around noon, and he watched Jesus struggling, pulling himself up, gasping for air, pulling himself up and saying things like, I’m so thirsty, and later crying out in anguish, My God, why have you forsaken me?

And later calling out to him, John, John, Mary is your mother now. Take care of her. Pulling himself up, trying to breathe as his lungs were filling with fluid. Pulling himself up until he had no more strength to do it. Then John heard Jesus call out just before he slumped in death, It is finished. With his last ounce of strength, It is finished.

Then his head slumped forward, and he gave up his spirit. John watched all of this. John experienced all of this. At around 3 p.m., one of the soldiers who was standing guard ran a spear up into Jesus’ side, and John saw a large flow of blood and water gush out. I think he describes that detail to leave no doubt in any of his readers’ minds that Jesus really died that day. He and many others on that hilltop outside of Jerusalem witnessed it, he’s assuring us.

It is finished. What did that mean? What was finished? Actually, the word John used when he wrote about this is the Greek word tetelestai. It was a word used in the business world in that time, meaning paid in full, as though someone stamped on an outstanding account on a bill, paid in full. In time, John came to understand and to believe that the cross was no unfortunate tragic ending to Jesus’ remarkable life, but that he’d actually witnessed the ultimate expression of God’s love for us as he provided his own perfect Son as a lamb to make a once-for-all payment for sin, to make a way for our human sin debts to be paid in full.

Be sure you understand that. Underscore this in your mental notebook. Jesus did not say from the cross, I have done my part. Now it’s up to you to do your part. There’s nothing any of us can add to what the Savior did. If we could save ourselves through religion or at our own attempts to impress God through our own righteousness, do you think that he would have sent his one and only Son to experience this?

Being better than your neighbor, will that save you? Religious rituals and sacraments, will that save you? Look at the cross. It’s a drastic remedy. What can wash away our sins? an old hymn writer asked.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Take a very good look at that ugly scene at Calvary, the scene that John saw. It was entirely necessary in God’s view, the Lamb of God fully paying our sin debt there. With the shedding of his own precious blood, because it was necessary. It was the only way God could think of to remain just while offering forgiveness to sinners like us. An ultimate sacrifice had to be made.

Someone perfect, whose blood was infinitely valuable, had to suffer in our place. That’s why the final call from the cross John heard was, It is finished. There’s nothing we could possibly add to what Jesus did. We can humbly acknowledge we need it. We can reach out in faith and receive it, and that’s what it means to believe into Jesus. That’s why John keeps telling us to put our trust in him alone to save us, fully realizing only he can.

I hope you see this. If you know you need him, if you are feeling the pull to respond to what Jesus did on the cross for you, you can pause the podcast right now. Bow your head in prayer and thank God for sending his Son. Reach out in faith from your heart and believe into Jesus as John keeps urging us to. He paid the price for your sins. He made a way to reconcile you to your Creator.

Then turn your life from this moment forward toward following him as your leader. If you never have before, I would urge you to make that decision now. Then come back and let me finish the story for you. I wonder how those who first read John’s Gospel reacted to all this, or for that matter, if someone listening today has just heard John’s account through Share the Word for the first time. Isn’t the very first human reaction to what happened to Jesus a natural revulsion against the injustice of it all? I mean, it seems wrong.

Who should be held responsible? Who killed Jesus when you get right down to it? Let’s explore that interesting question for a couple moments. As you read the fourth Gospel, you certainly get the feel of John’s disdain for most of the Sanhedrin, the high council members. Those men were jealous and fearful. They were led by Caiaphas, the high priest, and they decided out of their own unbelief and insecurities that it would be better for Jesus to be killed than to let him go on and possibly risk losing their positions.

They searched for a way to get it done. They paid a betrayer. It was those high priests who sent the arresting party to Gethsemane, and once in their custody, many of those so-called holy men of Israel beat Jesus with their own fists, taunting him throughout the night before pressuring the Roman governor early Friday morning to crucify him. Certainly they are culpable. Or how about Judas Iscariot? He was one of the twelve.

After all he’d experienced, apparently dismayed that Jesus would turn away from the people’s call for him to be their king, dismayed at the waste of the small fortune he could have had access to when Mary poured out that ointment, remember, in Bethany, chagrined that Jesus rebuked him in front of the others, probably offended and disappointed in many other ways that he had logged in his twisted mind, Judas, in the end, settled for only thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus to his enemies. How inexcusable was that betrayal? Certainly Judas is culpable. We’ve already seen Pontius Pilate’s role. He knew Jesus was innocent of the charges the Jewish priests brought. His wife had even warned him in a dream not to have anything to do with the mistreatment of this innocent man.

Yet in the end, under pressure, he did what seemed the most politically expedient thing to do. Not the right thing, the easy thing. And he signed the order condemning Jesus to that awful, unjust death. In the end, is Pontius Pilate responsible? We cannot overlook the role of the soldiers who mercilessly flogged him, who prodded him through the streets of Jerusalem as he stumbled under the weight of his cross, who wielded the hammer, who pulled the hoist ropes to raise his cross, who callously stood watch as he suffered, and then ran a spear up through his side even after he’d obviously expired, just to be sure, I guess. Is it enough for them to say, We were just following orders?

I don’t think so. Who really killed Jesus? I heard that Mel Gibson, when interviewed following the release of his epic film, The Passion of the Christ, revealed that in the powerful scene when Jesus was on his back with his arms being stretched out to be nailed to the cross, that it was Gibson’s own hand that positioned the spikes to be driven through Jesus’ wrists, his own hand that swung the hammer down. It was Gibson’s graphic way, he said, of admitting, It was me who put him there. It was my sins that put him there. When we really understand why Jesus came and what transpired that day, if we believe what John and the other writers of the New Testament tell us, we are culpable.

Jesus did not die for his own sins. He was the sinless Lamb of God. He laid down his life of his own accord to make atonement for our sins. Our sins. If we’ll think about it beyond the obvious villains that we’ve talked about, our sins. If we get the reality of what transpired there, our sins killed Jesus.

I own my part in that. I hope you will as well. But at the risk of completely blowing your mind, let me push the envelope a little further. Who killed Jesus? A careful read of the Bible tells us that what happened at Calvary was the culmination of a secret plan God had made before Jesus ever appeared on our planet. What?

Yes, that’s right. That’s what the Bible teaches. The apostles were preaching in Jerusalem just weeks after the crucifixion, and I’m quoting now from a public sermon of Peter’s recorded in Acts chapter 2. My fellow Israelites, listen to me. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, and you are all witnesses of this. This man was handed over to you, listen, by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.

And you, Peter said, with the help of wicked men, then put him to death by nailing him to a cross. Peter is careful to not let all of those involved off the hook, but at the same time reveals that what happened to Jesus happened deliberately, he said, according to God’s foreknowledge and plan. And that’s consistent with what the prophet Isaiah had written 700 years earlier, perhaps the greatest of messianic prophecies, when he described the coming sacrificial death of the Messiah like this. He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We, like sheep, have all gone astray, each of us turning to his own way, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And then a few verses later, it was the Lord’s will to crush him, to cause him to suffer, and the Lord makes his life an offering for sin. Wow. It was the Lord’s will to crush him? Paul, are you telling me that God actually had a role in the killing of Jesus? I told you this was mind-boggling, didn’t I? Roman crucifixion was unparalleled agony, humiliation, and torture.

But Jesus on the cross was not only experiencing that; he was experiencing the judgment of God falling on him for our sin. That’s something we can’t even begin to fathom or appreciate. Again, I’m quoting Scripture. He, 1 Peter 2:24 says, He, Jesus, bore our sins in his own body on the cross. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us. So do you see what crushed him?

It was not just the physical torture of crucifixion, terrible as that was. It was also, maybe even much more so, the weight of our sin and guilt placed on him, and then the judgment of God falling on him as he willingly became our substitute, the sacrifice of atonement for sin. After six hours of that, the very real man Jesus, I think, his heart literally burst under the strain. That’s the explanation a medical doctor I once listened to gave for why, when the spear was run into Jesus’ side, John saw such an outflow of blood and water. His heart was under such enormous pressure, it broke open, and with the lungs now filled with fluid, Jesus succumbed under the weight of it all, and his body cavity filled with blood and water. I’m sorry for being so graphic.

I’m trying to explain what John says he saw. What transpired on that hill outside Jerusalem, as John and several others witnessed it, this is at the very heart of Christian theology. There on Calvary, God’s entire plan for our redemption, a way for reconciliation with our Creator, was brought to completion. The plan conceived of by God in the distant past, foreshadowed for hundreds of years by the blood sacrifice of millions of animals, the plan which brought God the Son out of heaven to become one of us, the plan that was always in the back of Jesus’ mind as he marched inexorably toward the awful hour, finally was brought to completion at the cross. And there, when Jesus had suffered enough, when the full payment for our sins had been made, when the precious blood of the Lamb of God had been spilt, it was finished. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.