THE HUMAN DRAMA LEADING TO THE DEATH OF JESUS
By: Jack Guyler
Good Friday is the day we remember the death of Jesus. And regardless of what you think about Jesus, or whether you see Him as God or only a good teacher, there can be little argument that He lived the most influential and impactful life ever lived. The world has not been the same since He arrived on the scene…our calendar has been determined by His life…billions of people testify that He has changed their lives…and His teachings and example of living has impacted our world in too many ways to even begin to list here.
But let’s go back to the original question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” Let’s look at the accounts from the four Gospels to get deeper insight into this question. As we look at the last 24 hours or so of His life, we see there were a lot of players and everybody had an agenda. These agendas were a dangerous mix of politics and religion (seems like not much has changed in 2,000 years).
The primary players were the Roman officials, Judas, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, the Chief Priests, the Sadicees, the Pharisees and the crowd. To more fully appreciate the late-night drama, we need to go back in time, even before Jesus came on the scene.
Israel was under Roman occupation. They were tired of this and had become very angry as God’s chosen people to have to live under such tyranny. Because of this, there were many want-to-be messiahs and revolutionary leaders prior to Jesus and during His lifetime. Two examples are given in Acts 5, Theudas and Judas the Galilean – both led revolts against Israel’s enemies. These were just two of probably hundreds who tried to overthrow the Romans.
The Jewish leaders would try to identify Jesus with these types of false and violent Messiahs to the Romans. They had no power to execute Jesus, so they needed to appeal to the Roman rulers of that day including Pilate and Herod, to get their cooperation in executing Him.
On the night of Jesus’ betrayal, Judas turned Him over to the chief priests, temple guards and the elders in the garden. Judas, as recorded in Matthew 27, when he realized that he had betrayed Jesus to death, went out and hung himself. We infer from this, that his original intention was only to get Jesus to meet with the Jewish leaders about who He was and what He was up to. One of the primary issues that emerges from the Gospel accounts is that Jesus was a disappointment to his own people – to the Jewish leaders and to the crowd. The Jewish leaders couldn’t accept Him claiming equal status with Yahweh; and the crowd wanted a fearless leader of revolt that would give them freedom from Roman oppression. Jesus did neither of these.
In Luke 22, as He stands before the elders and chief priests, He confesses to being the Son of God (22:70). This was the tipping point for them. They were charging Him with blaspheme – to speak with contempt or slander against God or to claim to be God.
While this group of Jewish leaders had the power to charge Him, they didn’t have any power to execute Him. He was a problem they couldn’t do anything about on their own. This is where they got Rome involved. The late night/early morning drama then moved next to Pilate (the Roman governor of Judea from about 26-36 AD).
They claimed before Pilate that Jesus was subverting the nation by telling people not to pay taxes to Caesar and that He was claiming to be the Messiah. Rome didn’t care about Him claiming to be the Messiah (provided He wasn’t leading a violent revolution). After interrogating Jesus, Pilate said “I find no basis for a charge against Jesus” (Luke 23:4). The Jewish leaders took to another tactic – they said Jesus stirs up the people with his teachings (23:5). While this did not change Pilate’s mind, it did get his attention because if His teachings stirred up the people enough, they might look to revolt and bring violence against Rome. Pilate did not want that on his watch. This is why he inquired as to whether Jesus was a Galilean. When He learned that He was, he sent him on to Herod (Galilee was under his jurisdiction). Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee.
After Herod interrogates Jesus, he finds no charges against Him for death. He sends Jesus back to Pilate, and Pilate concludes that neither he nor Herod have found Jesus to be guilty of anything that deserved death (Luke 23:15). But in the Luke account, the crowd gets into it at this point and demands a prisoner exchange which was granted during Passover by Rome. They wanted Barabbas (a zealot) released in exchange for Jesus. After much debate and exhaustion, Pilate relented to the crowd and Jewish leaders, and gave the okay for Jesus to be executed.
According to both the Matthew and Mark Gospel accounts, Caiaphas (the high priest) and the other chief priests and elders “schemed” to arrest Jesus secretly. Why did they do this? They had no proof of Jesus doing anything wrong that would warrant death. They were making things up so Rome would feel threatened by Jesus and order the execution that they could not. In Mark 14:56 it tells us that testimonies that were given about Jesus were false and didn’t agree. In Matthew 26:3 it says the chief priests were “scheming” (making things up and twisting the truth) to convince Rome that Jesus was a threat to them. But even after all of this, neither Pilate nor Herod were convinced.
As you can see, and I would encourage you to read the accounts for yourself, many of the various Jewish leaders who didn’t even like each other, worked tirelessly to conspire to come up with charges that Rome would see as threatening to them to execute Jesus. In Matthew 27:24-
26 we see the famous line about Pilate washing his hands in front of the crowd, stating that he doesn’t see any reason why Jesus should be executed, but if they are so insistent, then he gives them his permission. He wasn’t concerned that something bad was going to happen to him (as many think) because he committed many atrocities while he was govern (Luke 13:1 speaks to this); rather he was stating he was in charge, but willing to give them what they wanted, even though this wasn’t his decision.
As you can see, Jesus was tossed back and forth like a political and religious football between the Jewish leaders and the Roman rulers during the night prior to his final torture and being nailed to the cross around 9am on Friday morning.
So, these were the events that transpired to put Jesus on the cross from the human perspective.
From the Jewish perspective (the chief priests, elders, teachers of the law), they accused Jesus of blaspheme. This to them was a highly offensive crime. Because they were under Roman occupation however, they had no power to carry out a death sentences. They needed Rome to do this.
Much of the Jewish leader’s issues with Jesus had to do with His teaching about the Kingdom of God already being present through Him. This meant that the Kingdom of God wasn’t coming through the leaders, temple sacrifices, the keeping of the Torah, or violent revolutions. It was offensive to them that this Jesus had attracted so many people and had collected such a following to the point that everything they believed and stood for was being cast aside by this one man. This is what led Caiaphas to say “it is better for you that one man dies for the people than the whole nation perishes” (John 11:50).
Let’s understand that when Jesus died, no one understood the meaning of His death. We have had two thousand years to look back and dissect it. Even to this day, there is much debate as to the meaning of His death and there are many theories of atonement in Christian theology. But one theme that seems to be consistent and jump out at the reader of the Gospels is that Jesus makes no attempt to stop or escape His trial, torture, and crucifixion. It seems clear from these accounts that He understood what was coming and prayed “not my will, but your [God the Father] will be done.” Going along with this, Jesus says “the scriptures must be fulfilled this way” (Matthe 26:54). This is referring to scripture of prophecy of the Messiah such as Isaiah 53.
It is interesting to note the exchange of Barabbas for Jesus. The guilty man is released and set free while the innocent man is executed. It is a picture that may well describe the greater meaning of Jesus’ death. He, the innocent and unblemished lamb of God, died for a world that is guilty – guilty of turning away from God to go its own way. This is the world that God loves. As it says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever
believes in Him will not die, but have life.” On that Good Friday, Jesus died so Barabbas could live. On that Good Friday, Jesus died so that people like Pilate and Caiaphas might be forgiven and live. On that Good Friday, Jesus died, so that people, guilty of egregious sins, like you and me, could be forgiven, set free from the enslavement of sin, and have life rather than death.
Paul may express best the true meaning of Jesus’ death when he says, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
