Who killed Jesus?

For the greater part of those weary hours the mouth of Jesus was silent. Once only since Pilate turned his back on "the Truth" did He speak, and that when Pilate anxious to assert his authority with his Prisoner, even if the Jews mocked at it, cried "Speakest Thou not to me? Knowest Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, and have power to release Thee?" Did the Lord acknowledge the authority of the Roman judge? Yes, in the ways of God, that disobedient people had been put under the yoke of Rome, and since the Lord had said to them "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's" He would not flout the authority of Caesar's delegate. But God was over all, and Pilate could do nothing that day except as permitted from above. God was not responsible for the black flood of hatred that was pouring out from the hearts of the Jews, nor for the lesser sin of the vacillating judge who was ready to stoop to any injustice to save his face, but He did make Himself responsible for the channel in which the sin of Jew and Gentile flowed. He made the wrath of man to praise Him. The Lamb "verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, " and He being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God they with wicked hands crucified and slew (Acts 2:23). The sin of man was fulfilling the will of God; events were moving rapidly to the hour when that sin would rise in its utmost strength against God, but in that hour His love would triumph, for "God commends His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

It was no partial outbreak of human passion that caused the crucifixion. Satan, "the prince of this world," manifested as this by it, was able to unite Jew and Gentile, high and low together, against the One in whom God was reconciling the world unto Himself. Different motives might incite to the deed, and did; but, however the motives differed, the deed was that of all. How rightly could the Lord say of it "Now is the judgment of this world"! It was the final expression of the enmity of man's heart to God: "Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." (John 15:24.)

John 19:13-16. Pilate, loving this world, and with no sense of his need as a sinner, or appreciation of the grace of Christ, is swayed by the argument of the Jews as to his personal interests and worldly advantages. He takes his place on the judgment seat, and having made one more feeble attempt to escape the condemnation of One in Whom he had thrice stated that he could find no fault, he yields to their clamour, as they say, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him". The Jews see no beauty in Him that they should desire Him; and Pilate, though convinced of His innocence and impressed by His majesty and dignity, prefers the friendship of the world to the Son of God. Thus, Jew and Gentile join in crucifying the Lord of glory. As it has been said, "Pilate and the Jews were wholly opposed in their thoughts and wishes; but God was not in the thoughts of one more than the others". Thus, in these two verses, we have the summing up of the wickedness of Jew and Gentile. The Jews seal their doom by the total rejection of their Messiah, for they say, "We have no king but Caesar". This is the public apostasy of the Jews. The Gentile utterly breaks down in government by delivering One to be crucified in Whom, it has three times been confessed, there is no fault.

And the Roman emperors, though not so absolute in their rule as their Babylonian predecessors, "reserved to themselves and to their local representatives the right of judicial execution. The Jews admitted to Pilate their lack of this authority: "It is not lawful," they said, "for us to put any man to death" (John 18:31). This authority was in the hands of the Roman governor who arrogantly and insolently said to his Just and Holy prisoner, "Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power [authority] to crucify thee, and have power [authority] to release thee? "(John 19:10). This authority of Pilate Jesus did not deny, but rather traced that authority to its true source — not to his imperial master at Rome but to the Sovereign Ruler of all: Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above" (cp. Rom. 13:1-4). Never was this judicial authority more flagrantly abused than it was by Pilate, the representative of the Roman empire. Weakly submitting to the will of the Jews, he freed Barabbas the malefactor whom he should have executed for murder, and condemned Jesus the Benefactor to be crucified.

Peter then goes on to give a lovely testimony to the Lord — "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know." He calls attention to the beautiful life of his Master: what He had been doing, how on every hand He had been blessing men, as they well knew. But then what a charge he makes! He charges boldly home on them their guilt. "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel, and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Terrible impeachment! They were guilty of the murder of their Messiah, and of the refusal of the Son of God. Only seven weeks before they had refused to have the Lord, and had chosen Barabbas, a robber and a murderer, instead of Him. They had cried, "Away with him, crucify him," even though Pilate, the Roman governor, had declared Him innocent.

But Peter did not stop there; he proceeded to show why this baptism of the Spirit had taken place. It was the direct action of Jesus, now exalted to the right hand of God. This we find when we reach verse 33; but from verse 22 he had been leading the minds of people through the scenes of the crucifixion to His resurrection and exaltation. Jesus of Nazareth had been most manifestly approved of God during the days of His ministry, yet they had slain Him with their wicked hands. He had been delivered up to this by God according to His "determinate counsel and fore-knowledge," for God knows how to make the wrath of man to praise Him and accomplish His designs of blessing; though this does not diminish man's responsibility in the matter. Verse 23 is a clear instance of how the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man do not clash, when it is a question of practical results; though we may have difficulty in reconciling the two as a matter of theory.

Did any Israelite stumble at the cross as invalidating His claims? Yet on the cross, man — the Jew — being what he is, God had ordered it all marvellously to His own glory. Unbelief and rebellion and blasphemy on the one hand were allowed to work their unimpeded way, when the fit moment arrived; and Jesus was rejected ignominiously by His own people and the Gentiles were urged by them to crucify Him, that on the other hand He might become a propitiation for the sins of His own that believed, yea, for the whole world. If that was man's inexcusable iniquity, this was God's sovereign grace. If they were the instruments of their own spite, He gave One Who had been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Thus in the same cross met creature-will of man and of Satan in deadly enmity to God, divine love turning the otherwise hopeless sin to the shedding of that precious blood which cleanses from all sin, impossible without the glorious person Who is God no less than man, impossible save by His once in atonement suffering for our sins, Just for unjust. 'Him given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by hand of lawless men did crucify and slay.'

Was there ever such a barefaced travesty of justice? What judge would dare to permit the clamour of the accusers to settle the verdict, especially when the sentence was a death sentence? Pilate passing the death sentence, yet declaring that he found no fault in our Lord, made the Gentiles guilty. The Jews clamouring for His death made the Jews guilty.

That which characterizes the narrative in John is our Lord's divine dignity throughout. He is Master in the whole situation; as He Himself had declared, He laid down His life of Himself. No one took it from Him. He had power to lay it down and He had power to take it again. All was done in obedience to the will of His Father.

He makes another declaration in this chapter which will help us in this matter. He says, "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down Myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father" (verses 17, 18). What man who ever lived but He could make such a statement? No man takes My life from Me! That means that it was impossible for men to slay Him; in intent they did it, on their part no effort was spared to bring Him down to death, from this point of view they were His murderers; but when they had done all that their devil-inspired malice could devise, He voluntarily laid down His life as a sacrifice for sin. He did not die by the violence of men, nor by any natural cause. I know the popular hymn says, "He died of a broken heart." It is not true. But was not His heart broken? It was indeed. "Reproach," He said, "has broken My heart." But He lived with a broken heart. The lowly Man of Sorrows stretched forth His hands in earnest entreaty to men all the day long, and they answered Him with reproach and rejection. And His tender heart was broken by their conduct; but He lived on until His hour was come; then He yielded up His life as a sacrifice for sin, so that when the soldiers came to close up the work of that brutal day, they marvelled that He was dead already. One act alone on their part remained to be done, and that was to pierce His sacred side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. "And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knows that he says true, that ye might believe." (John 19:35). But why this care to emphasize the fact that blood and water flowed forth? Well, whoever in the history of the world had beheld blood and water flowing from the side of a dead man? Yet John saw it, and what he saw proved that the death of Jesus was supernatural even as His birth was.