Pilate, who authorized that Jesus be crucified, despite knowing his innocence, did so to prevent the wrath of the Jews against the Roman government. Jesus said to Pilate, who seemed sorrowful for what he was about to do, “You would have no power over Me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore, the one who handed Me over to you is guilty of a greater sin” (John 19:11).
That “one” could be Judas or
someone else. Judas did hand Jesus over, but not to Pontius Pilate. Caiphas
handed Jesus over directly to Pilate to do the bloody thing. It may have not
been Caiaphas, the chief priest, who did so literally, but he was the
responsible party. Scripture identifies Caiaphas as the “one” who handed Him
over to be crucified:
Jesus said to His disciples, “You
know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to
be crucified. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in
the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they schemed to
arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said,
“or there may be a riot among the people.” (Mat 26:2-5)
The festival is the feast of unleavened
bread. The festival lasts for seven days of which in the last day no work could
be done (Lev 23:8). It was to be a “convocation,” and “This day shall be unto
you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to the LORD;
throughout your generations you shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever”
(Exod 12:14). A ‘convocation’ is when the people assembled, in this case, to glorify
God who had delivered them.
When the chief priests and the
elders assembled, that was the Passover convocation. The convocation of
the Jews was not stupid, for they said, “or their may be a riot among the
people.
Jesus, indeed, was killed before
the Passover Sabbath began, on Friday, April 3, AD 33. If Jesus had been killed
on the Passover Sabbath, supposed to be a day of rest, the elders and chief
priests knew there would be a riot. They were adamant about not working on the
Sabbath and the Passover Sabbath was a festival. It could be that killing Jesus,
which was work, could not be done on the day of rest, and especially during the
Passover festival.
It is to be noted that Jesus was
the Passover ‘Lamb’ of God. He would need to be killed in preparation for the
Sabbath. Jesus, as the sacrificial Lamb of God was legally killed,
according to Mosaic Law. He was killed at a legal time but not for a righteous
cause.
The sacrificial lambs were always
a vicarious sacrifice to God, but here they were really killing God in the form
of a sacrificial man. Note that they did not kill God, but they did sacrifice
His perfect flesh, just as the sacrificial lambs were to be the firstborn,
perfect, and without blemish.
It is obvious that the people did
bring their sacrifice to the altar of the Sacred Cross, but unknown to them
all, it was God making the sacrifice Himself because it was His own flesh that
was the sacrifice. No more vicarious sacrifices would do; it had to be God Himself.
Many think that it was not God
that suffered on the Cross, but His Son. We think of the sacrifice as His Son;
and Jesus was the ‘Son’ in a sense — genetically
so — but within that flesh was the very Substance of God.
However, God did not die that day.
If God had died, then there would be no salvation. God did suffer death, but
that was the flesh. God took on flesh so that He could feel our pain. His agony
was not so much the pain that He endured, but that His creatures were such
great sinners that He must suffer death so that they need not!
The Holy Ghost left Jesus as He
died. Jesus lost His ‘Virtue’ (dynamis in the Greek). God Himself, in a
spiritual sense, died that day, losing His Dynamics. To put it another way, God
healed the world by losing immense Virtue. He died because for a time, He spent
His Almightiness to save His Creatures, then like in the beginning, after generating
Adam, God rested on the Sabbath Day!
God is not dead; He never was! To
put it mildly, and Peter would understand, in modern vernacular, God was Petered-out;
just as Peter denied Him thrice — once for the Father, once for the Son,
and Once for the Holy Ghost; people still deny His Substance left behind — the
Holy Spirit.
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