Who bears the blame?
Several weeks later,
Peter was quick to say who was implicated in
the death of Jesus:
“For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom
You anointed, both
Herod and Pontius
Pilate,
with the Gentiles and
the people of Israel,
were gathered
together” (Acts 4:27).
It doesn’t seem
that many people were
left out.
It’s easy to assign
blame for Jesus’
death to a small group
of people—the
religious hypocrites
and civil leaders who
wanted to retain their
positions seem to be
implicated the most.
It’s also easy to lay
the guilt of this
murder on a whole race
of people. And it’s
also true that we can
implicate the ruling
Roman state. But it’s
not as simple as that.
It’s safe to say that
if Jesus would have
come to
any
society and culture
and exposed
it for its failings,
its hypocrisy, He would not
have been accepted. If
Jesus had exposed
any society that was
equally far from its
ideals, they too would
have killed Him.
This is the horrible
truth we all want to
avoid. What the
original followers of Jesus
are telling us is that
no one is innocent
of
this crime.
We
all
were complicit in the
death of Christ. Paul was convinced of his personal guilt: “Here is a
trustworthy saying that deserves
full acceptance:
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of
whom I am the worst”
(1 Timothy 1:15, NIV).
A world unknowing, unaware
Paul, the former
Pharisee, says of himself, “Even though I was once
a blasphemer and a
persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy
because I acted in
ignorance and unbelief” (verse 13, NIV). That’s the
problem. We were
ignorant of all this. Paul tells us that “at the appointed
time,
Christ died for the
wicked” (Romans 5:6, REB). The world just
doesn’t know what it
is doing!
But God does, and one
day we will all know too. It was His purpose
from the beginning.
Jesus came into this world knowing He would be
killed (John 12:27).
Jesus inspired the Old Testament prophets to not
only foretell His
death, but to describe it in graphic detail. The sacrificial
system given to Israel
prefigured the perfect offering that was to come.
Jesus foretold His
death and suffering to His disciples on several
occasions, but for the
most part they refused to accept what He said.
It was far more
comfortable to believe that He would establish His
Kingdom then and
there, and all their worries would be over.
Paul speaks of “the
hidden wisdom which God ordained before the
ages
...
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