It seems this controversial topic has been struck up once again. This time the current Pope Benedict XVI writes that the Jews did not kill Jesus. He claims that a subset of the Jewish community, the "aristocracy of the Temple," killed Jesus and all of the Jews should not take the blame. For many years people have blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus. I know this issue is highly contended and the debate has been going on for quite some time.
It does not matter who killed Jesus, because the truth is that the only reason Jesus was in that position was because He put Himself there:
Jesus was not murdered, he willingly laid his life down. Jesus was on a mission
17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:17-18)
Jesus was not shocked to find people coming to kill him, nor was he expecting anything different. Jesus laid His life down because He had a singular mission that was much bigger then doing good works on earth. Jesus came to earth with a single goal in mind. Still though the truth that He laid down his own life raises questions, like "Why did He lay his own life down?" or even "Why did He not stop it? He could have done a lot more good on earth." So who killed Jesus? Why did he lay his life down?
Well, I am part of the reason Jesus laid His life down, and you too are part of the reason that Jesus came to this earth and died. You see we have the blood on our hands because we are ultimately the reason Jesus had to die and we are also the reason that Jesus died. He had to die for us because we broke relationship with God and ran from Him. Jesus came to earth on a mission to fix that relationship by taking away our sins.
So ultimately you and I killed Jesus, we killed Jesus because we are perverted, we killed Jesus because we get angry and we have tempers. We killed Jesus because we are proud and hated God. We sinned and rebelled against God and because God still wants relationship with us He sent Jesus to come down and die a bloody humiliating death on a wooden torture device. The big question now is why? Why death?
God will not simply wink at sin and let it slide. That is not fair, God loves justice and so he must punish sin and wrong doing. We sinned and rebelled against God, and in a stunning act of kindness never before seen God sent Jesus to come here on earth and lay His life down as the payment for our crimes. Our crimes called for the death penalty and Jesus stepped in and laid His life down for us.
You see the person or group of people who takes the blame for killing Jesus should be us. You cannot blame the Jews nor the Romans because we killed Jesus - you and I. The Jews and Romans may have worked together to actually do the deed but the reason Jesus was killed lies on us. He laid His life down for us willingly.
So you see why I can say that you and I killed Jesus, I was part of the reason He had to come. I do not care what group of people killed Jesus 2,000 some years ago because that is not important. Jesus came to earth to die, that was the main reason why He came. Instead of pointing fingers at people let's point them back at us because we were part of the reason Jesus died.
You can accept that or not but right now we are in a period were Jesus is offering amnesty to the rebels who ran away from Him. We should be turning to Jesus in faith and thanking Him for laying his life down.
