Who is Responsible for Jesus Death: The Biblical Story of Culpability
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FCF:
Our natural tendency is to deflect responsibility for our sins—such as greed, envy, and cowardice—and fail to recognize our own role in the crucifixion, which prevents us from fully embracing the transformative grace of the Cross.
Reflection Question:
The New Revised Standard Version The Resurrection Body
Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Reflection Question: Within what work is God calling me to stand firm?
Sermon Opening:
There is a word in the legal world that carries a heavy, jagged weight. It is the word culpable. It comes from the Latin culpa—as in the phrase mea culpa, "my fault." To be culpable is to be responsible. It means you are the one who should be answering for the crime.
When we gather on Easter, we aren’t just celebrating a happy ending; we are looking back at the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the world. We are looking at an event that is without equal—the most important moment in the life of our universe. It is the hinge upon which all of eternity turns. And so, the question of "Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?" is not a light question. It is not a history lesson. It is a forensic investigation of the human soul.
Usually, when we think of the execution, we think of the Roman soldiers. They held the hammers. They drove the nails. But the Gospel writers are curiously silent about the soldiers. They don’t describe the "how" of the crucifixion in graphic detail. They simply say, "They crucified him." No blame is attached to the soldiers—in fact, the centurion watching over the cross would eventually become a believer.
If it wasn’t the soldiers, then who? Today, we are going to look at the chain of custody—the people who "handed him over."
Text Opening
Our text today spans the trial and betrayal of Jesus across the Gospels. We will look specifically at the moments of transfer—the moments where Jesus was "handed over" from one power to another.
These accounts were written by men who witnessed a legal process that followed the rules on the surface but was rotten at the core. There was an arrest, a charge, a cross-examination, and a verdict. But the gospels make it clear: the prisoner was innocent, the witnesses were liars, and the judge was a coward.
The soldiers, crucified him.
The Biblical text does not talk about blood, nails, it simply says, they crucified him. How did the soldiers get Jesus?
Point 1:
Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.”
Explain:
We begin at the end of the legal chain. Pontius Pilate was the Roman Governor, appointed by Emperor Tiberius to keep law and order in a rebellious province. He was the man to sign the death warrant.
The Gospels make two things very clear about Pilate. First, he was convinced Jesus was innocent. He says it plainly in Luke 23: "I find no basis for a charge against this man." He even sends Jesus to Herod to try and pass the buck, but Herod sends him back. Pilate’s own wife sends him a message: "Don't have anything to do with that innocent man."
Pilate knew Jesus was innocent.
Second, Pilate desperately wanted to avoid making a choice. He wanted to avoid sentencing Jesus because he knew it was wrong, but he wanted to avoid releasing him because the Jewish leaders were threatening his job with a riot. His job is to keep riots down on behalf of king Tiberius and the Jewish leaders told him, Jesus is saying he’s a king.
His conscience was on one side; his job was on the other.
So, he tried to "wriggle out" of the dilemma. He tried to compromise. He said, "I’ll have him flogged—beaten nearly to death—and then let him go." But if Jesus was innocent, why whip him? If he was guilty, why release him? It was a half-hearted, devious attempt to satisfy everyone and please no one.
Point 1: Pilate; for Fear
So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.
Illustrate:
Eventually, Pilate took water and washed his hands—a futile attempt to stay neutral. He tried to "compromise" by flogging an innocent man to satisfy a mob.
Took water and washed his hands. And before his hands were dry, handed over Jesus to be crucified
Apply:
It is easy for us to condemn Pilate. But we often display the same devious behavior. Are we not anxious to avoid the pain of a whole-hearted commitment to Christ? We search for "wiggle room" in our faith. We say, "I’ll do this for you, Lord, but not that." We glorify Him as Lord on Sunday, but we give Him no lordship over our careers or our private lives on Monday.
Don’t call Jesus Lord without giving him lordship over your life.
We try to wash our hands of responsibility. We say, "That’s not my calling," or "I'll let someone else handle that." But like Pilate, our "shouts" of self-interest often prevail. We satisfy the "crowd" of our friends, our culture, or our own ambitions.
Point 2:
Explain:
If Pilate was the one who signed the warrant, it was the religious leaders who brought the charges. Now, why did they hate Him? On the surface, they had "good" reasons. They said He was a heretic, that He broke the Sabbath, that He was leading the people astray.
But the Bible strips away those masks and reveals the heart. It wasn't theology that drove them; it was envy.
For Pilate realized that it was out of jealousy that the elders and chief priests had handed him over.
Point 1: Pilate; for Fear
Point 2: Priests; for envy
Jesus had been upsetting them since the beginning. He called them "white-washed tombs." He healed the people they called "unclean." He was successful, He was public, and He was challenging their authority.
Envy only exists where pride is rooted. You cannot be envious of someone unless you are first proud of yourself.
These leaders were proud of their racial status, their moral record, and their religious power. Jesus was a threat to their status quo.
Illustrate:
C.S. Lewis famously called Jesus the "transcendental interferer." That is exactly how the Pharisees saw Him. He was interfering with their lives. He was stepping on their toes. They wanted a God who stayed in the temple, not a God who walked into their lives and told them they were hypocrites.
Apply:
Do we not do the same? We often resent Jesus’ intrusions into our privacy. We resent His demand for our homage and His expectation of our obedience. We find ourselves asking, "Why won’t Jesus just mind His own business?"
But here is the truth: You are His business. We too perceive Jesus as a threat to our pride. We want to be the kings of our own little kingdoms. When Jesus shows up and demands the throne, our pride turns into envy, and we look for ways to get rid of Him. We marginalize Him, we ignore Him, or we "hand Him over" so that we can keep our authority intact.
Point 3:
Explain:
Now we reach the very beginning of the chain. How did the priests even get their hands on Him? Judas handed Him over.
While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, “Judas, is it with a kiss that you are handing over the Son of Man?”
Why did Judas hand over Jesus?
Judas was the treasurer. He was the one who held the money bag. In John 12, when Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus with expensive perfume, Judas is the one who complains. He says, "What a waste! This could have been sold and the money given to the poor." But John tells us the truth:
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
Furious that a "year's wages" was "wasted" on an act of worship, Judas went and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—barely a third of what that perfume was worth. He chose the money bag over the Messiah.
Point 1: Pilate; for Fear
Point 2: Priests; for Envy
Point 3: Judas; for Greed
At the last supper Jesus even made a final appeal to him, dipping a piece of bread in a bowl and handing it to him Jn 13:25-30
As he took the bread, Jesus told him, do quickly what you are going to do.
That night Judas would betray and hand over Jesus to the priests.
Illustrate:
Jesus said it is impossible to serve both God and Money. Judas attempted to walk the middle ground for three years, but eventually, the heart's true master is revealed. He offered a flagrant breach of hospitality in exchange for silver.
Apply:
How many of us have made the same choice? We might not sell Jesus for silver coins, but we sell our integrity for a promotion. We sell our time with God for a bigger paycheck. We sell our "hospitality" to the Holy Spirit because we are too busy "helping ourselves" to the things of this world. Like Judas, we often see total devotion to Christ as a "waste" of our resources. We want a Jesus we can manage, not a Jesus who costs us everything.
Closing:
First Judas handed him over to the priests out of greed
The Priests handed him over to Pilate out of envy
Pilate handed him over to the soldiers out of cowardice and they crucified him.
I use this word hand over deliberately, in the greek the word is paradzidzomi
Paradzidzomi - To hand over to betray.
Like Pilate we might ask Why? What did this man do? What did Jesus do?
Pilate received no rational answer? The hysterical crowd kept shouting, “Crucify Him.”
I’ve framed this message in such a way to answer the question why did Christ die? By reflecting the way the gospel writers tell their stories. They created the chain of custody I’ve given you today.
Yet I’ve left something out.
Jesus was brought to his death by the sins of Judas, the Priests, and Pilate, but he did not die a martyr, no, he went to the cross a volunteer.
The cross is an exposure of human evil, and at the same time the cross is God’s purpose and way of overcoming that human evil.
From the beginning of his ministry he began predicting his death.
Throughout the rest of the bible, the term paradzidzomi is used to describe how Jesus gave himself up.
and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself (paradzidzomai) for me.
He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up (paradzidzomai) for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
Octavius Winslow - “Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy;-but the Father, for love!
On the human level:
Judas betrayed him for money, the Jews for envy, Pilate for fear.
But on the Divine level:
The father gave him up, and he gave himself up, to die for you.
As we face the cross, then, we can say to ourselves both, “I did it, my sins sent him there.” And “He did it, his love took him there.”
Jesus said, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I lay down my life…no one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord.”
Closing Application:
In Luke 18, Jesus tells a story of two men who went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee—the "good" guy. He stood and thanked God that he wasn't like other people. He wasn't a "sinner" like that tax collector over there. He thought he was "culpable" for nothing.
We could even ask, who is this guy really praying to?
Explain the Tax Collector
In the Greek, the word for "be merciful" is elasthatoimoi. The best translation is not mercy but the old english word for propitiation.
Propitiation means, let this thing take my place. He was saying, "Lord, let the sacrifice on the altar be for me. Let that lamb bear the wrath I deserve so that You might be favorable to me."
The pharisee prayed, God I’m thankful I’m not like those other sinful people.
The tax collector had no leg to stand on. He recognized that nothing he had done was worthy of saving him. His only hope was the Lamb.
Jesus asks a question at the end of that story, he says, “who do you think went home justified?”
I once taught a lesson on this story and afterwards a woman prayed God I thank you that I’m not like the pharisees.
It’s easy for us to think, God I’m thankful that I’m not like Judas, or the priests, or like Pilate. It’s easy to think it was others that crucified Jesus.
The cross is the exposure of human evil. It first exposes the evil within us.
The first persons sins we should see on the cross is our own.
Only when we are prepared to own our share of the guilt of the cross can we claim our share of its grace.
Before you can see the cross as something done for you, you have to see it as something done by you. You have to look at those nails and see your own greed, your own envy, and your own cowardice. You have to realize that you put Him there.
But then—and only then—can you look into His eyes and realize that He put Himself there for you.
“I did it, my sins sent him there.”
And
“He did it, his love took him there.”
May Jesus be the propitiation for our sins.
Amen.
