In John 10, Jesus tells his hearers that he is the good shepherd who lays down his life. In 10:18, he makes a crucial point about his “laying down life”:
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
Why is this so important? Why does it matter that Jesus willingly died?
Who Killed Jesus?
I suppose that before we can discuss the importance of Jesus willingly laying down His life, we need to make the case for Jesus having done so. To do this, we first need to ask, “who killed Jesus?”
Certainly, some blame could be laid at the feet of the Roman soldiers and Pilate. Without their complicity, the Jewish leaders could not have legally gone through an execution. When “and they crucified him” in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the most directly responsible are the Roman soldiers fulfilling the orders of Pilate. But would the Romans have even batted an eye at the ministry of Jesus if it hadn’t been for the Jewish religious leaders?
The religious leaders hated Jesus. He was popular with the people, and he was upsetting the masses. His ministry was taking power away from the religious leaders of the day. And the things that Jesus said, and the way he spoke with authority, shined a light on their inefficiencies. John Stott says it well:
So, they felt threatened by Jesus. He undermined their prestige, their hold over the people, their own self-confidence and self-respect, while leaving his intact. They were “envious” of him, and therefore determined to get rid of him. (Stott, 58)
They wanted him dead. But Luke tells us that they were consternated as to how to arrest Jesus without stirring up the people. Could the religious leaders have gotten Jesus before Pilate had it not been for Judas? His greed and perhaps his disillusionment that Jesus’ ministry was more about foot washing than dashing people to pieces, caused Judas to betray the Son of God.
We could also lay some blood on the hands of the people in the crowd who cried out for Barabbas instead of Jesus. Their shouts of “crucify Him” are only pointing to the great theological truth that it wasn’t merely Pilate, Jewish leaders, or Judas Iscariot who had Jesus on the cross that day. Jesus was sent to earth for a purpose. His death was necessary because of our sin. Again, Stott says it well: “Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us” (Stott, 63).
In Acts 4:27, we have a tremendous summary of who killed Jesus:
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
All of us. That’s the conclusion. But this prayer of believers in the upper room doesn’t stop with saying the death of Jesus was because of all of us. It goes further. These were gathered against Jesus, it says, “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:28).
Nothing happened on that day outside of the sovereign plan of God. Who killed Jesus?
“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all…” Romans 8:32
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted… Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;” -Isaiah 53:4, 10
[Christ Jesus] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.. - Romans 3:23
Mystery of mysteries, not only did Jesus die at the hands of wicked men, but he died according to the plan of God. It is at this point that the charge of cosmic child abuse is often leveled.
“How…have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Son? The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offense he has not even committed” (Chalke and Mann, 182).
This is why it is important to see that Jesus did not die against His will.
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Jesus' Death Wasn’t Against His Will
If we picture Jesus as an unwilling and passive victim—not only of the wicked people against Him, but also of the Father’s wrathful vengeance—then perhaps Chalke and Mann have a case that this theory of the atonement is nothing more than cosmic child abuse. But Jesus is not a victim. This is his claim in John 10. Nobody takes his life from Him. He willingly lays it down.
“Why, Luke, did you tell us this”? That’s one of the questions I found myself asking as I was preparing to preach through Luke 22:7-23. There was a mountain of information about the life of Jesus that the gospel writers could have included. Why, in Luke 22:7-13, are we given such details of Jesus’ instruction to the disciples about preparing Passover?
As I wrestled with this question, I started to think of some of the procedural dramas that I have watched on television. I thought in particular of NBC’s, The Blacklist, where James Spader is a criminal mastermind. Not that I am comparing our Lord to a criminal, but I thought of how in that show, they give the picture that Spader is absolutely in control of a situation that at first appears to be chaotic. It’s all the preparation and saying things like, “there will be a man there who looks like this, and he’ll say this, and then do this, and then this thing will happen.” It is something similar that look is showing us about Jesus in Luke 22:7-13. Jesus is in absolute control.
And that is significant because, in this context, Jesus is synonymous with the Passover Lamb. Lambs don’t talk. Lambs don’t direct the Passover meal. They are passive. They are, as it were, victims. They do not get to choose to be the spotless lamb. They don’t pick their death. They belong to the shepherd, they belong to the family, and their life is laid down at the behest of their owner. But that is most certainly not what is happening here in the death of Jesus. He lays down His life.
And because of this, we can say that this is not cosmic child abuse. God the Father is not sacrificing Jesus as if Christ is not a willing participant. He volunteered for this position. He desired to save us. And He desired to obey the Father’s plan. There is nothing in this that is abusive. It is voluntary.
Though the analogy breaks down at some point, the death of Jesus is much like the school teacher who put his body in front of students and took several bullets from a perpetrator's gun as the children in the classroom escaped from a window. He willingly gave his life for others. He laid it down so that others could live.
But it’s also important that we see that the sacrifice of Jesus was not against the Father’s will either.
Jesus' Death Wasn’t Against the Father’s Will
There are times when I hear gospel presentations that sound as if the Father was filled with wrath against humanity, but the Son stepped in and convinced Him not to destroy us. This likely comes from overextending the picture of Jesus as our Mediator. The typical picture of mediation is that two parties are at odds with one another and the mediator speaks for both parties. It fits with this picture to have God as wrathful, angry, and desiring to destroy, but the Mediator steps in.
But this is not the picture of the Bible. Consider John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”. It was because of the Father’s love that He sent His only Son. Consider also the beautiful logic of Romans 8:32. If God did not spare His own Son, how will He not also graciously give us all things? It was the Father’s love for you and I that led to this sacrifice. Jesus was not laying down His life to appease a God who did not want to love humanity. Again, I turn to Stott:
The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvation he was reluctant to bestow. There is no suspicion anywhere in the New Testament of discord between the Father and the Son, ‘whether by the Son wrestling forgiveness from an unwilling Father or by the Father demanding a sacrifice from an unwilling Son.’ There was no unwillingness in either. On the contrary, their will coincided in the perfect self-sacrifice of love. (Stott, 151)
Why Does This Matter?
This matters for us because it helps us to know that neither Father, Son, or Holy Spirit are reluctant to the salvation given to humanity. Jesus willingly laid down His life. The Son willingly gave of Himself. The Spirit willingly regenerates hearts and unites us to God.
In my darker moments, I can think that God is incredibly displeased with me, that He doesn’t actually like me, but because of this plan of salvation he has set up then he is obligated to forgive me. In my mind, something like 1 John 1:9 becomes a distant and static transaction that must take place because of what Jesus has done. If I confess, he must forgive.
And I picture this as if He is unwilling and almost forced to forgive. “Alright, I guess. But just because I already died for you. You’d better not let this happen again, I’m getting a little tired of having to forgive you over and over.” But this is far from the heart of God. He delights to forgive. He willingly gave Himself so that His sheep could live.
That’s the depth of His love for us.
Sources:
The Cross of Christ by John Stott
The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann
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