Who Killed Jesus?

Christians claim Christ died for them. What does that mean? Signs editor Lee Dunstan offers an explanation.

According to the apostle Paul, when Christ died He took on Himself our confessed sins, dying in our place (1 Corinthians 15:3). He also accepted the penalty for sin on behalf of all humankind. Isaiah says He was “pierced for our transgressions” (53:5); He was “crushed” for our sins.

According to God’s law of the universe, the death penalty was intrinsic to sin, and someone—the sinner—had to pay “the wages of sin” (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23). So Jesus died this death for each of us, paying that penalty on our behalf (see Hebrews 2:9). The point of this act of self-sacrifice was that humanity, condemned to die for eternity, might again access eternal life, which was forfeited by Adam when he chose to sin (see Genesis 3).

This is core Christianity: Christ took upon Himself our sins and paid the penalty for them. He came to earth and lived among us for 33 years, demonstrating the length to which He would go in order to save us.
Christ, the sinless One, must have suffered living in such close quarters to the sin that surrounds us. Even things that we might consider not so bad must have been anathema to Him.

While travelling in a Third World country where personal hygiene wasn’t priority and a shower wasn’t felt to be a necessity, I vividly recall fleeing a room, gagging on the obnoxious odours emitted by some its occupants. Outside, I leaned over the handrail, heaving, a fit of nausea sweeping over me. It literally made me sick. I imagine it was something like that for Christ, surrounded by malodorous sin alien to Him. We who have become accustomed to the stench of sin, being surrounded by it, don’t realise its abhorrence, as would a sinless being. Yet He neither fled nor even flinched.

But, in fact, it was actually much worse for Christ. Paul says that “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21, emphasis added).

That’s why, when the refugee Israelites were under attack by deadly snakes in the Sinai desert and dying—sin is represented by the snake in the Bible, dating from the serpent in Eden (Genesis 3:14, 15)—to be healed they were commanded to look at a brass, cast snake raised high above their camp on a wooden cross (see Numbers 21:4-8). Christ, the healer, was represented in the snake—He became, in some sense, sin itself. In some mystical way that we don’t fully understand, it was necessary for Him to become sin in order to free the world of sin.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,” said Jesus, speaking of Himself, “[so] that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15). Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).

In both kind and in reality, Christ paid the penalty for our sin when He was raised on the cross outside of Jerusalem. Beneath His feet, sinners, including His crucifiers, gazed up at Him, not realising it was for them He was dying or that it was their sins that put Him there.
That is, paradoxically, except for one, the centurion, who acknowledged Jesus’ status, commenting, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:47).

Franciszek Gajowniczek, who died in 1995, spent the 50 years following World War II championing the memory of “a righteous man” who died for him. Gajowniczek, a Polish soldier, first met Maksymilian Kolbe in Auschwitz, where they were both incarcerated.
According to Auschwitz law, for every prisoner who escaped, 10 remaining would be executed. So when one night a prisoner did escape, Gajowniczek was among those randomly chosen to pay the price of that man’s freedom.

The method of death was agonising and cheap; the condemned were simply locked in an underground cell, known as the “hunger bunker,” without food or water and left to die. When the last person died, the bodies were removed.

Faced with this, Gajowniczek pleaded for his life, having a wife and family whom he dearly longed to see again. And without hesitation, into his place stepped Kolbe, a Franciscan monk. When after 10 days Kolbe still hadn’t died, the guards shot him, whether out of embarrassment or mercy we don’t know.

But with the death of his saviour, remorse—survivor’s guilt—flooded over Gajowniczek. He refused to eat, and himself began to die. Then one of his fellow prisoners scolded him for his refusal to accept the gift of life Kolbe had given him, admonishing him, instead, to make the best life that he could. Gajowniczek owed his life to Kolbe, whom he did not know, but had died in his place.

Referring to people such as Kolbe, the apostle Paul observes that it’s a rare event for someone to volunteer for certain death on behalf of a good person, let alone a bad one. “But,” he says, “God demonstrates his own love for us [humankind] in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

This is the heart of the gospel. And just as Christ rose from death to life, according to Romans 6:4, so too may we.