The New Testament In Its World, April 6, 2025
Chapter 11 – “The Death of the Messiah”
The quotes below are all taken from “The New Testament In Its World,” Wright and Bird, Zondervan.
Somehow, Jesus’s death was seen by Jesus himself, and then by those who told and ultimately wrote his story, as the ultimate means by which God’s kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven. It was the ultimate Exodus event through which the tyrant was defeated, God’s people were set free and given their fresh vocation, and God’s presence was established in their midst in a completely new way for which the Temple itself was just an advance pointer. {Wright 242}
WHY DID JESUS DIE?
Crucifixion was a brutal and barbaric form of execution. If you had ever seen a crucifixion (and they were common in places like Judea and Galilee), the experience would have been terrifying. It would leave you with irrepressible memories of naked half-dead men dying a protracted death for days on end, covered in blood and flies, their flesh gnawed at by rats, their members ripped at by wild dogs, their faces pecked by crows, the victims mocked and jeered by sadistic torturers and other bystanders, while relatives nearby, weeping uncontrollably, would be helpless to do anything for them . . . If there is one thing we can be certain of about Jesus, it is that he was crucified. {Page 242}
So ‘Why did Jesus die?’ The question ‘why’ invites different kinds of answers. Many Christians will naturally opt for a theological answer, following Paul’s statement of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.3: ‘for our sins’. But the New Testament, and especially the four gospels, refuse to get to that answer without also addressing the question historically. Why did the Judean leadership ask the Roman governor to execute Jesus? Why did the governor, Pontius Pilate, agree to their request? And was Jesus then caught in a trap by mistake, or did he—as all the gospels affirm—somehow intend this consequence? How would that relate to, or even (as the texts assert) form the climax of, his public career of launching God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven? {Page 245}
THE CHARGES
Crucifixion was a powerful symbol throughout the Roman world. It was not just a means of liquidating undesirables; it did so with maximum degradation and humiliation. It said, loud and clear: we are in charge here; you are our property; we can do what we like with you. It insisted, coldly and brutally, on the absolute sovereignty of Rome, and of Caesar. It told an implicit story, of the uselessness of rebel recalcitrance and the ruthlessness of imperial power. It said in particular: this is what happens to rebel leaders. Crucifixion was a symbolic act with a clear and frightening meaning. {Page 245}
Some scholars, knowing that Pilate was not particularly competent or distinguished at his job, and that his rule was marked by provocation and corruption, have argued that the gospel picture of him as a confused and concerned Roman official, trying feebly to get Jesus off though not ultimately caring much about his fate, is the result of the writers’ desire to lay the blame for Jesus’ death on his Jewish contemporaries. But if the evangelists were trying to make Pilate out to be anything other than weak, vacillating, bullying, and caught between two pressing agendas, neither of which had anything to do with truth or justice, they did a pretty poor job of it. The later Christian adoption of Pilate as a hero, or even a saint, is miles away from his characterization in the gospels: the famous scene of him washing his hands must surely be read, both within history and within Matthean redaction, as merely the high-point of his cynicism. {Page 246}
Pilate must therefore have realized that the Jewish leaders had their own reasons for wanting Jesus executed, and were using the charge of sedition as a convenient excuse. This gave him the opening to do what he would normally be expected to do, which was to refuse their request; he tried this, but failed. He failed, because it was pointed out to him in no uncertain terms that if he did not execute a would-be rebel king he would stand accused, himself, of disloyalty to Caesar. Historically, emotionally, and politically this sequence makes perfect sense. In terms of the Roman authorities, the answer to the question ‘Why did Jesus die?’ is that Pilate not only put cynical power-games before justice, but also, on this occasion, put naked self-interest before both. {Page 247}
But why did the Judean leadership, the priestly aristocracy, request that Pilate inflict the death penalty on Jesus in the first place? (As all the sources agree, the Romans did not allow subject peoples the right to use the death penalty.) One immediate answer comes to us from a Jewish tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud about Jesus’ execution:
Jesus was hanged on the eve of Passover. The herald went before him for forty days, saying, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he practised sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray. Let everyone knowing anything in his defence come and plead for him.’ But nothing was found in his defence, so he was hanged on the eve of Passover. {Page 248}
The combined impression of Jesus’ public actions and teachings, leading eventually to his action in the Temple, will have created in some suspicious minds just this impression. It would not be difficult to present him as someone speaking and acting in opposition to Torah and Temple, and leading others, by word, example, and ‘works of power’, to do the same. What could he be, in their eyes, if not a false prophet, performing signs and wonders to lead Israel astray? {Page 248}
Serious Jewish observers might well have concluded that Jesus was misleading the people in terms of the agendas, and Torah-interpretations, current at the time. Precisely because he would not endorse, but rather opposed, the movement of national resistance, the (Shammaite) majority of Pharisees would find him deeply unsatisfactory. Precisely because he was ‘stirring up the people’, creating an excitement wherever he went in a highly volatile social and political setting, the chief priests and Sadducees were bound to see him, like his late cousin John, as a troublemaker. {Page 248}
Many among the general populace were undoubtedly hoping that Jesus would be the sort of Messiah whom Pilate, if he caught him, would have to execute—the sort who, like Barabbas, would lead a violent revolution in the city.10 If the Jewish leaders had found Jesus guilty of being a revolutionary Messiah, and had handed him over to Pilate on that charge, they might well have precipitated the riot they were anxious to avoid. {Page 249}
Jesus must be eliminated because he is performing signs; people will be led away after him; the Temple and their national life are at risk.
In terms of the Jewish authorities, then, the question ‘Why did Jesus die?’ evokes a fivefold answer. He was sent to the Roman governor on a capital charge:
- because many saw him as ‘a false prophet, leading Israel astray’;
- because, as one aspect of this, they saw his Temple-action as a blow against the central symbol not only of national life but also of YHWH’s presence with his people and promises for their deliverance;
- because, though he was clearly not leading a real or organized military revolt, he saw himself as in some sense Messiah, and could thus become a focus of serious revolutionary activity;
- because, as the pragmatic focus of these three points, they saw him as a dangerous political nuisance, whose actions might well call down the wrath of Rome upon Temple and nation alike;
- because, at the crucial moment in the hearing, he not only pleaded guilty to the above charges, but also did so in such a way as to place himself, blasphemously, alongside the God of Israel. {Page 249}
But what about Jesus himself? Was he simply, as some have suggested, a brash and hotheaded prophet who messed with powers beyond his ken? Could Jesus have been a victim of unfortunate circumstances by doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time?13 Did he go to the cross kicking and screaming ‘I’m innocent—let me go!’ Or did Jesus foresee his own death in Jerusalem, and believe that it was a vital part of God’s coming kingdom, the event that would crown his life’s work and bring about the end of exile, the launch of a new exodus, the defeat of the satan, the real restoration of Israel, and healing for the nations? {Page 251}
LAST SUPPER
This meal was a deliberate double-drama. As a Passover meal, it told the story of Jewish history in terms of divine deliverance from tyranny, looking back to the exodus from Egypt and looking on to the new exodus, the still-awaited return from exile. But Jesus’ meal fused this great story together with another one: the story of Jesus himself, his own life, and his coming death. It somehow involved him in the God-given drama, not as a spectator, or as one participant among many, but as the central character. {Page 252}
Jesus clearly intended his final meal with his disciples to carry deep significance; if his earlier celebrations with ‘tax-collectors and sinners’ were signs of the kingdom, how much more this one. When Jesus wanted to fully explain what his forthcoming death was all about, in other words, he didn’t give his followers a theory of the atonement.
He didn’t give them a sermon, a lecture, or even a set of scriptural texts. He gave them a meal. This meal would interpret and explain not only his death but also his entire vocation. {Page 252-253}
We should note, first, that this meal, like all Jewish Passover meals, celebrated the exodus, Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. To a first-century Jew, it also pointed ahead to the return from exile, the new exodus, the great covenant renewal spoken of by the prophets. The meal symbolized ‘forgiveness of sins’, YHWH’s return to redeem his people, his victory over Pharaohs both literal and metaphorical. {Page 253}
Jesus’ last supper with his disciples was thus full of prophetic symbolism. It was the natural sequel to his previous great prophetic act, the demonstration in the Temple. If Jesus believed that the Temple was corrupt, that it would soon be destroyed by God, and that its sacrificial system was coming to an end, then (as many have seen, including some Jewish scholars) he may well have understood his own commemorative meal as at least pointing to an alternative. If, as we have argued, Jesus had after all seen himself as Messiah, the builder of God’s Temple, the focal point of the great divine act of liberation, then the symbols which ordered Israel’s life and hope would now focus back upon him. {Page 253}
The words of Jesus at the supper, the so-called ‘words of institution’, show that Jesus, in prophetic style, identified the bread with his own body, and the wine with his own blood, and that he spoke about these in language which echoed the context of Passover, sacrifice, and covenant, and applied it to his forthcoming death (see text grid: ‘Jesus’ words at the Last Supper’). Especially notable are Jesus’ words about the cup which identify its content, in obviously symbolic fashion, with his own blood. {Page 254}
All three synoptic accounts contain a further explanation: Jesus’ blood will be shed ‘on behalf of the many’ (Luke has ‘on behalf of you’). To this, Matthew has added ‘for the forgiveness of sins’.16 When situated in its first-century Jewish context, this denotes, not an abstract transaction between human beings and their God, but the very concrete expectation of Israel, namely that the nation would at last be rescued from the ‘exile’ which had come about because of its sins.17 Matthew was not suggesting that Jesus’ death would accomplish an abstract ‘atonement’. He is stressing that it would be the means of rescuing YHWH’s people from their exilic plight. These words once more bring the meal’s symbolic significance into clear expression.
Luke and Paul both include a command that the meal be repeated, and that this repetition be undertaken as a way of remembering Jesus himself.18 Such a command again makes explicit what is in any case implicit in the meal’s symbolism. If Jesus was about to perform the great messianic action, and if his last meal with his followers would function in relation to that action as Passover functioned in relation to the exodus from Egypt, then of course the meal would include the prayer that this messianic action would be successfully accomplished; and of course, as the meal was repeated by Jesus’ followers, it would be done not with an eye to YHWH sending the Messiah at last—he had already done that—but with an eye to his remembering the messianic act which Jesus had already accomplished. All this, again, makes sense only once one allows that Jesus really did suppose that he was about to die, and that this was part of the eschatological plan for the fulfilment of YHWH’s kingdom-purposes. Jesus’ symbolic action deliberately evoked the whole exodus tradition and gave it a new direction. Jesus intended to say, with all the power of symbolic drama and narrative, not only that he was shortly to die but also that his death was to be seen within the context of the larger story of YHWH’s redemption of Israel. More specifically, he intended that his death be seen as the central and climactic moment towards which that story had been moving, and for which the events of the exodus were the crucial and determining backdrop; and that those who shared the meal, not only then but subsequently, were the people of the renewed covenant, the people who received ‘the forgiveness of sins’, that is, the end of exile. {Page 254-255}
In sum, Jesus knew he was going to die, but he believed he would die as a Passover lamb. He believed that his broken body and his shed blood would bring forgiveness, that his death would turn away God’s wrath, and that the whole event, liberating God’s people, would usher in the new covenant and the new creation. {Page 256}
RIDDLES OF THE CROSS
The various ‘Passion predictions’ should not be dismissed (as many have done) as ex eventu prophecies of Jesus’ death, projected back into Jesus’ life as an apologetic device. The material is too widely attested, and too prevalent across the various traditions, to represent a later Christian invention.19 Neither are these predictions the melancholic musings of a man with a martyr complex. Rather, they represent the realistic reflection of someone proclaiming God’s kingdom, challenging Israel’s official (Sadducean) and unofficial (Pharisaic) leaders, attracting crowds, exciting eschatological fervour, imbibing messianic dreams, challenging boundaries about who is ‘in’, and making a powerful protest in the Temple which appears to be a symbolic foretelling of its downfall. {Page 256}
Sometimes, then, Jesus made explicit statements about the rejection and death that awaited him in Jerusalem, words which met with confusion, disbelief, and even rebuke by his disciples. At other times, Jesus made cryptic statements about a bridegroom being taken away, about a prophet not dying except in Jerusalem, about a coming time when the disciples would have to fend for themselves in his absence. He would be, he said, like green wood being burnt when all around were dry sticks ready for kindling. He would be like a landowner’s son killed by wicked tenants.
The images mount up; they also add up. They carry multiple scriptural resonances. Jesus’ death would provide a ‘ransom’, much like that of Isaiah’s ‘servant’. He likened himself to a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings to protect them from a barnyard fire, just as YHWH had taken Israel under the shelter of his wings. He would drink from a ‘cup’, and undergo a ‘baptism’, both of which spoke scripturally of coming judgment. He would be struck down like the shepherd of Zechariah. All of these sayings, rooted in scripture and found in more or less all strands of tradition, portray Jesus as the one who symbolized Israel’s fate in himself, who would suffer death on behalf of others, and who would turn away divine wrath so that Israel could escape the slavery of exile and be launched into the freedom of the ‘new exodus’. The striking thing to note is that these ‘riddles’ seem markedly different from the atonement theology of the later church. {Page 256-257}
JESUS: MESSIAH AND SERVANT
If we bring together what we have learned about the ‘last supper’ and these various ‘riddles’ about Jesus’ approaching death, then, we are bound to reach the conclusion that Jesus seems to have regarded his own approaching death as being part, indeed the climax, of his vocation. Called to inaugurate God’s kingdom, and to do so in and through his own presence, power, teaching, and leading, he saw this work as being accomplished through his own death. This was the point at which the fate he had announced for Israel would become the fate he himself would suffer. He had warned that Israel would be crushed by Rome. Now he went ahead to the cross, which symbolized precisely that outcome. {Page 258}
There was, in other words, a belief, hammered out not in abstract debate but in and through poverty, exile, torture, and martyrdom, that Israel’s sufferings might be, not merely a state from which the nation would be redeemed, but paradoxically, under certain circumstances and in certain senses, part of the means by which that redemption would be effected. This is the narrative in which Jesus’ death should be situated and understood. {Page 258}
Jesus believed that Israel’s history had arrived at its focal point. More specifically, he believed that the exile had reached its climax. He believed that he was himself the bearer of Israel’s destiny at this critical time. He was the Messiah who would take that destiny on himself and draw it to its focal point. {Page 258}
Jesus’ shocking combination of scriptural models into a single vocation makes excellent historical sense; that is, it explains at a stroke why he had to die. Jesus, having warned his people of what was to come, went to take it upon himself. His predictions of the destruction of the Temple and the city were matched, stride for stride, by his own vocation. That is part of the mystery of his crucifixion: ‘wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquity’. {Page 259}
He could not establish the new creation without allowing the poison in the old to have its full effect. He could not launch God’s kingdom of justice, truth, and peace unless injustice, lies, and violence had done their worst and, like a hurricane, had blown themselves out, exhausting their force on this one spot. He could not begin the work of healing the world unless he provided the antidote to the infection that would otherwise destroy the project from within. This is how the early work of Jesus’ public career, the healings, the celebrations, the forgiveness, the changed hearts, all look forward to this moment. {Page 259}
THE VICTORY OF GOD
Jesus took his own story seriously—so seriously that, having recommended to his followers a particular way of being Israel-for-the-sake-of-the-world, he made that way thematic for his own sense of vocation, his own belief about how the kingdom would come through his own work and especially in his death. He would turn the other cheek; he would go the second mile; he would take up the cross. He would be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. He would be Israel for the sake of the world. {Page 258}
Jesus, then, went to Jerusalem not just to preach, but to die. While there, he deliberately enacted two symbols, which encapsulated his whole work and agenda. The first symbol (the Temple-demonstration) said that the present system was corrupt and recalcitrant. It was ripe for judgment. But Jesus was the Messiah, the one through whom YHWH, the God of all the world, would save Israel and thereby the world. So the second symbol (the Last Supper) said: this is how the true exodus will come about. This is how the exile will end; this is how the new exodus will be launched. This is how sins will be forgiven. This is how, in particular and at the heart of it all, evil (perhaps we should say, Evil with a capital E) will be defeated. {Page 260}
But at the heart of Jesus’ symbolic actions, and his retelling of Israel’s story, there was a great deal more than political pragmatism, revolutionary daring, or the desire for a martyr’s glory. There was a deeply theological analysis of Israel, the world, and his own role in relation to both. There was a deep sense of vocation and trust in Israel’s God. There was the unshakeable belief—Gethsemane seems nearly to have shaken it, but Jesus seems to have construed that, too, as part of the point, part of the battle—that if he went this route, if he fought this battle, the long night of Israel’s exile would be over at last, and the new day for Israel and the world really would dawn once and for all. {Page 260}
When we speak of ‘following Jesus’, we are talking about the crucified Messiah. His death was not simply the messy event that enables our sins to be forgiven and which can thereafter conveniently be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God; the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the One in whose image we are made, and hence about our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives and service the living God is made known. And when therefore we speak of shaping our world, we do not—we dare not—simply treat the cross as the thing that saves us ‘personally’, but which can be discarded when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world. In undertaking that task, the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped from start to finish. {Page 261}
The Carpenter's Nail 