|
 Children have a strong sense of injustice, especially when they experience it themselves. If you punish the wrong child for an offense that you didn’t actually see happen, you will usually get howls of protest in response. Nothing seems to bother us more than getting punished for something we didn’t do.
Of course, we generally don’t mind not getting punished for something we know we did wrong. I don’t tend to feel guilty when a police car doesn’t come after me when I know I’ve been speeding. I feel relief, to be sure, but not actual guilt for having broken the law.
This state of affairs makes the events of Good Friday all the more striking when we consider them.
On a Friday almost two thousand years ago, Jesus was handed over to the Roman authorities to answer charges brought against him by the religious leaders of his day. They accused him of stirring up rebellion, of forbidding the payment of taxes to Caesar, and of setting himself up as a king to challenge the emperor. Ironically, Jesus had carefully avoided any of these things during his years of ministry. But to Pilate’s great amazement, Jesus “gave him no answer, not even to a single charge,” as Matthew tells us in chapter 27 verse 14.
Why doesn’t Jesus say anything? Maybe he was simply being fatalistic. He knew that he didn’t have any sway with the authorities, and speaking out would only make things worse. In any case, for all his prior claims of authority and a special relationship with God, Jesus comes off looking very passive in the face of a sentence of execution.
Many years ago I found myself visiting a friend’s home in a small village in Central Asia. As is the custom there, I was welcomed as an honored guest and treated to rich hospitality by my hosts. They honored me by slaughtering a lamb and preparing a great meal to welcome me to their home. I was led outside to see them select the lamb that would become a multi-course feast. Once the lamb had been chosen, they brought it forward, gently pulled its head back and proceeded to slit its throat. I remember being struck by the fact that the lamb made no sound and attempted no struggle against what was happening to it.
I was reminded of the way the Old Testament prophet Isaiah spoke of one who come and voluntarily suffer in the place of God’s people: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”
In the same chapter, Isaiah makes it clear that the reason Jesus willingly submits to such injustice is that he was taking on a punishment that we deserved on our behalf. As much as a part of me wants to be able to get away with breaking the law, we all know that we would hate living in a world where we frequently faced injustice. We want justice for those who wrong us, but clemency for our own mistakes.
So Jesus willingly accepted a punishment he didn’t deserve to satisfy divine justice. He wasn’t being fatalistic about his sentence. For God to be both just and merciful, someone had to pay the price for the wrongs committed by the human race. Jesus could have defended himself, and he could have escaped punishment. Though he was the Son of God and could have legitimately challenged Caesar’s authority if he had desired to, instead he willingly offered up his life so that all who trust in him might have their debts paid, their wrongs forgiven.
The one who suffered the greatest injustice of all time was Jesus, dying on the cross in my place, and he did so willingly that my sins might be forgiven.
Tell, me ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his? Friends through fear his cause disowning, foes insulting his distress; Many hands were raised to wound him, none would interpose to save; But the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that Justice gave. -Thomas Kelly, 1804 |