We all know on Thursday night of his final week, Jesus was arrested and forced to stand trail, first by the Jewish Council, and then by the Roman Magistrate. We know that they found him guilty – of what, it didn’t matter – and that they condemned him to death. Clearly these legal proceedings were not seeking justice! They served to provide a pretense of legality, so that they could – with impunity – “eliminate” Jesus. After all, Jesus wasn’t guilty of anything!
The preposterous act of condemning Jesus only becomes clear when we look at Jesus attitude about condemning others. Remember the woman caught in adultery? As she lifted her amazed eyes to meet the gaze of Jesus, He said, in measured tones that carried the deliberate meaning of the words, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.”
“I don’t condemn you?” If there was ever a situation that called for direct condemnation, this was it. The Law that Jesus Himself had given from Sinai condemned what she did. The penalty of death is the one that He Himself had prescribed. It was an open-and-shut case. But for Jesus on that day, it became a shut-and-open case. He shut his eyes to the “facts” that they wanted Him to see, and opened his heart to a shattered, hurting, hopeless daughter of God. As he did so, a spark of hope lit up the dark recesses of her heart, and she came to know that God did indeed love sinners.
You see, Jesus took his mission statement very seriously. In speaking with Nicodemus, He declared that, “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” When challenged to condemn the woman, he said, “Condemnation isn’t in my job description. Why don’t I just do what I came here to do, and save her instead?”
Jesus never condemned a weak and broken sinner, no matter the situation. The only words of condemnation ever recorded from His lips, were directed at those who were blinded to their need of a Savior by their own spiritual pride.
Again and again Jesus gave hope to condemned people. The Samaritan woman at the well. The untouchable lepers. The Phoenician woman whose daughter needed healing. The Roman Centurion. Zacchaeus. Hopeless cases all. 500 years earlier Isaiah had seen the care with which He would touch wounded human souls, and had written, “A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish.” In each life, He carefully fanned the flame of hope.
Even on the cross as He was dying, His body wracked with pain, His soul tortured by our sins, He spoke words of compassion and hope to the thief dying next to Him. As the hardened criminal heard the words of Jesus, his thoughts turned from his life of failure to the perfect life of Jesus. He lost sight of his own death, lost in contemplation of living in the Kingdom of God. None of the human witnesses to that event could see the full significance of that interaction, but as the convicted thief responded to the words of Jesus, Heaven watched as all the guilt and sin of this man’s life was transferred one cross over. Heaven recorded that a sinner and a saint died that day… and the sinner was in the middle.
Amazingly, the most poignant scripture written about the events of that Friday were written hundreds of years before they occurred. The prophet Isaiah captured the event perfectly when he wrote:
He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.
He poured out Himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.
I want you to note that Jesus died for sinners. He didn’t just die for the church-goers and the do-gooders. He also died for the Idi Amins, the Adolf Hitlers, the Jeffery Dahmers and the Gary Ridgways of this world. Scripture tells us that God caused the sins of us all to fall upon Him. No exceptions. Catch the implication of that statement. Every sin that has ever been – or will ever be – committed was placed on the form of Jesus as he hung there on that Roman cross. If you think for a moment that God can’t forgive you because you are too bad – you’re wrong. If you think that God couldn’t possibly care whether or not you are saved – you are wrong. He has already placed your most vile deeds on Jesus – and Jesus has already paid your debt.
You see, it wasn’t the Priests or Romans that declared Jesus guilty. They had no power to condemn Him. But He was condemned by God – condemned to die, because of the crushing weight of our sins that he took upon Himself.
No wonder Paul could declare, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”