From another place
John 18:28 – Chapter 19
Today we read of the events we’ll remember at the end of Lent: the trial, death and burial of Jesus…the dark day we observe with the ironic name of Good Friday.
If you’re ever in the mood for an unsolvable debate, start with the question, “Why was Jesus crucified?” There are a surprising number of ways to answer the question, and few of the participants would have agreed on what the right answer was.
The Jewish leaders would have said Jesus had to die for blasphemy for claiming to be God. Some may have done enough soul-searching to realize the answer was, at least in part, that he had to die to protect their power.
Some, like Caiaphas, might have said he had to die to protect the peace. The death of one man was a sacrifice to prevent rebellion that would have resulted in many Jewish deaths.
The Romans might even have agreed with that. To them, civil unrest was unacceptable.
To later Christians, the death of Jesus was necessary for reasons neither the Jewish leaders nor the Romans would have ever thought of: it was a sacrifice of the Son of God to take away the sin of the world.
You can probably come up with even more reasons.
But the immediate legal reason was that Jesus claimed to be a king: a challenge to both Roman and Jewish authority that could not be allowed to stand.
Jesus did not refute the charge that he claimed to be king, but he made important statements in his own defense: “My kingdom is not of this world,” and “But now my kingdom is from another place.”
Jesus was king in the world but not of it. Our allegiance to him is different from, and overriding, any allegiance to civil or even religious authorities.