Did the Jews kill Jesus?

Debunking Replacement Theology – Part 1

The accusation that the Jews killed Jesus has been used repeatedly over centuries by antisemites in an effort to create a wedge between Christians and Jews. Clearly provocative, the term is not so obvious in mainstream Christianity today, but it might be more common than you realise. Where there is false teaching regarding Israel, bad theology about the Cross, and a lack of Biblical love for the Jewish people, this same attitude towards Jews is at risk of returning. 

This antisemitic trope is actually a form of replacement theology. This is because it deliberately misuses Scripture to eliminate them from the purposes of God. This is why we have chosen this topic as the first in this series – it illustrates the severe consequence of false teaching.  

As early as the 2nd century under the Roman Empire, Jewish people were vilified as “Christ-killers”. For two millennia, this slur was the basis for the worst antisemitism in the name of Christianity, including pogroms, massacres of Jews, and expulsions, including from England, France, and the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions carried out by the Roman Catholic Church. During the Middle Ages, it was one of the strategies used to invoke hate and prejudice against Jews, by depicting Jews as evil and untrustworthy. During the Holocaust, there were Nazis who used the trope to justify their evil acts. 

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a liturgy for ‘Holy Thursday’ speaks of “murderers of God, the lawless nation of the Jews.” The Book of Mormon, while being a sect, teaches that Jesus came to the Jews because they were the only nation which was wicked enough to crucify Him. 

Meanwhile in Islam, there is a verse in the Quran that quotes Jews boasting that they killed Jesus, but the verse continues to say that Jesus wasn’t actually killed, but only appeared to be dead. Imagine being a Jew in the Middle Ages and being subject to Muslims accusing you of killing Jesus to stir up antisemitic hatred among Christians, who were also being taught that the Jews killed Jesus. It demonstrates the spiritual strategy that Satan was using to drive a damaging wedge between Christians and Jews. 

Since 7 October, our CUFI UK team has seen first-hand a growing number of people on social media who attack Christians standing with the State of Israel by blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. We’ve discovered that many are pro-Palestinian antisemites pretending to give a Christian viewpoint, when in fact many are not Christian even by their own admission. Many are Muslim, using the Bible that they don’t believe in to stir up antisemitism. Their aim is to undermine the Biblical basis for standing with Israel and create a wedge between Christians and Jews, just like the age-old antisemitism of the Dark Ages. The same spirit that was behind some of history’s worst antisemitism in the name of Christianity is alive and well. Christians must heed the warning. These ancient tropes that we’ve identified in the dark corners of social media will reach the pulpit if we do not teach sound Bible doctrine regarding the death of Jesus. 

So, to contend this question, let us go to the Bible and to Calvary. 

The Father’s will 

First Peter 1:19-20 explains that the ‘precious blood of Christ’, the ‘lamb without blemish and without spot’ was ‘foreordained before the foundation of the world’. It was God the Father’s will that His Son, Jesus Christ, would be sent into the world to become an atonement offering for our sin. Jesus was not ‘murdered’ – it was the Father’s will that He should die, and as Philippians 2:8 says, “He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” It is crucial to understand the context of the Cross as an appointed fulfilment of God’s plan for salvation. Christians must remember that without Christ’s death there would be no salvation. Without the Cross, God’s plan of redemption would be incomplete and there would be no salvation for the Gentiles. 

A Roman execution

Addressing who was responsible for the crucifixion itself, let us consider three aspects. Firstly, crucifixion was a Roman death penalty, used for executing some of the worst criminals. John 18:31-32 reveals that Jesus being handed over to the Romans was so that Jesus’s prophetic words concerning the details of His death might be fulfilled. The Bible is clear that it was Roman authorities who cruelly killed Jesus – whipping and torturing him, ripping and tearing his flesh, putting a crown of thorns on his head, spitting on him, nailing him to the cross, crucifying him, even running him through with a spear. Notably, the Romans exploited Jesus’s Jewishness, mocking him as a Jewish king and affixing the sign ‘King of the Jews’ above his head in a teasingly antisemitic way. Interestingly, the chief priests asked Pilate to change the sign to read, “He said, I am the King of the Jews” rather than affirm Jesus’s claim, but Pilate refused to change it. He was adamant to exploit Jesus’s Jewishness and at the same time exasperate the Jewish leaders.

Delivered by the Jewish leaders 

Secondly, we must acknowledge the significant role of the Jewish leaders present – the chief priests and Sadducees, who, the Bible explains, handed Jesus to the Roman authorities saying clearly that He should die because “He made Himself the Son of God.”  This rejection of Jesus is fundamental in understanding the big picture of God’s work of salvation. 

When the Sanhedrin brought Jesus before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Pilate could not find any fault in Jesus, stating it three separate times (Luke 23:4, 14–15, 22). He also “washed his hands before the multitude, saying ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just person,’”. In John 19:10, Pilate said, “I have the power to crucify You, and power to release You?” to which Jesus responded that Pilate could have no power at all unless it had been given him from above. Jesus continued, “Therefore, the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

Later in the trial, Pilate sought a way to free Jesus (John 19:12). In a ploy to appease the Jewish leaders, Pilate used a custom associated with the Passover festival in which the governor would release a prisoner to the people. Pilate allowed them to choose between a convicted criminal named Barabbas and Jesus. The chief priests whipped up chants of ‘crucify him’ and it says, “he [Pilate] delivered Jesus to their will,” (Luke 23:25). 

Whilst these Jewish leaders coerced the Romans to carry out Jesus’s death sentence, to deliberately associate this moment to any individual Jewish person in the present, is beyond ludicrous. It is nothing short of antisemitic. Furthermore, it is important to note that most of Jesus’s followers at the time along with Jesus Himself were, of course, Jewish. But this moment of rejection by ‘the house of Israel’ from a theological standpoint is important. It was necessary that, according to John 1:11, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

This act of Jesus being delivered to the Romans was referred to many times by the Apostle Peter in explaining the gospel to the Jewish leaders and the people of Israel. On at least three occasions Peter described Christ as the one whom they crucified (Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10). 

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ,” (Acts 2:36). 

In Acts 3:13-15, Peter preached, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.”

The Apostle Paul warns Gentile believers, however, to guard against any malicious feeling towards the Jewish people over Israel’s rejection of Jesus. It says in Romans 11:11-12, “But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness!”

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” These were some of the final words of Jesus as He hung nailed to the Cross (Luke 23:34). These are powerful words that turn focus away from guilt to grace. Ultimately, it wasn’t the crowd’s cries of “Crucify Him!” that put Jesus on the cross. It was our sin. 

The Bible says in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  In this sense, all sinners are culpable. All men are guilty. From the very beginning, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the Lord had promised to send a Saviour who would crush the reign of sin and death (Genesis 3:15). Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, came as a Jew to the nation of Israel. It was the punishment of sin and His great love for the world that were met as He suffered and died. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities,” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Jesus laid down His life

We have considered the actions of the Romans and the Jews at Calvary. But the third aspect is the pinnacle in our response to ‘Did the Jews kill Jesus?’. It is a crushing blow to the antisemite. Whenever you are asked this question, quote these words of Jesus from John 10:17-18: 

“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”

This Scripture tells us that Jesus willingly laid down His life. It was with authority from the Father that Christ offered up His life, and it was the power and authority from the Father that He arose from the grave. This aspect of Jesus’s crucifixion alone should humble the Church into repentance for the hurt done towards Jews in the name of Christianity. Two millennia of hatred towards the Jewish people could have been averted if this Bible truth had been embraced. No one took Jesus’s life – He laid it down Himself. Yes, He was led “like a lamb to the slaughter” but He “opened not His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). In His silence, he laid down His life so that the power of God’s forgiveness and the victory over sin might be experienced by all those who turn to Him.

Jesus is not dead

Finally, even though Christ died and was buried in the tomb, He did not remain dead. Jesus rose again on the third day, conquering the grave, and defeating sin and death. 

Peter, addressing the “men of Israel” in Acts 2:23-24, declared, “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”

It is God who raised Jesus from the dead. Any person trying to assert blame for Jesus’s death exposes their ignorance and reveals their true motives. But the true Christian understands that the weeping at Calvary was turned into the joys of victory.