A Story from the morning hours, for a narrow circle of my friends.
The last few months I have seen the same question flare up again and again in comment threads, as the age-old apparently bottomless - but utterly groundless - hatred of Jews has been ignited by clowns.
The question being discussed is - who killed Jesus?
The Romans? The Jews? Pilate? The believers themselves? Religion? People quarrel about it as if it were a riddle that could be solved if you just found the right guilty party - and the more they quarrel, the more they overlook that they are fighting over the wrong question. Because "who" is not the deepest thing at work here.
The deepest is "why".
And that question I walked around pondering myself for the longest time without ever getting an answer that stuck. Why did Jesus have to die? If he is God, and God can do anything - then why couldn't he just forgive? Why the cross, the blood, the whole dark drama, when a single word from him could have done the same?
Truth be told, it was precisely that which kept me from even beginning to understand Christianity the first four decades of my life. And no one told me what on earth it was about.
Then I heard a story about ten years ago, which I was reminded of by a dear friend who sent it to me again yesterday, which I pass on here - because it answers that question better than any theological work I have read.
It goes like this.
There was once, in a distant kingdom, a king whom everyone in the land knew as the most just and most loving king who had ever lived.
Not one or the other. Both. Both the most just AND the most loving.
And it was precisely that which would become his trial.
For one day it was discovered that someone was stealing from the king's treasury. The king, who was just, issued a decree - whoever was caught stealing would receive ten lashes.
But the theft continued. So the king adjusted the punishment to twenty lashes. The theft continued and no one was found or came forward. So twenty became thirty. And finally, when nothing else had worked, the king issued his final decree - forty lashes for the guilty one. And everyone in the kingdom knew what that meant.
Forty lashes was a death sentence.
The theft continued anyway. Until the day when it was discovered who the thief was.
It was the king's own daughter.
Now a wave of unrest went through the kingdom, for everyone asked themselves the same question - what will the king do? Some said that he would of course forgive her - but how could he then be just? His word would be worth nothing, his law a facade, his justice something that only applied to those he did not love. Others said that the judgment had to stand - but how could he then be loving? What father sends his own daughter to her death?
Notice what happens here. It is not a dilemma between a good and a bad option. It is two goods that seem to exclude each other. Justice demands that the judgment be carried out. Love demands that the daughter live. And the king cannot give up either without ceasing to be who he is.
The king made his decision.
The judgment is just, he said.
The punishment shall fall. The decree stands.
Then came the day when the entire kingdom was gathered. The king's daughter was brought forward before everyone, the sentence was read out to her, she was bent over the platform, and her back was bared. The executioner raised the whip for the first blow.
And in that same second the king shouted - "Stop!!!"
A silence fell over the square. Would he not carry it through after all. Some thought that the whole thing was staged - that the king would now step forward and pardon her at the last moment, and that the judgment had only been taken this far to make an example. Others just waited for him to yield, the way all fathers yield in the end.
Because that is how we know power - it speaks harshly, and then it bends when it comes to its own. The law for strangers, mercy for family. No one in the square had ever seen anything else.
The king walked forward, took off his own cloak, then bent over the platform and laid his body around his daughter's... Then he looked back over his shoulder and said - "Strike her now."
The executioner refused. "Lord," he said, "the blows will hit you." And the king answered - "The judgment shall stand. It is just. Strike!"
So the forty lashes fell again and again and again on the king's body, which shielded his daughter's.
And the king died in his daughter's place.
See what happened in that story. The king was just - for the punishment for the guilt was paid, in full, without discount, without the law being bent an inch. And the king was loving - for the daughter went free, because he himself took the judgment. Not a stranger. Not a substitute appointed against his will.
Himself.
That is why Jesus had to die. Not because God is bloodthirsty, but because God is just.
Think of the opposite - a judge who looks the guilty one in the eyes after the most gruesome crime and says - "I can see you're sorry, so let's forget it." No one would call that justice. We would call it corruption. A guilt that is just waved away is not forgiven - it is ignored, and the victim is ignored with it. The bill does not disappear because you tear it up.
Someone always pays.
But what kind of debt is being paid then? Not just my individual missteps or yours. It is the whole rupture - the crack that goes back to the Garden of Eden, where Man reached out to be his own god and pulled himself out of the order he was created into.
Everything that has followed since, every lie, every betrayal, every murder, is not isolated accidents but fruits of the same rupture, and the bill for that rupture has grown so large that no human could ever pay it. Not because we wouldn't - but because we couldn't. A debtor cannot pay with money he owes away. A human who himself stands in the rupture cannot close it - at best he can die for his own part of it, and then there is nothing left to give for the others.
There had to be a Human, for it was Man who stood in debt. And there had to be God, for only God was great enough to bear it fully.
Therefore the Word became flesh.
Not as a formality, but as a necessity - the only one who could pay Man's debt was one who was Human all the way through - and at the same time God all the way through.
So, if you are to understand "why", you must see that God stood with the same impossible choice as the king. Justice demanded that there be a reckoning. Love demanded that we go free.
And on the cross he solved it in the only way it could be solved - he paid himself.
So. It is not God who punishes another to avoid having to forgive.
It is God who lays his own body in between.
I think that story is so good for explaining it. And then you got my subsequent thoughts as a bonus, now that I was sitting here drinking morning coffee on the last day of my 51st year anyway. 🤯
51.... I've only just arrived!?
How short is Life?
Let us get the best out of it.
Together. ❤☀️
Good Wednesday.
