They led Jesus away to the high priest, and all the chief priests, elders, and scribes assembled. Peter followed Him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he sat with the officers and warmed himself by the fire.
Now the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were seeking testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but they did not find any. For many bore false witness against Jesus, but their testimony was inconsistent.
Then some men stood up and testified falsely against Him: “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this man-made temple, and in three days I will build another that is made without hands.’” But even their testimony was inconsistent.
So the high priest stood up before them and questioned Jesus, “Have You no answer? What are these men testifying against You?”
But Jesus remained silent and made no reply.
Again the high priest questioned Him, “Are You the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
“I am,” said Jesus, “and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”
At this, the high priest tore his clothes and declared, “Why do we need any more witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What is your verdict?”
And they all condemned Him as deserving of death.
Then some of them began to spit on Him. They blindfolded Him, struck Him with their fists, and said to Him, “Prophesy!” And the officers received Him with slaps in His face. […]
Early in the morning, the chief priests, elders, scribes, and the whole Sanhedrin devised a plan. They bound Jesus, led Him away, and handed Him over to Pilate.
So Pilate questioned Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
And the chief priests began to accuse Him of many things.
Then Pilate questioned Him again, “Have You no answer? Look how many charges they are bringing against You!”
But to Pilate’s amazement, Jesus made no further reply. […]
Now Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and the soldiers forced him to carry the cross of Jesus.
They brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha, which means The Place of the Skull. There they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it.
And they crucified Him.
They also divided His garments by casting lots to decide what each of them would take.
It was the third hour when they crucified Him. And the charge inscribed against Him read:
THE KING OF THE JEWS.
Along with Jesus, they crucified two robbers, one on His right and one on His left.
And those who passed by heaped abuse on Him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, come down from the cross and save Yourself!”
In the same way, the chief priests and scribes mocked Him among themselves, saying, “He saved others, but He cannot save Himself! Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, so that we may see and believe!” And even those who were crucified with Him berated Him.
From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
When some of those standing nearby heard this, they said, “Behold, He is calling Elijah.”
And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine. He put it on a reed and held it up for Jesus to drink, saying, “Leave Him alone. Let us see if Elijah comes to take Him down.”
But Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed His last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
When the centurion standing there in front of Jesus saw how He had breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
And there were also women watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These women had followed Jesus and ministered to Him while He was in Galilee, and there were many other women who had come up to Jerusalem with Him.
Mark 14:53—65; 15:1—5; 15:21—41
The Trial of Jesus
In the dead of night, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Jesus was arrested and taken to the house of the High Priest. The Sanhedrin assembled there and sat in judgment against him. The High Priest asked him: “Are You the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus replied: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”
Through many demonstrations of his divine authority Jesus sought to reveal his true identity. But now he publicly confesses before the Sanhedrin that he is the promised Messiah, the Son of God. From the very beginning the religious leadership refused to acknowledge Jesus’ authority, and now at last the High Priest accused Jesus of blasphemy and judged him to be worthy of death. During the Roman occupation the Sanhedrin did not have the authority to put anyone to death, and therefore handed him over to the Roman authorities. That same morning, Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judah, condemned Jesus to death because he confessed that he was the King of the Jews and was therefore rebelling against the authority of Caesar. Jesus was indeed condemned to death both by the religious leadership and the Roman authorities, but it must be remembered that his death on the cross was planned before the foundation of the world and had to take place. He came to this world to die, to give his life as a ransom for many.
Jesus’ Atoning Death
After his trial Roman soldiers led Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem, and at nine in the morning they crucified him between two thieves. While Jesus was hanging on the cross the religious leaders mocked him: “He saved others, but He cannot save Himself!”
They saw Jesus’ shameful and humiliating death as proof that he was a false prophet who was incapable of preventing his crucifixion. But in actual fact, Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross in order to save the world from the judgment of God. At noon darkness suddenly came over the earth and remained there for three hours. This darkness was a palpable sign of the judgment and wrath of God. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin and suffered with wrath of God in our place:
“God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21
The prophets of Israel had prophesied that the Messiah had to suffer many things, be rejected, and die in our place in order to atone for our sins:
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and who can recount His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living; He was stricken for the transgression of My people.”
Isaiah 53:3—8
After three hours of darkness, Jesus cried out with a loud voice: “ ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ ” This was a cry of utter desolation. In this cry Jesus expressed the profound horror of his separation from God and the intense agony which accompanied this separation. From before the creation of the world Jesus enjoyed eternal fellowship with God his Father. And now, because he had become the embodiment of sin, Jesus experienced total alienation from his Father.
God is Holy
We can vaguely begin to understand the tremendous price which Jesus paid in order to atone for our sins when we recognize the absolute holiness of God and the depth of our sin against him. God is the creator of the world and the whole of creation is his domain. Consequently God requires us, the subjects of his domain, to obey his laws and to be holy:
“Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.”
Leviticus 19:2
The angels proclaim his exceedingly fearsome holiness:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”
Isaiah 6:3
God gave us the Torah in order to guide us in his laws and in his holiness. His laws are not arbitrary. God is good; his laws are good and are intended for our benefit:
“You are good, and You do what is good; teach me Your statutes.”
Psalms 119:68
God requires us to obey all of his laws in their entirety:
“If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.”
Deuteronomy 28:15
It is exceedingly clear that no one has successfully kept all the commandments of God in their entirety. Therefore we all need forgiveness of sins.
Man is Sinful and in Danger of the Judgment of God
In light of God’s awesome holiness we are exceedingly wicked:
“This is an evil in everything that is done under the sun: There is one fate for everyone. Furthermore, the hearts of men are full of evil and madness while they are alive, and afterward they join the dead.”
Ecclesiastes 9:3
God is a righteous judge, and therefore must judge sin. Even a single transgression against his laws requires him to judge us. Each person must stand before the judgment seat of God and give an account of his life and deeds. There is no man who can justify himself before God because he has kept commandments or because of his other “righteous deeds.” Isaiah compares our “righteous deeds” to a polluted garment:
“Each of us has become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.”
Isaiah 64:6
The judgment for sin is eternal fire. Jesus taught:
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’”
Mark 9:43—48
It is not the will of God that anyone should perish. God sent Jesus to die in our place and to be punished with the punishment which we deserve:
“This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4:9—10
Receiving Forgiveness of Sins Through Faith in Jesus
The atoning death of Jesus was sufficient to forgive us of all our sins:
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
1 John 1:7
However, the free gift of forgiveness of sins needs to be accepted personally; that is, each person must trust in Jesus as his personal savior. In order to accept Jesus as savior, we must acknowledge his true identity — he is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose from the grave. If Jesus was just a man, or a good teacher, or a reformer, his death could not save anyone. Only in light of Jesus’ identity is it possible to understand the meaning of his death on the cross. When the Roman soldier saw how Jesus died, he confessed:
“Truly this man was the Son of God!”
Jesus’ life, teachings, deeds, death and resurrection all witness to the fact that he is the promised Messiah, the Son of God. Through faith in Jesus alone we can be saved from the punishment for our sins and be reconciled to God. If there were some other way to be saved, God would not have sent his son to die in our place and suffer such horrible agony:
“Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 4:12
Forgiveness of sins and eternal life are a free gift, but we must receive them by faith:
“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Ephesians 2:8—9
When we confess our sins and trust in Jesus the Messiah, God forgives our sins and credits us with the righteousness of Jesus:
“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.”
Romans 10:9—10
A Relationship with God
Jesus cried out once more just before he died, and then the veil in the Temple was torn in two. The veil separated the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God, from the Holy Place. This veil symbolized the boundary between heaven and earth; it separated the holy God from sinful man. Only the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to atone for his sins and for the sins of the nation. The rending of the veil at the moment of his death was a sign that from now on all men could access the presence of God through faith in Jesus.
Jesus died in our place so that we can live in fellowship with God in this world, and in the world to come. Through faith in Jesus we can have an eternal relationship with God:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38—39
