Jesus’ Sins, and Ours

Matthew 27:46 says, “And about the ninth hour [on the cross] Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying…’My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Writers have said that Jesus wasn’t speaking on his own behalf, but rather he was speaking on behalf of the Roman soldiers who took part in his crucifixion. If that were the case, then we know the answer although the Romans, who were in total ignorance of God, wouldn’t have known. The answer may be found in Mark 16: 15 which says, “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but WHOEVER DOES NOT BELIEVE WILL BE CONDEMNED.” The Romans who crucified Jesus therefore were destined to be condemned even though they didn’t know it! The question that Jesus asked is the question that those Romans would have asked if they had any knowledge of God’s existence, and of their own fate for not believing.

One may say there is a touch of irony in that God, who as described in John 3:16, out of his love for the world wants that all be saved, apparently, if we take Jesus’ question literally, couldn’t care less about the soldiers crucifying Jesus except to condemn them. But Jesus, even being on the cross, attempted to intervene on their behalf when in Luke 23:34 he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We know that that call would go unanswered if the Romans didn’t ask God themselves for forgiveness. One is accountable for one’s own sins and must answer for them.

What of Jesus’ sins? The only sins he personally may have had was whatever the world attempted to place on him from his moment of birth. But he threw off the temptation of those sins as he got older, even as those around him were not as conscientious at doing so. Surely the Pharisees who allowed gambling in the temple on the Sabbath were not as conscientious!

Jesus said that whoever believed in God would be saved from the fate imposed on them by their sins. They would be led away from temptation and delivered from evil.

Like the Romans, though, those who didn’t believe in God through Jesus were condemned and didn’t know it. So Jesus commanded his disciples to spread the Word, as he told them in Mark 16: 15. They had quite a chore held out for them. For how do you convince the gentiles of the time that they will be condemned if they do not believe in a being they never heard of? And how would they know what it is to be condemned? Maybe for those who believed in other gods, they may have been familiar with the idea of condemnation even if not God’s condemnation. And perhaps it may be easier to convince those who believed in other gods that God is the only one that matters, having been exposed to the idea of a superior being. In this regard, perhaps, it was easier to convince the Romans of God’s existence that to convince those who put their belief on no god at all.

The Gospels served as a reassurance and reinforcement to those who already had learned and had started to believe in God through Jesus. The difficulty was in conveying the Gospel to the pagans. On this, many of Jesus’ disciples were met with hostility. Paul, for instance, met his death in the hands of others.

Some may question why people would risk their lives to convey God through Jesus. It’s a relatively simple answer: Jesus commanded us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love eachother as we do ourselves. We would therefore want to impart on the rest of the world the things we know of the Kingdom of God that awaits us if we believe in him. It is a treasure that we, in loving others as we love ourselves, would be willing to share, so that those who did not know of God’s existence would not be forsaken by Him.

Jesus had no sins.

He was born into a world of sin, so he was born with sin hanging on him like on the rest of us. Read my op to see what he did with them, that the the rest of us cannot do.

Here is an analogy:

Humans are born with hands, but dogs aren't. Both have an itch on their bellies. Humans with their hands can scratch their itch, but a dog can't reach its itch with its paws. So, he relies on a human to give it a belly rub. The dog in this analogy is us. The humans in this analogy is Jesus. The itch is the sins of the world. Like a dog relying on a human to give it a belly rub, we rely on Jesus, who scratched the itch of sin off of himself, to guide us in scratching off the itches of our sins.

Newton, I guess I just don't understand what you're trying to say. Either Jesus had sins or he didn't. I don't think anyone will agree that Jesus had sins. I certainly won't.

That's my understanding also.

I used to like dogs and still do but basically I'm a cat person now. I have no idea what it is that you are trying to convey. Dogs can certainly scratch an itch on their belly. Jesus, who bore the sins of the world lived His life without sinning. He may have had an itch to scratch but it was not a result of sin.

Jesus had no sins

He was forsaken by becoming a curse for us and taking our sin to the cross

The Roman soldiers said...Surely this was the Son of God when he gave up the ghost and the earth quaked

I never used to care much for cats or dogs, but now I like both. The former is probably because of lily-the grape-eating dog. The latter is probably because when I was sitting on my neighbor's porch last winter, their cats would sit on my legs-which helped keep me warm.

I have 10 cabins on 50 acres in Missouri....I keep from 9 to 12 cats at any given time....they keep the mice, rats, snakes down and kill anything that moves hahaha

Cats a like a hot water bottle and are a comfort to old tired bones.

The question that Jesus asked as He was dying on the cross was a quoting and fulfillment of Scripture, Psalm 22.

It is important to note just how predictive Psalm 22 really is of Jesus' suffering. The Psalm begins:

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1).

Jesus cried out these very words from the cross, (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34 ). Likewise, the Psalmist explains:

"All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, 'Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him,'” (Psalm 22:7-8)

The gospel writers similarly report:

"And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, 'He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.' The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine, and saying, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!” (Luke 23:35-36, see also Matthew 27:39-43 and Mark 15-29-32).

The details are different enough that there is no reason to think that Luke or the other Gospel writers are merely copying lines from the Psalm and claiming they happened to Jesus, and yet the parallel is striking. The Psalmist also cries:

"They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots," Ps 22:18

During the execution of Jesus, we are told:

"And they crucified Him, and divided up His garments among themselves, casting lots for them to decide what each man should take,"

The author of the Psalm exclaims:

"For dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers has encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet," Ps 22:16

Surrounded by hostile gentiles ("dogs" and "evildoers"), Jesus is nailed to a Roman cross through His hands and feet. As one New Testament passage puts it:

"This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death," Acts 2:23

The process of crucifixion also fits well with phrases like:

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint," Ps 22:14

The Psalmist even explains "My tongue cleaves to my jaws," Psalm 22:15 while Jesus cries out from the cross, "I am thirsty," John 19:28. Many commentators have pointed to Psalm 22:17, "I can count all my bones," as according well with the fact that Jesus' bones were not broken during the crucifixion. One could even argue that the phrase, "You lay me in the dust of death," Ps 22:14 could point to the fact that the person about whom the Psalm is written literally dies and is buried before later being delivered, thus implying the resurrection. This is especially plausible since later in the Psalm the phrase "those who go down to the dust" is paralleled with the clause, "he who cannot keep his soul alive," Psalm 22:29 Regardless, however, the Psalm as a whole parallels dramatically well with Jesus' own suffering in stunning detail. Simply reading the crucifixion narratives in the Gospels and then this Psalm back to back, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they are describing the same events.

Coincidence, Plot, or Prophecy

These parallels leave us with three possibilities:

1. It is a mere coincidence. The details just happen to line up as they do.
2. It is an early Christian plot. The gospel writers invented the details of Jesus' execution to make it match the Psalm.
3. Psalm 22 is, indeed, a prophecy of Jesus.

That the Psalmist would just happen to mention details as specific as the piercing of hands and feet or the dividing and casting lots for clothing just as they occurred in Jesus execution seems highly improbable. The more parallels we note, such as the intense thirst and all the bones of the body being stretched out of joint, the more unlikely it becomes that this is coincidence, especially since crucifixion did not yet exist when the Psalm was written. To attribute it to coincidence seems more than a bit of a stretch.

The conspiracy theory, where the Gospel writers manufacture a connection between Jesus and the Psalm, seems more plausible at first, but breaks down on closer examination:

• First of all, what reason would they have to pick a random Psalm and use it as a model for Jesus execution if that Psalm isn't a messianic prophecy? The only motivation for the conspiracy would be if Psalm 22 actually is intended to be prophetic.
• Secondly, there are four gospel writers. While many scholars argue that Matthew, Mark, and Luke's gospels may have in some way relied on one another (most often claiming that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source), few if any serious scholars would claim that John borrowed from any of these three. Yet, in all four gospels, the narrative of Jesus' death matches up strikingly well with the narrative of the Psalm. You would have to accuse at least two and arguably four different writers of coming up with the same conspiracy to take the same random, non-prophetic suffering Psalm and not only turn it into a prophecy of Jesus but make it a primary source for the whole narrative of Jesus' suffering. You would also have to claim, without clear evidence, that the author of the book of Hebrews already possessed one of the gospels or invented the same conspiracy himself when he also makes the Jesus-Psalm 22 connection. If you accept the theory of modern scholars that the book of Revelation was written by someone other than the John who wrote the gospel, then you have yet another author to deal with as Revelation also makes this connection. This would be a remarkably widespread and detailed conspiracy to happen so quickly among so many with only ancient media with which to work.
• Thirdly, the vast majority of these parallels are incidental in the narrative. The gospel writers are not making much of them, nor are they turning back to Psalm 22 again and again to say "as it was written," or "this occurred to fulfill the scripture..." as they often do with other passages elsewhere. Indeed, Mark and Luke don't cite the Psalm at all, and John and Matthew each only reference it once in passing. These writers love to point out the many places that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament but make surprisingly little effort to direct the reader to Psalm 22 as a fulfilled prophecy. This would be rather surprising if they were trying to manufacture a connection between Jesus and an otherwise non-prophetic Psalm
• Fourthly, many of the details are directly connected to the methods of torture and execution contemporary to the Roman society of Jesus' day. The gospel writers could not just make them up to match the Psalm. No one would have believed them if they were not practices that Romans would really do. The Psalmist wrote before such practices were invented, but the gospel writers wrote while they were still happening. They could not simply invent them to match the details of the Psalm because they were describing events from their own time and place. Their contemporary readers would catch the errors if they contrived unrealistic scenarios to make Jesus' death connect with the Psalm.
• Finally, there is the fact that these men were willing to suffer the loss of their possessions, imprisonment, torture, and death for what they said about Jesus. It seems absurd to think that they were intentionally fabricating their testimony. These men believed what they were claiming with great conviction and were willing to suffer and die for it. That does not fit well with the idea that they made up the details to force false connections with unrelated prophecies.

This leaves us with the conclusion that the Psalm is, indeed, prophetic. The text of the Psalm itself also gives us reason to think so. The Psalmist writes at the conclusion of the suffering and deliverance he describes that:

"All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before You," Psalm 22:7

From https://carm.org/is-psalm-22-a-messianic-prophecy

Hi Newton, would you mind elaborating a bit on these three thoughts?

Thanks!

~Deut

(KJV) Isaiah 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.

I think Christians of all denominations have no problems believing that Jesus on the cross, has took our sins, and saved us. That is the garment of salvation.

But the divine exchange did more than that. We are not only clothed with the garment of salvation, we are also covered with an additional part, which is the robe of righteousness.

In some other translations, the term used is wrapped, indicating that we are completely covered. This means we are not only saved from the penalty of our sins, we are completely righteous.

To understand the degree of Jesus being “completely righteous”, take a look at three testimonies of Jesus righteousness from Peter, John, and Paul

1) Peter, a man of action, said in 1 Peter 2:22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth

2) John, a man of love, said in 1 John 3:5, You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.

3) Paul, a man of intellect, said in 2 Cor 5:21, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus had no sins, to the extent that he didn't commit any. There are the sins of the world, though, which we are all born into. Jesus was born into the same world, but the difference with him is that he was clothed against the sins that would have gotten the better of those who do not arm themselves with the sword and shield of God.

Hi again Newton, do you perhaps mean (by the above in bold) "the temptations of the world" instead? If so, I agree, because the Bible makes it clear that Jesus was tempted just like we are, yet w/o sin .. e.g. Hebrews 2:18, 4:15.

Thanks!

~Deut

Nope, Jesus had no sin. And he was not born in sin.
But he had to took all the sins we have. He paid the price we had to pay.
Where you get it from that Jesus sins?
Would he be a sinner his death at the cross would be useless.

That is why it needed to be a virgin birth. His blood came directly from GOd.

You still don't get it. Jesus does not sin.

I know this, but i was not shure you know it😊

I have never in my life heard this theory before.. Who where the ""Writers"" who gave this theory?

I believe Jesus was quoting scriptures.. Psalm 22.. Scriptures that would lead those who heard it to conclude Jesus was the Messiah.. People should do themselves a favor and read Psalm 22 and see how many things there mirror what happened to Jesus on the day of His execution..

Oh and PS: Jesus was without sin..