The Jews The Romans Jesus Killed Jesus

A nominally-Jewish friend of mine asked for me to weigh in on an e-mail he received. A female Jewish acquaintance of his was distraught that her 7 year-old child had heard from a Catholic-reared 10 year-old cousin that the Jews killed Jesus. Further inquiry from the mothers revealed that the cousin heard this in church. The Jewish mother made the Catholic mother aware that this is not a position of the church in Rome and the Catholic mother seemed immune to that knowledge. The Jewish mother was wondering whether she should allow her children to play with their Catholic cousins any more after this. I took the time to type it all up, so I'll go ahead and copy/paste the reply I gave to may friend.

From a certain perspective, the Jews did kill Jesus. They had him arrested and Pontius Pilate would have released him, except that the Jewish religious leaders incited the crowd to call out for the release of a murderer and insurrectionist instead of Jesus. You could say it was the Jews' "fault" that Jesus was killed.

From a certain perspective, the Romans killed Jesus. He was brought up on false charges and given a sham of a trial, then not released when the governor thought he ought to be set at liberty. Roman soldiers certainly were the individuals who laid on Jesus many stripes, beat him, placed on his head the crown of thorns, and eventually Romans nailed him to the cross. A Roman pierced his side with a spear and a Roman took him down, dead, from the Roman cross on which he was executed. The Romans did the actual *killing* of Jesus, regardless of whose idea it was.

From a certain perspective, Jesus killed himself. Ever since the first man (Adam) violated the only rule he was given, all of us have had a tendency to do what we wanted to do, God's orders notwithstanding. Every man alive has done things he knew at the time were not the right thing to do. God (the Father) is too just to have sin in his presence, so sin must be forgiven if we are to stand before Him. The prophet Ezekiel said (speaking for God) "As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die...?" God is eternal, and his rewards are eternal. He is also just. A sin against an eternal, just God must be paid for in a permanent way. The covenant God established with Moses and the descendents of Israel provided a temporary (to be repeated at least annually) method of paying for men's sins with the blood of animals.

Saul of Tarsus was a Jewish scholar, perhaps you could say he was a rising star of the Pharisees. He had studied Jewish law and custom under one of the preeminent teachers of his day. He was a contemporary of Jesus. Saul said "almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission." He also said "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." and "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law..." God's justice requires the blood of a *man* to pay the eternal price for a man's sin. God, knowing that we wouldn't live up to the letter of the Mosaic law, sent a man to pay for every *other* man's sins in a way that prevents men from being punished eternally. That man was Jesus. Jesus had at his command all the power of his Father (God) and could have removed himself from the cross, struck the responsible Romans and Jews dead right there, and gone about his business . . . but he had a more important thing to attend to than his own discomfort. He COULD have come down, but chose to sacrifice the life of his human body (temporarily) to pay for your sins. By not acting, Jesus might be said to have killed himself.

To address the more pressing concern, I don't think this is really a reason to not have children who are friends play together. If it is a one-time thing and it was not meant in malice, almost anything could be said between children, without being a reason to ban them from seeing each other. If it becomes a repeated, or systematic, pattern of offensiveness (cursing, hitting, religious difference, theft, whatever) that would be a different story.