Let Him be Crucified

These four simple terrible words from Matthew 27:23 express the undiluted horrific sinfulness of blind human nature.

This crowd in Matthew 27:15-23 had seen the glory of God in the face of Christ, and they wanted Him dead. Friends, they wanted God dead!

For thirty years God, made Man, walked this planet; a real living breathing flesh and blood Person. One would think that humans would only have worshiped, adored, loved. But the very opposite happened. They despised, rejected, scorned, blasphemed, lynched.

Here is a wake up call for all humans. This is how bad we all really are apart from eye and heart-opening grace. Do not think the crowd of Matthew 27 especially evil. Think of them as a mirror; for they are you, and you, them. Humans--all humans--apart from God's regenerating, heart transforming grace, will despise God and want him dead.

Unless God gives us a new heart that loves what is All-good and All-holy (i.e.-God), we will cry out in utter hatred and panic: "Let him be crucified!"

The reason people wanted Jesus dead then is the same reason they ignore, despise, and want Him killed today. Guilty humans (such as we all are) find God intolerably holy, terrifyingly all-knowing, inescapably invasive.

Humans cannot handle the presence of such a God, so they try to kill Him. He invades their space, threatens their autonomy, cramps their style, knows their secrets, demands their supreme allegiance.

This humans will not have. So the God-lynching continues today.

A key indicator of whether one is born again of God as a new creature in Christ is whether one runs to such a God or runs away. Do you love and want to draw near to the all-holy, all-knowing, everywhere-present Christ, or do you shrink back and even wish Him gone?

Would you stand up in the crowd of Matthew 27 and agree with the mob, or would you cry out against their God-lynching hatred, saying: "Let Him live--and may He live in me?"

Would Pilate's mob have had a dissenting voice?