Crucifying Jesus All Over Again: The Modern Killing and Replacement of Christ in Western Christianity

When the crowds were told that Pilate would release to them either their king or a murderer, they opted for the murderer and demanded instead that he get rid of Christ by executing Him.

A man named Barabbas was imprisoned with rebels who had committed murder during an insurrection. Then the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to release a prisoner for them, as was his custom. So Pilate asked them, “Do you want me to release the king of the Jews for you?” (For he knew that the chief priests had handed him over because of envy.) But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas instead. So Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you want me to do with the one you call king of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” 14 Pilate asked them, “Why? What has he done wrong?” But they shouted more insistently, “Crucify him!” Because he wanted to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas for them. Then, after he had Jesus flogged, he handed him over to be crucified. 
 
The name of the man is said to have been Barabbas, which is Aramaic for “Son of the Father.” Hence, the replaced the real Son of the Father for a murderous imposter because they found him to be a more palatable alternative to Him. 

As shocking as it might seem, this same scenario repeats itself over and over again throughout time. The Bible tells us that an antichrist is coming and that many antichrists have already come from the time of the New Testament forward. The word “antichrist” is often thought to mean “one who is against Christ” but the Greek preposition anti in the New Testament largely has the meaning of “instead of/in the stead of” or “replacement,” which means that an antichrist is “one who replaces Christ” with another Christ. Indeed, John speaks of those who deny the Father and the Son by rejecting the true Christ. They also deny that Jesus has come in the flesh. All of this was denied because these characteristics about Jesus were less than palatable to the philosophical and moral sensibilities of the culture at the time. Paul also talks about false apostles teaching the church to follow “another Jesus” (2 Cor 11). The centuries to follow would see great controversy with many attempting to replace the Jesus of the Bible with another one. Supplanting Christ seems to be the regular activity of heretics.

The Jesus of the Bible is full of grace and truth. He has great compassion upon sinners who come to Him in their need to be restored to God. His love, as the love of the God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament, endures forever. However, I would argue that an antichrist is not an antichrist because it looks nothing like the Jesus of the Bible, but because it takes only a part of Jesus and leaves the other part on the cutting-room floor. It emphasizes certain attributes to the exclusion of others, as though Jesus’ demand that His people live in holiness and His wrath poured out upon the wicked in fiery judgment when He returns is somehow contrary to the mercy and love He has for His people. Indeed, His fiery wrath upon the wicked is an extension of His love for the righteous who have been redeemed by Him. He rids the world of chaos and chaotic agents in order to give them a new heaven and earth where righteousness dwells. He, therefore, is just as much an enemy of the unrepentant wicked as He is a friend to the repentant sinner. He has just as much anger and judgment for those described in the New Testament as unreasoning animals who claim to know Him that He does for those who are restored to the image of God through their unification with Him by faith.

The inclusive Jesus of the Enlightenment and modern America wants to bring peace and harmony to the world in its present condition. The Jesus of the Bible brings a sword to wage war against the present world so that even a close-knit family will be at war with one another over Him. The Jesus of the American church affirms everyone no matter what they are doing. The Jesus of the Bible calls all to repentance from their sin and self-directed lives, lest they perish. 

I once gave a sermon entitled, “Why Jesus Is Not God.” Of course, my congregation knew that I affirmed the Ecumenical Creeds of the ancient Church, so they knew I was getting at something else altogether. That something else was to argue that Jesus is not the God of American religion. He is not a generic benevolent deity who then goes on in the New Testament to define a brand new God, different from the one in the Old Testament, to us. Instead, as John argues in his Gospel, Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. He’s the Word through whom God created all that has been made, the One who made a covenant with Abraham, the I AM who spoke to Moses in the wilderness, one with the Father, dividing the children of Satan from the children of God by confirming the judgment of the former and the salvation of the latter.

This revelation from John may come as a shock to the modern proponent of Americanity, who largely believes that Jesus came to reveal an all new vision of God that corrects the old vision of God in the Old Testament. That God was exclusive and mean, but Jesus is inclusive and nice. That vision of God was angry, but Jesus’ vision is favorable. Where the God of the Old Testament wants to burn everyone with fire for their sins, Jesus just wants to give everyone a hug and tell them not to worry about their sin because he’s got their back. This Jesus only has wrath upon those who judge others for their sins. He is not all that concerned with sins in general. 

In American religious discourse, two “Jesuses” often emerge: One is revealed as the God of the Old Testament who saved His people by destroying their enemies, including the wicked among them, and the other one had a show on PBS where he visited the land of make-believe along with his trolley. By replacing the biblically-revealed Jesus with the persona of someone like Mr. Rogers, who represents the non-judgmental Jesus who accepts everyone at His table and just wants everyone to be His neighbor, the modern Church is guilty of proclaiming an antichrist rather than Christ.

This preaching of an antichrist is the primary reason when one finally hears the words of the real Christ, he boldly proclaims, “Well, that’s not my Jesus!” Indeed, it is not, and that is precisely the problem.

The counterclaim to all of this is that no one knows everything about God or Jesus, and therefore, no one would know Him well enough to avoid worshiping an antichrist. The problem with this common postmodern claim is that it fails to make the distinction between exhaustive and sufficient knowledge. One may not exhaustively know everything about his wife, but he has sufficient enough knowledge to distinguish his wife from other women, so that he can recognize his wife and say, “This is my wife,” as well as also saying, “This is not my wife.” If found in bed with another woman, no one will accept the claim that he was not guilty of adultery because he could not distinguish between the women due to a lack of exhaustive knowledge pertaining to his wife. In the same way, because God has given to His people sufficient knowledge of Himself and His Son via biblical revelation, one can say, “This is the true Jesus,” and at the same time say of another Jesus, “This is not the true Jesus, but an antichrist.” In essence, just because one does not know everything does not mean at all that he knows nothing; and what is known can be used to distinguish between true and false claims, specifically in this context, about God and Jesus. 

However conservative and orthodox an institution or person may be, the truth of the matter is that the assumption of Enlightenment inclusivism, even in its smallest seed form, will always tend toward removing the biblical version of Jesus from the center of theology and the religious life. Either the biblical Jesus will be exchanged for one supporting the religious ideas of the culture, or His role in those things will be diminished from being the center of one’s theology and practice to becoming a sentimental figure (like Santa Claus to Christmas) who is helpful, but largely unnecessary to one’s relationship with God.

But what is it to deny the true Jesus in order to replace Him with a fake one but to repeat the first act of betrayal by desiring the true Christ to be dead and the fake one to supplant Him. In this way, the denial of the real Jesus is nothing more than apostates calling out for the Church to crucify Jesus and to give them a Barabbas instead. Their condemnation is truly just.

So the next time you hear the phrase, "My Jesus would never." or "That's not my Jesus," or "Jesus loves everyone" or "Jesus would never divide or condemn" etc., then be sure you are hearing an echo of that deicidic crowd that called out to Pilate so long ago, "Give us Barabbas" and of Jesus, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!"