(Who is ultimately responsible for the crucifixion of Christ? The author joins the debate.)

The debate over the yet to be released Mel Gibson movie depicting the passion of Christ is foolish, despite its entertainment value. After previewing the film, many Jewish leaders are complaining that Gibson’s depiction of the crucifixion of Christ is anti-Semitic. Jews are shouldered with the guilt of His death, and the anti-Jewish bias will create a backlash against the Jewish community, according to these Jewish leaders. After centuries—even millennia—of such backlash, one can understand the nervousness Jewish leaders exude over the film, but to call the film historically inaccurate or anti-Semitic serves no purpose.

Jesus was a Jew. He lived His entire life among Jews. Although He spent some of His childhood in Egypt, He never traveled to Greece or to Rome as many of His disciples would. Geographically, Jesus spent His entire ministry in a very tiny part of the world, hardly ever straying from the borders of Israel. To complain about a historical depiction of Christ’s death is futile. The cry of an anti-Semitic bias rings as hollow as would a Southern politician’s complaint that a historically accurate film depicting slavery is anti-American. An apologist defending the Jewish leadership of Christ’s day sounds as self-serving as would a contemporary priest defending the Crusades or the Inquisition.

When all else fails, perhaps a reading of the text is in order. The Bible clearly indicates that the Jewish leaders of the day plotted to kill Jesus. The temple guards arrested Him in the garden, dragged Him before the Sanhedrin, the counsel of Jewish religious leaders, which condemned Him to death. With no authority to put someone to death in the Roman occupied Israel, the Jewish leaders appealed to the Romans for Christ’s execution. The Romans found Jesus innocent of all wrongdoing, yet bowed to the pressure of the Sanhedrin and executed Christ by the most atrocious means conceivable: crucifixion.

Who is responsible for Christ’s death? Whose shoulders bear the guilt of such a dark deed? The Jews who demanded the death of a righteous man? The Romans who carried out the execution despite the fact they considered Him innocent? The finger-pointing misses the whole point of Christ. All are guilty of His death, but none are responsible for it. Jesus claimed that no man could take His life. That He laid it down of His own accord. Jesus was born to die. He came to this earth to be the sacrifice for the sins of an entire world, not just the sins of a handful of Jewish leaders or Roman soldiers. Ultimately, the one most responsible for the death of Christ was Christ Himself.

Those who ignorantly blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ lack insight into the Kingdom His death fostered. Those who defend the actions of the Jewish or Roman leadership miss the entire point of Christ as revealed in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. He came unto His own, and His own knew Him not…rejected Him. Yet precisely because of that rejection, an entire world found hope. Let Mel Gibson depict the awful facts of that day in a historically accurate form. Let the world celebrate the redemption that day won for us all.