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THE SINS THAT CRUCIFIED JESUS

These four texts give consecutively the sins that were immediately responsible for the crucifixion of our Lord.

These self-same sins, envy, avarice, slander, and servility, are most common in our midst today. Who is there among us that can plead "not guilty" to each of these four charges which the record brings against the crucifiers of our Lord? Yet the prevalence of these sins detracts nothing from their heinous and deadly character. The fact that these so common sins are the sins of Christ's murderers ought to deepen our abhorrence of them. The fact that, whenever we are envious, or avaricious; whenever we give currency to scandal, or yield to the pressure of evil influence, we are joining the company of these abhorred chief priests and elders; of the odious Judas and the detested Pilate, ought to make us more on our guard against them.

The first and chief of the sins that led to Christ's death was envy. "For envy the chief priests delivered him up."

The chief priests were the prime movers. The rest were but tools in their hands. Power and privilege and influence of all kinds, and especially ecclesiastical power and privilege and influence, have always been found dangerous gifts to trust in frail human hands. Insolence and arrogance, perversion and abuse, have almost invariably sprung from long-continued ecclesiastical authority, whether among Jews or Christians, Catholics or Protestants, Episcopalians or Congregationalists. The chief priests formed a pontifical clique, an ecclesiastical ring. The control of the temple was in their hands. They bestowed the patronage. Out of the expenses connected with the observance of a system of religious rites which they had made more and more elaborate and costly, they took their commissions. They had been looked up to with unquestioning reverence all their lives by the unlettered multitude. They had always had the satisfaction of running things their own way; and without knowing when or how they had come, as men generally do in such cases, to identify their own way with God?s way.

Their reasoning was simple, if not sound. "This," they said, "is a divinely ordered system of worship; we are the divinely established administrators of it. Therefore, our views and notions about religious matters are God's purposes and plans. Therefore, it is God's will that whoever opposes us should be put out of the way." If this reasoning is not satisfactory to a dispassionate observer, it no doubt was all-conclusive to these chief priests, who had centuries of tradition behind them and an abundance of conceit within them. In every age since then, and in cases before our eyes to-day, men, without a tenth part of the excuse for it, have found, and are still finding, just such reasoning amply satisfactory. The line between self-deception and hypocrisy is a very shadowy one; and we should never bring a charge of the latter unless we have given due allowance to every indication of the possible presence of the former. Had nothing happened to disturb them, no doubt these chief priests and scribes would have gone down to history with quite as much of a halo about their memories as has attached to the average priest and bishop and prelate and secretary of religious boards and moderator of church assemblies the world over.

In their day, however, something did come to pass. From despised Nazareth, out of provincial Galilee, there came a teacher, a preacher, a healer of disease, a forgiver of sins, a king of men, the Son of God. In the name of His Heavenly Father, he cleared the temple of dove-sellers and money-changers, lie substituted prayer for merchandise as a condition of acceptance with the Temple's God. Lie taught plain, honest-hearted, men, and poor, humble women, that God was their Father, and that He listened more willingly to their own heartfelt stammerings of penitence and devotion than to the pompous rites and elaborate ceremonies which the chief priests celebrated in the temple. He told repentant publicans and sinners that forgiveness was not to be purchased from a reluctant tyrant, of whom the heartless and mercenary priests were the vice-regents, but was to be gratefully received in humble trust as the free gift of a loving Father, of whom He Himself was the anointed messenger and faithful witness and true Son.

The chief priests saw that He was superseding them. The common people were hearing Him gladly; and in proportion as they followed Him the spell of obsequious reverence with which they had regarded the long-robed priests and broad-phylacteried Pharisees was broken. For this cause they envied Him, and "for envy delivered Him up." In this the chief priests were not sinners above men in similar position always and everywhere. Can you tell me of a single church reform, either in doctrine or policy that did not have to meet opposition from this very source? A healthy conservatism is indispensable to safe and sure advance. Conservatives are as conscientious in their obstruction of new movements as progressive spirits are in pushing forward new views and measures. Yet when we have, made all allowance for the conscientious distrust of innovation which is constitutional to many minds; while we rejoice that every new movement has to run the gantlet of honest opposition; still we are compelled to recognize the fact that the dread, on the part of somebody or other, of being superseded, the reluctance to give up the relative importance and prominence and leadership which they have previously held, invariably comes in and gives to every controversy about religious matters that personal bitterness which renders such controversies so deplorable. Even in the local church, when there ought to be the closest love and fellowship, it is often found to be almost impossible to advocate seriously a new measure of any sort without meeting an outcropping of this same malicious envy which crucified our Lord.

How, then, shall we guard against this most deadly of sins, in ourselves? We must make sure whenever we support a side that we are seeking, with a single eye, the highest good of the universal or the local church, or of the community interested in the question. We must make sure that we are willing to have our views, and even ourselves with them, displaced by better measures and more efficient men if such there shall prove to be. Thus only can there be the fullest and fairest discussion of every proposed change of doctrine. Thus each side of the question can be fully, fairly, candidly, forcibly set forth. Thus will truth ultimately triumph, and no injury be done. Let us remember that to have part or lot in any controversy on one side or the other in the spirit of envy, because somebody else, with some other doctrine, is gaining more favor than we with ours, is to take our place in the verdict of history and before the judgment-seat of God by the side of the men who for envy put to death our Lord.

The second of the sins that crucified Jesus was money-loving. "Then one of the twelve called Judas Iscariot went unto the chief-priests and said unto them, 'What will ye give me and I will deliver him unto you?' And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him."

Now we all recognize that money, as it is the symbol of the universal product of human toil, is, in itself, a good. And if money is good, then money-getting and money-making are most worthy objects of human ambition and endeavor. Money-loving, however, is a very different thing from money-making and money-getting. Every honest laborer is a money-getter; every upright merchant is a money-maker. But only knaves and misers are money-lovers. Love is personal. Persons alone are worthy of being the objects of our love. When a man cares more for money than for men; when he will sacrifice the human welfare of others or himself for the sake of money, then he becomes a money-lover, and joins the company of Judas. And the money-lovers of our day are just as guilty, just as murderous, just as odious as was ever Judas Iscariot. As John Ruskin has well said: "We do great injustice to Iscariot in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover, and like all money-lovers the world over, didn't understand Christ; couldn't make out the worth of Him, or the meaning of Him. Now this is the money-lover's idea the world over. He does not hate Christ, but can not understand Him, does not care for Him, sees no good in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it come what will."

Do you ask who are the money-loving Judases of our day? They are, as has been said, the men who in any way whatsoever are sacrificing human welfare to their own love of gain. Honest work and honest trade, besides contributing to the gain of tile workman or tradesman, also contributes an equivalent to the welfare of other men and women. Any form of work or trade which fails to benefit others as well as yourself has the Judas brand upon it. The kinds of work and trade that bear this brand are various. For instance, take the plumber, who, to gain an extra profit for himself, does defective work; and months afterward, a child of the unsuspecting family that comes to occupy the house, pays the penalty with its innocent young life. Is that money-loving plumber less a murderer than the money-loving Judas? A workman in a foundry finds a gap as large as a man's hand in a casting destined for an important place in an ocean steamer. I could name the shop where this was done. The workman takes a piece of cold iron, heats it and hammers it into the gap, smooths over the surface and thereby saves the thousand dollars it would cost to reject the piece and cast a new one. This very hour some ocean steamer, I know not whether passenger or freight, is carrying human lives on such security as that wedge of iron can give to that faulty casting. If ever disaster shall bring the passengers and crew of that vessel to a watery grave, will the money-loving foreman, who ordered that thing done to save expense, be less a murderer than the money-loving Judas? A merchant adulterates his groceries or his drugs and sells them as genuine. And some poor invalid, on the margin of life, fails to get the nutriment or remedial effect expected. Is that merchant less guilty than Judas? An employer of labor screws down the wages of his workmen to the lowest notch, in order that his company's dividends may be ten or twelve per cent.; and from lack of healthful tenements, from inability to provide sufficiently nourishing food, and competent care and nursing, the families of his workmen show an abnormal death-rate. What is the difference between the policy of that employer and the policy of Judas? "In asmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." There are factories and stores in our large cities where no girl can gain promotion, or gain a decent livelihood save at the cost of what is more precious to her than life. Think you the stockholders and agents and overseers of such concerns are anywise better than the betrayer of our Lord?

To take but a single instance more. In nearly every large town of these United States there are men engaged in a traffic which involves as its direct consequence, as some compute, sixty thousand deaths a year, to say nothing of the untold shame and degradation and misery and wo which follows in the train of that murderous traffic. The principle at the bottom of this busines -? that which makes men cling to it so fondly, is not that liquor-sellers love to bring wo and poverty and disease and death upon their fellows - not that - but simply the fact that liquor-selling happens to be the way in which a certain class of men find that, with least expenditure of hard labor, they can get the greatest money returns. It is not the love of liquor, strong as that is; it is the infinitely stronger, infinitely more murderous and heartless love of money that makes the liquor traffic so hard to exterminate.

Instances might be multiplied indefinitely. The betrayals and murders and robberies that go on in this land every year due to this Judas motive of money-loving are countless in number. Only the recording angel can trace the subtle workings of this murderous principle, and assign to you and me whatever share of responsibility our dishonesty, our selfishness, our avarice, our money-loving lays upon us.

Let us, then, realize the worth of money; let us be as diligent as may be in all honest efforts to earn and save it. But may we be careful that no piece of silver goes into our pockets which directly or indirectly represents unnecessary privation or want or injury or disability to any fellow man. As we would shun the remorse and condemnation that befell Judas, may we be free ourselves from all complicity with business schemes in which the gain to ourselves is based on a corresponding loss or injury to others.

The third sin which contributed to our Lord's crucifixion was slander. "And the whole multitude of them arose and led him unto Pilate, and they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king."

The sin of slander, you observe, is the one of which the multitude were guilty. Slander is the weapon of the ignoble rabble who have not influence or power enough to stand up by themselves and strike an open blow on their own responsibility. Just so today, the meanest feature about malicious gossip and scandal is that it is sure to be the work of some one who is sheltered behind his or her insignificance. The scandal-monger does the devil's retail business. Scandal consists of putting a grain of truth with a bushel of surmises, inferences, misinterpretations and innuendoes and peddling the product as unquestioned fact. In the case before us, the grain of truth was that Jesus had announced a spiritual kingdom. That He meant a temporal kingdom was at best an inexcusable misunderstanding; that He was a rival of Caesar was nonsense; that He forbade to give tribute to Caesar was the exact opposite of the truth, and that He perverted the nation was a downright lie. We detest and abominate that lying, yelling rabble that thronged the Judgment Hall of Pilate with cries of "Crucify him, Crucify him." But have we never repeated an uninvestigated charge? Have we never put a bad interpretation on conduct which yet was susceptible of honorable interpretation? Have we never, as a man was being condemned unheard, added our voices to the clamor? have we never whispered behind a person's back what we would not have had the courage to say to his face? Have we never allowed our prejudices to color our interpretations of another's conduct? It is to be hoped that we are not. But if we have, then let us remember that those acts of ours are precisely on a level with the slanderous accusations of this mob that clamored for the crucifixion of our Lord. And let us in the future beware how we lend our lips to slanderous accusations which reduce us to a level with these most detestable of our Lord?s murderers.

In the fourth place, to crown the whole, we have Pilate's servility. "And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified."

Pilate did not want to do it; he had resorted to every device; he had left no stone unturned by which he might avoid this unjust act. But he was willing to content the people, and so he yielded. And so, notwithstanding his real love of justice, and his abhorrence and shrinking from the injustice of this deed, he did it; and his name has gone down to all ages as one who sanctioned and authorized that central crime of history.

And he likewise is the type of the sinners of our own day. Nineteen-twentieths of all the sins committed today are done in just the way that Pilate committed this. A young man does not willfully and deliberately ruin his health and reputation arid fortune and character in drink and dissipation. He first gets entangled with a company, or, as he says, "gets into a crowd," "goes with a set of fellows," and, willing to please them, he takes step after step, reluctantly and in secret unwillingness, on the downward road that leads to death. A man does not willingly become a defaulter and a thief: but he gets drawn into extravagant ways of living, and willing to keep up his standing with a fashionable circle, willing to gratify the pride and vanity of his own family, reluctantly and unwillingly he takes the secret steps that ultimately lead to exposure, ruin and disgrace.

A man does not willingly and deliberately pass all his days without an open, full wholesouled committal of his ways unto the Lord, and find himself at last face to face with a neglected, injured, unknown and untrusted God. No man sits down and with full and deliberate intent does that. How then comes it about that in so many cases the thing is done? The reason is that you are associated at home, in business and in society, with men and women who know you pretty thoroughly. They know your weak points, just as well as this multitude knew the vulnerable points in Pilate's record. To come out squarely and openly on the Lord's side, would surprise them; would make talk; perhaps provoke criticism and in general stir up the comfortable relation in which you now stand to them. They might think you were setting yourself up as an example for them. Your act might be a silent condemnation of their indifference. It might set them to serious thinking. For the time being, at least, the relations between yourself and them would not be so easygoing and comfortable and sympathetic as they now are. And willing to content them and leave these things undisturbed, you go on risking your own soul, and placing yourself side by side with Pilate, who for no deeper reason and with no more malicious intention became partner in the crucifixion of the Lord.

It is precisely the same willingness to content somebody else which made Pilate deliver up Jesus to be scourged and crucified, that causes vast multitudes of men and women here in our midst and everywhere today, to deliver over the Church of Christ to languish and suffer, and perhaps to die, for the lack of that hearty, thorough, whole-souled support which, in their secret hearts, they feel and know they ought to give it.

I suspect there is scarcely a man or woman among us who has not at some time or other been guilty of one or all of these very sins which contributed to the crucifixion of our Lord. This I do know; that if there is a soul today who is above these very sins, it is because the grace of God has lifted you and is still holding you above them. Between the ranks of the crucifiers and the followers of Jesus there is no middle ground. "He that is not with me is against me," says Jesus. I know enough of human nature to say that if there is a soul today that has not repented of his sinfulness, made confession and received the grace of Christ, he is not only capable of each and all these sins, but is yielding to them day after day. If there is one of the profest followers of Christ, whose hold on Christ has weakened, whose communion with Him has become less deep and full and constant, I know that he is finding these sins creeping back into his life to mar and defile it. From these very sins that crucified our Lord, nothing short of the constant presence and power of the Spirit of Christ Himself can keep us.

If this study of the sins that crucified our Lord brings home to you and me an unsuspected depth of sinfulness within our hearts; if it classes us with men whose names we have been wont to speak with bated breath, nevertheless let us not despair. For you and me, who have done these very things unto our Lord in doing them to our fellow men; for us, as for those whose envy and avarice and slander and servility were directed against His person, He prays: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Not only will Christ pardon these deep-seated, daily sins of ours, but he will give us power to rise above them. As has been said, there is no other way given among men whereby our human hearts can rise above these easily besetting sins except that of letting the love of Christ lift us up out of them.

Christ is able to save to the uttermost. From even these deeply ingrained traits of character and lines of habitual conduct, He can rescue us. Do you doubt it? Do you ask how? Let us take these very sins one by one:

First, envy. Do you find it difficult, at times impossible, to look on your neighbor who is richer than yourself, who has an easier time, who is more popular, more beautiful, who is a better housekeeper, who excels you in your particular line of business, your profession, your art, your music; who has opportunities thrown in his way which you have struggled all your life to secure in vain?do you, I say, find it difficult to repress the feeling of envy that arises spontaneously at the thought of this more favored one? The love of Christ will lift you clear above all that. He will teach you that a man can have nothing really and lastingly good unless God gives it to Him. He will fill your mind and heart and hands with thoughts and deeds of loving service to Him, which, with the talents, the opportunities, the means, and the accomplishments you already have, you can perform, and in which and for which you can, day by day, receive His approval and enjoy His fellowship and love. Entering heartily and self-forgetfully into this service for Christ and with Christ, you will consider yourself the most highly favored of mankind. You will be only thankful if others can perform this same Christian service in a more effective manner and in a wider sphere. And for all who have not learned this blessed secret of doing whatever their hands find to do contentedly, humbly and cheerfully for Christ's sake - for all such, whether they be above you or below you in outward advantages and accomplishments you can have nothing but pity and sorrow to think that with all their opportunities they are missing the one thing which can give to life, under any conditions, a real joy and satisfaction. As John the Baptist said of Jesus, you will gladly say of every one who can do more and better work in any line than yourself, "He must increase and I must decrease." And your joy will be just as great in the total good accomplished as though your part in producing it was greater, and your honor connected with it more generally recognized.

Secondly, money-loving; avarice. Do you find yourself tempted to put the question, "What will it pay?" "How much can I make out of it?" above the question, "How will this bargain affect my fellow man?" Do you find yourself making trades where you would not willingly yourself take the consequences which these trades bring on the men you trade with? Do you find a tendency to treat your debtor, your workman, your servant, as you would not willingly be treated yourself, if you were in debt, if you were earning wages by the daily labor of your hands? Has this habit of getting as much out of everybody and giving as little back as possible so become a habit with you that you never think of the privation, the suffering, the disappointment your dealing brings to others? The love of the Christ, who gave, not His money alone, but His very life for men; the love of the Christ to whom all, even the lowliest, the least deserving, the most wayward, are still brethren and sisters, to be blest, and helped, and loved, and saved; this love of Christ, really coming into your heart and taking possession of your life, will take out of you all that is accurst in the thirst for gold; and at the same time it will leave you thrifty, industrious and economical; and protect you from future poverty and want quite as effectively as these close-fisted, avaricious ways which you have come to regard as your only safeguard. In the face of all temptations to do wrong for the money it will bring, you will be able to say with Peter, "Thy silver perish with thee."

Thirdly. Is it the habit of running from house to house with the wretched tale of some fellow creature's misdoings, real or fancied, that likens you to these murderers of Jesus?! Is that little member about the use of which James gives us so many warnings, the one which leads you most frequently into unchristlike conduct? If so, then your fault is one of the most difficult of all to cure. Yet even from malicious gossip and scandal, the grace of Christ can keep you. Let the pity and compassion of Him who said to the convicted woman, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more" - let the broad, human sympathy of Him who found even publicans and harlots more congenial to His spirit than their censorious and self-righteous accusers, once gain complete admission to your breast, and you will find it as impossible to speak harshly of a brother's sin or a sister's fall, to find satisfaction in discussing iniquity, as it is now seemingly impossible to avoid it. You will still see with sorrow the evil and sin there is in human hearts and lives. When called upon to act with reference to a man who has done wrong, you will not ignore his misdeeds; when it is necessary to reprove directly, or to warn those interested indirectly, of a bad man?s character, you will not hesitate to do it. But from out a heart in which Christ is present at the time, no unnecessary word of fault-finding or ill-willed gossip can ever pass.

Fourthly, compliance and servility. Are you accustomed to think what this, that, and the other one will say about you; how they will feel toward you; what possibly they may do to you before you make up your mind what to do in any given case? In other words, are you the slave of your associates? Let the life of Him, who, when advised to alter his course for fear that Herod might kill Him, replied: ,"Go and say to that fox, behold I cast out devils and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I am perfected. Howbeit I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following"; let the spirit of Him who drove out the sellers of doves and overthrew the tables of the money-changers in the temple, not deigning to give answer to the chief priests who asked by what authority He acted; let the majestic calmness of Him who would not in the slightest respect explain away his lofty claims before the Roman procurator who was to decide between release and crucifixion; let this manly independence that Christ displayed once get hold of you, and this excessive regard for what folks will say and think about you will in¬stantly vanish.

To all who are disposed to criticize you after you have decided to take a given course, because God calls you that way, you will be able to say with Paul: "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man?s judgment. He that judgeth me is God."

Thus for each and all of these sins, the grace of Christ can pardon us, and from them His spirit can preserve us.
In view of the presence of these same sinful tendencies within us; in view of the prevalence of these very evils in our midst today; in view of our Lord's words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me," shall we not, with deeper contrition and more heartfelt confession of our sins, betake ourselves to Christ for His forgiveness and His saving power; that both now and in the great day when the men of every age and every nation shall be assembled before the judgment-seat of God, we may be found, not in the company of the traitor Judas, the envious Caiaphas, the malignant Annas, the slanderous rabble and the servile Pilate; but may ours be the blessed fellowship in Christ with the impetuous but repentant Peter, the faithful Marys, and the loving John.

Related Tags: William Dewitt Hyde, THE SINS THAT CRUCIFIED JESUS, sermon, lesson

# posted by John Schroeder @ 8/13/2006 05:30:00 AM