Rector’s Daily Reflections
Wednesday 27th March 2026
Why was Jesus crucified?
We have seen that a straightforward answer to this question is that Jesus was crucified because the Roman Empire demanded it. The senior Imperial official on the spot, Pontius Pilate, took the view that Jesus constituted too great a risk to the well-being of the Empire. Jesus had to go.
The Jewish religious leaders had come to a similar conclusion: Jesus had to go. Why was this?
We cannot be certain, not least because our main sources of evidence come from the New Testament, and the New Testament on the whole portrays a fairly negative picture of the character and objectives of the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day.
However, the following considerations seem to have made Jesus an unpopular figure among the Jewish religious leadership of the day. For some, the objection to Jesus was political rather than spiritual or religious: Jesus seemed to be challenging the authority of the Roman Empire, and this was bound to end in tears. The Empire was too powerful to put up with any opposition. For others, the issues were fundamentally theological. Jesus’ teaching and behaviour seemed to constitute an attack on the Temple worship which was central to contemporary Judaism. In his teaching, Jesus also claimed to have an intimate relationship with God, who he even called his “Father”: was this merely the conventional language of piety, or did it amount to blasphemy? Was Jesus claiming that he was himself divine?
There is also the possibility that some of the religious leaders were also worried about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. According to the account in John’s gospel, “the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus”.
So there were many reasons why it suited at least some of the Jewish religious leaders of the day to have Jesus crucified. It would bring his influence to an end, and show that his claims to be an authoritative prophet were quite unfounded – or so they hoped.
And I wonder whether there was another factor involved, as well. Jesus was not one of the Temple priests, and he was not a member of the Jerusalem elite. As far as the Jerusalem establishment was concerned, they might have been prepared to have tolerated Jesus the Prophet, if he had been one of their own. They might even have taken a certain degree of pride in his uncompromising message. But he was an outsider, and what right had an outsider to tell them how they should be running the religious affairs of the country? Many elites, including religious elites, are prepared to tolerate criticism if it comes from within. But elites tend to close ranks against criticism which comes from without. It is much too threatening.