A reading of Jesus’s death through the fate of Israel’s prophets
Did Jesus have to die on the cross? It is common, especially during Holy Week liturgies, to hear various people, clergy and laypeople, young and old, affirm the necessity of Christ’s salvific death: “Without the sufferings endured by Christ, there is no salvation,” “The sacrifice of the cross is necessary for our salvation,” “God sent his Son to die on the cross,” and so on.
These affirmations are troubling in two ways. First, they present us with a rather unflattering image of God. What kind of Father would send his beloved Son to suffer and die? Could he not have saved us without this “bloody sacrifice”? Second, they raise questions about human freedom. Were the people who contributed to Jesus’s death (for example, Judas who handed him over, and the priests who condemned him) acting freely, or were they compelled to play out God’s plan? Should we not, in that case, praise them, and perhaps even canonize them, for the decisive role they played in the history of salvation?
In Accordance with the Scriptures
It is true that several New Testament authors, seeking to make sense of the death of the Messiah, interpreted it as salvific. Paul, for instance, to whom we owe many of our theological formulations, reports how the early communities understood the Lord’s death:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)
This is one of the stereotyped formulas that became the core of the early Church’s professions of faith. These formulas even found their way into the Gospel narratives, such as this saying of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, which appears only in Matthew’s account:
Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:52–54)
These formulations are, in fact, interpretations of the unexpected death of the long-awaited savior. Indeed, the Old Testament did not announce a suffering Messiah, nor did his contemporaries expect one. What they hoped for was a king, a son of David, not someone who would die, of course, but someone who would deliver them from Roman oppression. This is likely why the people chose Barabbas over him, a man who actively resisted the occupying forces, even though just a few days earlier they had welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with shouts of praise: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9). The same is true for the disciples: the Gospels show that they were in denial after Jesus announced that he was going to die; they were still arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom, and when the hour came, they all abandoned him.
At Jesus’ death, the Gospels show us disciples who were, to say the least, disoriented. They did not understand what had happened. How could this “prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” (Luke 24:19), the one who was supposed to redeem Israel (Luke 24:21), have been handed over by the chief priests and leaders (Luke 24:20) and die such a shameful death? The disciples on the road to Emmaus were still asking themselves these kinds of questions, even after the women had told them that Jesus was alive (Luke 24:23). And Jesus, who was walking with them though they did not recognize him, said to them:
“Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. (Luke 24:25–27)
“In accordance with the scriptures.” This is how the first communities came to understand the destiny of Jesus. But this did not refer to any one Scripture in particular, since, as we have already said, none explicitly mentions a suffering Messiah. If it had been otherwise, if there had been clear passages in the Old Testament announcing the suffering, rejection, humiliation, and execution of Jesus, the evangelists would certainly have quoted them. Matthew in particular, whose Gospel is filled with fulfillment formulas, would not have missed the opportunity. Yet the only two times he uses this formula without citing a specific Old Testament verse are precisely those that concern the death of Jesus, in Matthew 26:54, as mentioned above, and in 26:56. In the same way, Paul would not have had to make such an effort to convince his fellow Jews:
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.” (Acts 17:2–3)
It was therefore a matter of all the Scriptures, of the Scriptures taken as a whole, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets.”
After the Emmaus scene, Jesus appeared to the Eleven gathered together:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. (Luke 24:44–45)
What, then, would this understanding of the Scriptures be?
The Fate of the Prophets
According to the Old Testament theology to which Jesus refers, God sent leaders and prophets to his people to guide them and keep them faithful to the covenant he had made with them. But the word of God is not easy to hear. It unsettles, it convicts, it disrupts human plans. As a result, the Jewish people did not exactly give a “warm welcome” (to use a euphemism) to God’s messengers, the prophets. Two quotations, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, illustrate this clearly:
Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. (Nehemiah 9:26)
You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. (Acts 7:51–52)
This last quotation comes from Stephen’s speech, in which he interpreted the fate of Christ in light of the history of Israel, a people who “oppose the Holy Spirit” speaking through the mouths of the prophets, a “stiff-necked people” (see also Isaiah 48:4 and Jeremiah 17:23), a people who persecute and kill those sent by God. This is how the early Church came to understand the death of Jesus, “in accordance with the scriptures.” This is also how Jesus himself, as a faithful Jew, must have envisioned the end he foresaw, “in accordance with the scriptures.” The execution of John the Baptist likely served as a premonitory warning, for it was according to this same “law” of Israel’s history that he interpreted the execution of the prophet John:
11Then they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” 12He said to them, “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? 13But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.” (Mark 9:11–13)
A Mission That Led to the Cross
In the light of the past history of the Jewish people, Jesus read his present and foresaw his future:
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. (Matthew 16:21)
Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Luke 13:33–34)
Once in Jerusalem, Jesus spoke directly to his opponents through the parable of the wicked tenants (Mark 12:1–12 and parallels). In this parable, Jesus illustrates the fate of God’s messengers using the Old Testament image of the vineyard, a symbol of the people of God: a man planted a vineyard and entrusted it to tenants to care for it. But each time he sent a servant to collect his share of the fruit, the tenants mistreated or killed him.
“He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ […] So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.” (Mark 12:6, 8)
Thus the Son, at a certain point in his journey, saw his future taking shape according to the pattern of the prophets who had come before him. The Father did not send him to die, any more than he had sent the earlier prophets to die, or the owner of the vineyard his servants. But given the nature of the Jewish people, a “stiff-necked people”, the outcome of his mission was “sealed in advance,” unless, of course, he chose to renounce it. He had that freedom, but he chose to go all the way, in accordance with the mission the Father had entrusted to him, which was to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. It is with this proclamation that he began his mission, at least according to the accounts of Mark and Matthew. The announcements of his Passion came only at a later stage.
No, the cross was not an inevitable path imposed by the Father. It was his preaching and his life given in service to all, especially to sinners and those excluded from society, that led him to this death. And it is this life for others that gives meaning to his death and shows us the example to follow in order to reach the Father.
This article is part of the series “From the book,” adapted from Questions and Misconceptions about the Bible (WestBow Press, 2026).