His Blood Be On Us
By Rev. Willem Glashouwer

One of the verses that was used throughout the ages by the Church to teach that Israel has been rejected and is under a perpetuating curse and judgment of God, and that the Church replaced Israel as the chosen people of God, is Matthew 27:25: “Let His blood be on us and on our children!” (Maybe the background for this expression can be found in Ezekiel 3:16-21).

It is this verse, this terrible cry shouted by the crowd in Jerusalem that is often quoted to defend the view that Israel’s tragic fate throughout history is her own fault. Many said: ‘Yes, it is terrible, all that happened throughout the centuries with the Jews. But let’s face it, didn’t they more or less ask for it when they killed Jesus? Isn’t it a warning to us all? Isn’t this what is going to happen to people who reject the Lord and His Anointed One? Isn’t this the judgment of God?’

The Church over the centuries even ‘helped’ to bring this judgment of God about. By developing a Christian theology that could be labeled as Christian anti-Semitism. By inciting hatred and creating an anti-Jewish atmosphere in which terrible persecutions of Jews could happen, notwithstanding the fact that some Christians personally behaved decently and tried to help the Jews as much as they could.

Let’s have a look at Matthew 27:25 a little bit closer. We believe that the Bible is God’s Word, totally trustworthy and reliable, and that one should believe the literal meaning of the words first, before looking for spiritual meanings and interpretations. We should not spiritualize or allegorize God’s Word, although we can always draw spiritual lessons from it. At least 7 comments could be made about this particular verse:
Perhaps a few hundred Jews, stirred up by some of their religious leaders, stood in front of the house of Pontius Pilate and shouted, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” The people living in the North of Israel didn’t have a clue what was happening in Jerusalem, and many of them would have disapproved - if they only had known. Can one hold the whole of the Jewish people responsible for what this small mob in Jerusalem did, incited by some of their religious leaders, when they asked for His crucifixion? And not only the whole of the Jewish nation in those days, but since then throughout the ages to come? The Church has done just that, and shoved the guilt for the death of Jesus into the shoes of ‘the Jews’. This is demonical, and it has led to the spilling of rivers of Jewish blood in the lands of Christendom. But there is more to it.

When one applies the principle of taking the Bible verses in their first and literal sense to these terrible words, it is clear that taken in a literal sense they must have already been fulfilled. “…Us and our children…” they shouted. So, that particular generation, and their children – the next generation of these Jerusalemites. These Jews who shouted those words, they and their children, were murdered 40 years later by the Romans, in Jerusalem. One of the biblical numbers for the duration of one generation is 40, referring to the duration of the wandering in the desert where the generation that left Egypt died because of their unbelief. Another one is 70, spanning the time of a grandfather to his grandson, “…from generation to generation…” (Daniel 4:3 and 34). And another one is 100 (Genesis 15:16 en 13). In 70 AD Titus and his legions razed the city and the temple to the ground, murdering 1,100,000 Jews (according to the Jewish historian of those days, Flavius Josephus) and crucifying thousands from Jerusalem to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, until there was not enough wood left to construct more crosses. In 135 AD Emperor Hadrian finished the job by quenching the revolt under Simon Bar Kokhba in 3 ½ years, killing another 600.000 Jews in addition to those who died of hunger, disease, and fire (according to the Roman historian in those days, Dio Cassius. Were these the moments that His blood ‘came on’ that same generation and their children, the next generation? These massacres happened 40 and 100 years after Jesus’ crucifixion around 30 AD. If so, by this massive slaughter this prophecy has been fulfilled - if one takes the words ‘us and our children’ in their first and literal meaning. And all the rest of Jewish blood that was spilled over the centuries ever since has nothing to do with God’s judgment but are terrible sins, crimes of men, waiting for God’s final judgment.

This leads to another question. Did the Romans actually bring God’s judgment upon these Jewish people, them and their children? Was this God’s judgment? Does God judge in such a way? Because even if this exclamation be taken as meaning that the small Jewish crowd with some of their leaders in Jerusalem were taking responsibility for the death of Jesus, and indeed, 40 years later the Roman legions captured and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and brutally murdered that generation and their children: among them were undoubtedly also thousands of Jewish Christians! Would God include also Jewish Christians in such a ‘judgment’? The question whether all the Christian Jews had fled to Pella before the siege of Jerusalem is still an issue hotly debated by historians. Some say that there was no such flight! So among the many victims of the atrocities of the Roman legions there could well have been many Jewish Christians – and some Gentile Christians as well. And Jews in Jerusalem who had not even participated in the mob that was shouting and yelling before Pontius Pilate demanding Jesus’ crucifixion. Did they deserve God’s judgment? So this is another reason to ask the question: “Was this destruction of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 70AD actually a ‘judgment of God’”?

A lot of innocent Jewish blood has been spilled since then, throughout the centuries. In the lands of Christendom in Europe and elsewhere in the world – also the Islamic world. All of this innocent spilled blood is now awaiting God’s retribution at the Last Judgment. Or is all of the innocent blood – Jewish and non-Jewish - of the last 2000 years and more, still calling from the earth and is it all awaiting the judgment of God at the end of time? Innocent blood like that of Zechariah, the son of Berekiah – Matthew 23:35: “And so upon you (at the time of the final judgment?) will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar?” Is there a difference between ‘innocent/righteous bloods’, from before and after Christ? Has God’s judgment on the innocent blood of ‘Zechariah, the son of Berekiah’ - spilled by some Jews in some centuries before Christ - come to pass in this terrible destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD? Does God have a special judgment for Jews in the case of ‘spilled blood’? Or does all innocent blood on earth of all the centuries of human history – Jewish and non-Jewish innocent spilled blood - including that of ‘Zechariah the son of Berekiah’, wait for the judgment one day by God Almighty in the final day of His wrath, at the end of times? Because the blood of Abel that was shed of which Jesus speaks, was shed long before the Jewish people were even in existence, even before Abraham, even before the Flood!

And Who is the One who will finally bring judgment? Man or God? Can Romans bring God’s judgment on Israel? Can people execute God’s judgment? Paul says in Romans 12:19: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ”It is Mine to avenge; I will repay, “ says the Lord.” God will one day ‘avenge’ the wrongdoings of man and all the spilling of innocent blood. Like the innocent blood of the Christian martyrs – Revelation 6:9-11: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.“

One day God will finally sit in judgment to avenge all the innocent blood that was spilled on this earth. Like the innocent blood of all victims of violence, including the millions murdered in the womb by abortionists. The victims of rape, of incest. The exploited ones, the slaves. The torturers and the murderers. The dictators and the exploiters. And the like. Romans, Germans, Dutch, Chinese, Russians, Americans, Spanish, British, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish and of whatever race or cultural or religious or philosophical background the perpetrators are, have been or will be. John says in Revelation 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” And Paul says in Galatians 5:19-21: “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”

The conclusion must be: all the sins of men – Jews and non-Jews alike – await Gods judgment at the end of time. He is to be the Judge. Men can never execute Gods judgment. It all awaits the final verdict at the end of time. Till that time there is only One who was punished and felt Gods judgment on behalf of us all: Jesus. Whosoever puts his or her faith on Him will not come into Gods final judgment at all, the Bible says. So probably the destruction of Jerusalem and the land of Israel by the Romans in 70 AD and 135 AD was not a judgment of God at all, but crimes committed by the Romans who will be held accountable for them in the final day of God’s judgment.

Maybe there is even a quite different interpretation possible of this exclamation of the yelling crowd. Could this cry of that mob in Jerusalem have been an unconscious and unintentional prophetic truth being uttered, as that was the case with the words of the High Priest when Caiaphas said in John 11:49: “Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was High Priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” Caiaphas did not understand the full implications of what he was saying and he surely did not mean those words to be prophetic in the sense that John understood them. But it still was very true. Jesus, the “one man,” died to redeem many people and save them. One man died instead of the whole nation or, for that matter, the whole of mankind. God in His Grace found and executed this incredible solution to the problem of the sin of man. And the Son co-operated wholeheartedly with the loving purposes of the loving Father, and made His life available to become the blameless Lamb that could be slaughtered for the sins of the world. John says in John 11:51-52 about what Caiaphas said: “He did not say this on his own, but as High Priest he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one...” Could the cry “His blood be upon us and our children” work in a similar fashion, as an unintentionally uttered but nevertheless deep spiritual and prophetic truth? Because the blood of Jesus must come upon us cleanse us from all our sins. The blood of Jesus must also come upon Israel to cleanse Israel’s sins. This was of course not what they meant: they meant to take upon themselves the responsibility for the death of Jesus. So their cry was not an honest sinner’s prayer, but nevertheless they did speak unintentionally a deep truth. This leads to the final and in my opinion decisive point.

On the cross Jesus prayed: “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). When He is praying this prayer upon the cross, Jesus as the Lamb of God is giving His blood to redeem the sins of the world right then and there. To make it possible that God forgives our sins. Would the Father not answer the prayer of His dying Son for all those who were directly involved in His execution? Surely He forgave the Roman soldiers and the yelling Jewish crowd, and Pontius Pilate, and Herod and the Sanhedrin and all the people involved in the process of condemning and killing Him. For they indeed did not know what they were doing. The Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate and Herod: they had no clue what was going on, what was really happening. Peter says in Acts 3:17-18: “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what He had foretold through all the prophets, saying that His Christ would suffer.” The Lamb of God had to be slain in order that the sins of the world could be forgiven. John the Baptist immediately recognizes this great commission of Jesus when he sees Him coming toward him. John 1:29 says “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world!” And in John1:35: “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

Jesus is not murdered by accident, or against His will. He says: “No one takes it (My life) from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). He has come into this world, to give His life as a free offering for the sins of the world. To be slaughtered as a Lamb. Isaiah prophecies about Him in chapter 53: “Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed…He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth…He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of My people He was stricken…though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth…Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer…He poured out His life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” So this prayer of Jesus on the cross ended the curse this Jewish mob invoked upon themselves right there. And all the innocent Jewish blood that was spilt throughout the ages waits for God’s judgment at the end of time.

His Blood Be On Us By Rev. Willem Glashouwer

His Blood Be On Us
By Rev. Willem Glashouwer