The Murder In the Middle

Three Murders Frame the Bible

About 44 people are murdered every day in the United States, and about 43% of those murders go unsolved. You might think that a lot of people are getting away with murder. If so, you would be wrong.

History is brimming with accounts of famous murders. Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March and Rome was never the same. Archduke Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo and it started World War I. The Japanese military murdered 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor without a formal declaration and it pulled the United States into World War II. Islamic terrorists murdered 2,977 Americans in New York and Washington and our culture was changed forever. From the murder of Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy to Martin Luther King, Jr., countless momentous murders changed the course of history. But the turning point of all history is the murder in the middle.

Murder in the Bible

At the center of Christianity is a murder. What happened on the cross was the greatest injustice ever committed by humanity. Peter informed the “Men of Israel” that when they murdered Jesus, they “killed the Author of life” (Acts 3:15). Stephen reminded the people of Israel when God sent them their promised Messiah, they “betrayed and murdered” him (Acts 7:52).

Murder isn’t merely a homicide. Some homicides are justified. For example, God authorizes capital punishment for murder (Gen. 9:6). But murder is the taking of human life that God has not authorized anyone to take. It is theft of the highest order to steal the life of another person made in the image of God. Right in the center of the Ten Commandments, God’s moral law is clear: “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13).

Human courts in the Western world, deeply influenced by the legal system of the Bible, have long recognized degrees of murder. First degree murder is premeditated, planned, and deliberate. Second degree murder is deliberate but unplanned and impulsive. Some legal systems recognize third degree murder which may not be deliberate (intending to kill) but is the result of a reckless disregard for human life. In addition, some murders are particularly heinous, shockingly evil, and cruel. These call for stricter judgment.

The First Murder

It only takes four chapters into the Bible before we are told about the first murder, when Cain “rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Gen. 4:8).

The murder of Abel was deliberate and premeditated. Cain revealed a consciousness of guilt by lying to cover it up. God confronted him with the question, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). Blood in the dirt was Exhibit A in Cain’s trial and the judge of the universe found him guilty.

The Last Murder

The last murder mentioned in the Bible refers to state-sponsored shedding of “the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev. 17:6). But in between the first and last murder, we find the most despicable murder of all.

The Worst Murder

While the first murder in human history is Cain’s slaying of Abel, the worst murder in human history is recorded in the Gospels when religious and political authorities beat and butchered the Son of God.

We instinctively know that the heinousness of a crime rises in proportion to the innocence of the victim. For example, if a hardened drug dealer is murdered by another hardened drug dealer in a fight over turf, a terrible crime has been committed. But if the hardened drug dealer murders a baby to strike fear in a neighborhood, that murder is particularly heinous.

That’s why the murder of Jesus is the worst murder in history. The completely innocent and sinless Son of God was falsely accused, tortured, and murdered in an egregiously deliberate, premeditated, unjustified homicide.

How the First Murder is Like the Worst Murder

Immediately after God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden in Genesis 3, God foreshadows the way he will return them to Eden’s joy in Genesis 4. His salvation will come through a good shepherd whose innocent blood will soak the earth. The cross will become a crime scene.

The Murder that Ends All Murders

God could have prevented the murder of his Son, but he did not. As the early church prayed,

…truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28).

Could it be that the murder of the Son was part of God’s perfect plan? Jesus knew all along that he would be murdered. No one took his life against his will. Rather, he laid it down willingly. The mighty Son of God voluntarily presented himself in Jerusalem to be murdered by the puny sons of Adam. “Yet, it was the will of the LORD to crush him” (Isa. 53:10).

Is murder in God’s will? Murder is never in the moral and revealed will of God and it never pleases him. But murder is often in the decreed and secret will of God even though he hates it. Every day God permits what does not please him for his sovereign and secret purposes. As Joni Eareckson Tada has said, the ten words that changed her life are these: “God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”

Can God forgive murder? If you answer no, a couple of famous murderers, King David and the Apostle Paul, would like a word! But unrepentant murderers who don’t confess their sin, repent, and trust in Christ alone will be eternally kept from eternal life in the New Jerusalem of the New Earth. There will be justice.

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death (Rev. 21:8)

On the cross, Jesus submitted to murderers and died in the place of sinners, bearing our guilt, paying our debt, receiving our penalty. The first murder was the slaughter of an innocent shepherd whose death atoned for no one. The last murder takes the lives of those who bear witness to the resurrected shepherd whose death atones for all who repent. In the middle, the worst murder is the slaughter of the innocent and “good shepherd” who “lays down his life for his sheep” (Jn. 10:11), “the Savior of the world” (Jn. 4:42). He is the “Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4) who is coming again to judge the living and the dead. Which means that no one…absolutely no one…will get away with murder.