Introduction
Traditional Christianity teaches that Jesus willingly went to the cross in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and as a planned sacrifice for sins. This essay challenges that claim. It argues that the Hebrew Scriptures do not clearly predict a dying and rising Messiah, that Jesus’ own words and actions suggest an expectation of deliverance rather than execution, and that later Gospel theology reshaped events after the fact. When the biblical texts are read carefully and without theological assumptions, the image of a Jesus who knowingly planned his crucifixion becomes difficult to sustain.
THE ARGUMENT
Jesus said that the Old Testament prophecies spoke of him. But they never predicted that the Messiah would die and rise again. Even Psalm 16, which is used to prove that the resurrection was predicted, never actually speaks of a dead man returning to life but of a sick man getting well. If there was a historical Jesus, he never expected to die on a cross, though he did expect to suffer greatly.
Does the famous Psalm 22 speak of a future person suffering crucifixion? Does it mean Jesus? The majority of Hebrew manuscripts claim the wording of the Psalm here is, “They are at my hands and feet like the lion,” or even, “My hands and my feet are withering and shrivelling.”
When read carefully, the Psalm best describes a person who is kidnapped, abused, and starved.
1 Peter 5:8 perhaps is telling us that the lion is the Devil. Read it.
The most important insight is that the Psalm is not about anybody but the composer.
The lack of prophecy shows that if Jesus intended to be crucified for sins, he did not have any authority from a God to do so.
On the night he was arrested, prior to his crucifixion, Jesus said that God would send a legion of angels to rescue him from the cross if he asked (Matthew 26:53). Christians say this implicitly means “if it is God’s will,” but since it is not God’s will and not Jesus’ will, they will not be asked for.
Prior to his arrest, Jesus told his apostles to sell what they had and procure weapons. He was then shown two swords and said, “Enough” (Luke 22:36–38). So perhaps the “enough” meant, “Wise up, I don’t mean real swords,” or he thought that two swords would be enough to defend him. Perhaps he thought that only a couple of men were going to arrest him. It would show that he had no intention of dying.
Perhaps he wanted the disciples to be under-armed because he had a team ready to pretend to be arresting him. He would go under cover. Crucifixions would take place. Everybody would assume he was one of the crucified. Then he would reappear again to implement the greatest religious hoax of all time.
There were a lot of lies told decades later in the Gospels about the Jewish crowd forcing Pilate to kill him. This would suggest that this scenario could well have been the right one.
Perhaps Jesus was claiming that God was going to magically enable his men to destroy a cohort with two swords. That would be a sign of mental disturbance or of overconfidence in his supernormal abilities.
Christians say the two swords were required only as symbols of the uselessness of earthly weapons.
But whatever the case, there is no evidence for the symbolic interpretation of the two swords. When Jesus could have been speaking literally, that is how he should be taken. Do not see symbols where they need not be. Jesus let them carry the swords, and Peter even used his on the high priest’s slave, proving the literal interpretation. The proper interpretation has Jesus deciding to go back on his promise to let himself be arrested and put to death (Mark 10:34; 14:24). He broke this promise when he asked God to save him in the Garden (Mark 14:36). It was still breaking his word, even though he instantly changed his mind. Yet the Gospels say he spoke as a prophet and predicted that he would die on the cross and rise again. He had a lot of faith in his ability to see the future, hadn’t he?
The fact that the Old Testament considers the power to see the future and the will of God to be the mark of a real messenger from God, and that the Gospels give prophecies that could have been written after the event, shows that the Old Testament is being trampled upon and that there was no honesty or divine inspiration in those Gospels at all, for proof of being made before the event would be necessary to fit the strict Old Testament standard. If Jesus approved the Gospels, he was a fake and an antichrist.
Jesus said that in his mind he was willing to undergo the crucifixion, but that his flesh held him back (Matthew 26:41). If he sincerely wanted to endure it, he could have. This was being manipulative. He said that when Judas arrived with the band, he and his apostles must escape (Matthew 26:46). Jesus had changed his mind and wanted to get away, despite claiming that it had to happen as the Scriptures foretold. He was denying that the prophets were truly prophets. The fact that he let his men carry weapons proves that his prayer in the Garden was for salvation from crucifixion when he asked his Father to take the cup away from him.
One argument is that Jesus’ actions and prayers suggest hope for divine intervention rather than certainty of death. In Gethsemane, he asks for the cup to pass from him, which can be read as genuine expectation that God might avert execution. His entry into Jerusalem and temple protest resemble prophetic acts meant to provoke reform and divine vindication, not martyrdom. Finally, the cry of abandonment on the cross (“Why have you forsaken me?”) can be interpreted as evidence that he expected rescue that never came, rather than a fully scripted plan to die.
CONCLUSION
The portrayal of Jesus as a willing, foreknowing redeemer appears to be a later theological construction rather than a position grounded in his own expressed intentions.