Matt W Cook

I recently heard a man say that, on the cross, Jesus Christ became a rapist, a murderer and a pedophile.

I didn’t like hearing that.

In fact, physically felt a little sick to my stomach. Every part of me starting screaming out ‘NO!’ So, yeah, I didn’t like hearing that at all.

But my wife, blessed woman, counseled me to think about it for a bit before violently rejecting it. And so I did. And I found out that Mark Driscoll said something similar in his book, Death by Love:

The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther rightly declares that at the moment Jesus became the most grotesque, ugly, and hideous thing in the history of all creation. In what Luther calls “the great exchange,” the sinless Jesus so thoroughly took our place that he became the worst of what we are – rapists, thieves, perverts, addicts, liars, gluttons, gossips, murderers, adulterers, fornicators, homosexuals, and idolaters. Importantly, Jesus’ work on the cross was not just a bookkeeping transaction in the divine economy. Jesus actually took to himself our sin with all its horror and shame, (Hebrews 12:2-3)

Hmm. So Driscoll also says that Jesus became a rapist. You know what? Unless he means something different by it that I’m not understanding, he’s dead wrong. He seems to say that Luther agrees with him. If so, I guess that Luther is wrong, too.

Christ was made sin, yes. Christ took the sin of the world on his shoulders and brought it down to the grave with him, yes. But Christ did not become a sinner. Christ did not become a pedophile. In a strange way he became something worse.

He became pedophilia.

Or at least the root sin that causes it. He became sin, not a sinner. He became dirt, not dirty. To say that Jesus was a pedophile has a lot of shock value (whatever value that has), but it has not root in reality and it’s bad theology. And bad theology leads to many nasty places that we don’t want to go. Because if Jesus only took the place of the sinner, that’s not much good for us.

If Jesus became a pedophile and took the place of the pedophile, what does that do to the pedophilia? Nothing, as far as I can tell. But Jesus became pedophilia, so now not only can the pedophile rejoice in mercy that he can be pardoned, but he can rejoice in hope that his root problem of pedophilia is killed and he can be free of the horrid darkness that it is!

Through Christ I am not only pardoned for my pride, but my pride has been dealt a death-blow, and I can have hope that, since he became pride and took it with him to the grave, I will be free of pride, ultimately.