Matthew 27:25

‘And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” '

For the idea here compare 2 Samuel 1:16; 2 Samuel 3:28. The people recognised quite clearly what Pilate was trying to do, and had been worked up into such a fever that they replied vociferously, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” They had recognised the symbol and were quite ready to take the blood guilt on themselves if it would frustrate Pilate. They treated the death of Jesus as lightly as the Chief Priests had treated Judas. But little were they aware of how literally God would take it, for within forty years their city would become a blood bath the like of which has rarely been seen since. Then they would bear their blood guilt indeed. We should note here how in Daniel 9:26 the ‘cutting off' of the Anointed One (Messiah) is also connected with the destruction of Jerusalem.

‘All the people.' Strictly this means ‘all who were present there', that is, all the crowd as they bayed as one. They knew the pressure that unanimity could apply. Compare ‘all Jerusalem' in Matthew 2:3. Once again the whole city was, as it were, aroused against Jesus. We should recognise that the idea is not that the whole Jewish nation will bear the guilt, and indeed many of that nation would come to Christ in the years that followed. It is rather that Jerusalem will bear the guilt, as indeed it did in a terrible way.

(As we have constantly stressed the guilt cannot be laid at the door of the Jewish nation as a whole, except in so far as it can be laid at the doors of all men. It is strange how people who would never take on themselves the guilt of a particular crime in which they were not directly involved, will nevertheless happily apply such guilt to others. I remember well how as a teacher in a school made up mainly of West Indians there were some who vociferously informed me that I wholly shared the guilt of the practise of slavery, while even the more well disposed still thought that there was some truth in it. And when I pointed out that I accepted no guilt at all for what others had done, and that I abhorred slavery, they yelled me down. Furthermore they would never admit that black tribes and Arabs were equally involved in the infamous trade, and therefore equally bore the blame. That would never do, for it might suggest that it was not white men who were totally to blame. And yet how quickly they would speak of it being unfair if a class was made to bear the guilt of a few (when it was often far more justified). It was a matter of ‘rules for some, and rules for others'. It is in a similar way that the Jews throughout history have often quite unfairly been made to bear the guilt of what happened here. But while certainly every Jew will have to give account for his failure to respond to Christ, as indeed will all who have so failed, it was only the minority, even in Jesus' day, who were really responsible for it, and who can really be described as having been guilty of crucifying the Son of God).