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Jesus was Not our Whipping Boy
Jesus was Not our Whipping Boy
16th century England subscribed to the “Divine Right of Kings.” Kings were not subject to any authority on earth; only to God. By extension, if a king’s young son, the prince, misbehaved, only the king could deliver the punishment. The prince could not be punished by any authority outside the royal crown. A question arose: “What if the prince is misbehaving, but the King is away on a journey? Who can punish him?” The answer was still, “No one but the King.” Hence the introduction of the “The Whipping Boy.” A whipping boy was someone the prince had a close emotional bond with. It was a friend. Whenever the prince misbehaved, he would have to watch as the whipping boy was forced against his will to take a beating for him. The point was to cause the prince distress so he would correct his behavior. It wasn’t just or fair. An innocent bystander was forcefully taken and beaten for someone else’s crime. Some accuse God of unjustly using Jesus as our whipping boy. That’s wrong for three reasons.
1) Jesus is God. Philippians 2:6 says, “Although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” He was equal with God, but instead of using His position, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant.” (2:7a). In John 8:58, Jesus calls Himself “I am,” which is the very name of God the Father in the Old Testament (Ex. 3:14). In Hebrews 1:8, Jesus is referred to as “God,” and in Hebrews 1:10, the 107th Psalm attributed to God the Father in the Old Testament is attributed to Jesus. Here’s the point: Jesus was innocent, but He wasn’t a random bystander taken by God and beaten against His will. Jesus is God and He voluntarily chose to take our punishment for us.
2) Our sins were committed against Jesus too. Since Jesus is God, we’ve all sinned against Him too. The whipping boy was an uninvolved third party. The prince wronged someone else, not the whipping boy. He was beaten, yet he had absolutely nothing to do with the situation. Imagine if, on the other hand, the prince wronged the whipping boy, so the prince was doomed to be beaten by the king. Then the whipping boy stepped in and said, “Even though you wronged me, I don’t want to see you beaten, so I’ll take the beating for you.” That’s what Jesus did for us.
3) We were not Jesus’ friend. In the whipping boy scenario, the prince watched his friend be beaten by someone else and it broke his heart. With Jesus, we were the ones who put Him on the cross. We shouted, “Crucify this blasphemer! We have no king but Caesar!” We were His enemies. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners [or enemies v.10], Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)
