Jesus gets abused by his guards.

Mark 14.65, Matthew 26.67-68, Luke 22.63-65, John 18.22-23.

Historically, people have always abused prisioners. They figure there was good reason you were arrested and imprisoned, whether you’d been tried and convicted or not. Heck, maybe you even weren’t guilty of the charges brought against you… but you were in prison because you’d done wrong in some other way, and either the gods or the universe were punishing you for it in this way. Or whatever other justification bullies could come up with for smacking you around.

Our laws have since made prisioner abuse illegal. Not that these laws have stopped anything. Cops and guards will still smack a prisioner around if they don’t respect the law and think they can get away with it. Lynchings used to happen all the time in the United States. Not just during the Jim Crow era, when white terrorists did it to blacks to promote white supremacy, but whenever any angry citizens took the law into their own hands and tarred and feathered, or shot or hung, anybody they saw as troublemakers… or competition. Not for nothing do police body cameras need to stay constantly on. But let me get off that tangent and get to when Jesus was slapped by his guards. Happened during his pre-trial trial:

John 18.22-23 KWL

22Once he says this, one of the bystanding police

gives Jesus a slap, saying,

“This you answer the head priest?”

23Jesus answers him, “If I speak evil, testify about the evil.

If good, why beat me?”

In Mark, Jesus isn’t beaten till after the Judean senate found him guilty, but in both Matthew and Luke the guards didn’t care to wait for any trial; they made up their own minds about him.

Mark 14.65 KWL

Certain people begin to spit on Jesus,

to cover his face and punch him,

to tell him, “Prophesy!

Which underling gave you that punch?”

Matthew 26.67-68 KWL

67Then they spit in Jesus’s face and punch him.

with those slapping him

68saying, “Prophesy to us, ‘Messiah’!

Which of us hit you?”

Luke 22.63-65 KWL

63The men holding Jesus are mocking him,

beating him,

64and covering Jesus’s face,

{punching him in the face,

and} saying, “Prophesy!

Which of us hit you?”

65Many other slanderers

are saying likewise to Jesus.

This behavior offends Christians nowadays, because we know Jesus did nothing wrong. And yet all too often, these very same Christians don’t mind if another prisioner gets roughed up by police or prison guards, because those folks must be guilty, right? They can’t possibly have caught the wrong guy. Can’t possibly be hassling another innocent victim like Jesus. Right?

I’ve heard fellow Christians take perverse glee about convicts experiencing abuse in prision. Even jokes about prison rape, which are way too commonplace considering this is a crime which needs to be exterminated. But these folks love the idea of rough treatment in prison. Serves ’em right, they figure.

But of course violence is not a legal punishment, and doesn’t fit the crime. Somebody incarcerated for a lesser crime, like fraud or theft, can be attacked same as a murderer or rapist. Someone can be assaulted for their race, or because they’re gay, or because they’re mentally ill, or any number of other factors which have nothing to do with why they should be in prison. But even if they are in prison for murder: If that’s a beloved family member of yours, you’re not gonna appreciate those prison-rape jokes. And God forbid there’s some mixup which puts you in a holding cell with some angry, rapey thugs.

To hear these jokesters talk, if it were up to them we’d go right back to the bad old days of beating confessions out of suspects. And they claim to be Christian! So how is it Jesus’s experience at the hands of his accusers, haven’t made ’em realize “innocent till proven guilty” is always the way to treat suspects?

Well, lots of reasons. But most of them have their origin in gracelessness.

“We all deserve worse.”

One of the more common questions people have about God is “Why do bad things happen in a good God’s universe?” There’s a whole study on that question, called theodicy, which either draws answers from the scriptures… or doesn’t, because they don’t care for what the bible suggests, so they come up with their own unsatisfactory answers.

One of the more popular unsatisfactory answers is that whole bad-karma one: “There’s no such thing as a wholly good person; we’re all evil to some degree. Everybody deserves punishment for those sins. Including death and hell. So the question shouldn’t be ‘Why do bad things happen to good people’ because there are no good people.” Comes complete with bad proof texts like “All have sinned” Ro 3.23 and “There are none who do good,” Ps 14.3, Ps 53.3 and “There is no one righteous.” Ro 3.10 Nobody deserves jack squat, and it is by God’s grace we have anything good. We should be grateful our lives aren’t total chaos.

This is the underlying idea behind the arguments of Job’s friends—whom the LORD declared wrong. Jb 42.7-8 Throughout Job they’re either telling Job he has to have sinned; how else would he merit the destruction of all his wealth and health? Or that everybody deserves worse, so if Job gets smacked around—or some suspect or convict gets assaulted—“Okay, that’s not ideal, but we all deserve worse.”

But that’s not an argument which works with Jesus the Nazarene. At all. He deserved none of this. He is a genuinely good person. He has no sins which outweighs his good deeds; he has no sins! 1Pe 2.22 Can we ever claim, “Well that’s horrible, but we all deserve worse” about Jesus? Never.

Jesus has God’s nature, Pp 2.6 meaning he’d never sin, nor even think to sin. He 4.15 If we’re ever backed into a corner where all the choices we have appear to be sinful, it’s only because we’ve blinded ourselves to the fact God always provides his kids an option which isn’t, 1Co 10.13 and Jesus always knew and took this option. He didn’t merit a single evil act done to him. Bad karma can’t touch him.

These folks who are fond of saying, “We all deserve worse” will admit Jesus didn’t deserve worse. His guards were entirely in the wrong for abusing him. But rather than learn the lesson from this example—don’t abuse prisoners!—they figure Jesus is a colossal exception to the rule. He didn’t deserve worse. But everyone else does. So go right ahead and smack other suspects around. They may be innocent of this crime, but they probably have it coming for something they did. Everybody does.

This is why it took centuries for Christians to finally realize prisoners have such things as human rights. And why some Americans figure prisoners only have human rights if they happen to be American. If they’re American, give ’em a speedy trial, convict ’em or let ’em go. If they’re not—if we picked ’em up on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan—well, we can leave ’em in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without trial. After all they’re not American, and not even on American soil. And are probably guilty anyway. And hey: We all deserve worse.

Like I said, gracelessness.

Like Job’s friends, people figure the suffering in the world is God’s way of thumping us for our sins, or toughening up our character. To their minds, God is just as graceless as they are, and looks at the suffering in the world as something he uses for his own secret purposes—not as something he wants to utterly do away with. Nor something he wants us, as we seek his kingdom first, Mt 6.33 to help him eradicate.

Part of Jesus’s passion.

The Law of Moses has no overt command against abusing suspects or prisoners. That’s why Jesus’s guards felt it was okay to smack him around. Some rabbis nowadays stretch the command to be extra-careful about sin while at war Dt 23.9 to include just about any war crime they can think of, and every way one can treat prisoners. But the Sadducees and Pharisees of Jesus’s day didn’t think that way. And those self-described “Christians” who ignore Jesus’s teachings don’t either.

Because the basis for treating prisoners humanely comes from the New Testament. It’s in Jesus’s Lambs and Kids Story, where visiting prisoners is commended. Mt 25.36 It’s the author of Hebrews instructing her readers to remember prisoners. He 13.3 It’s seen in the examples of Jesus, John the baptist, and the apostles when they variously suffered at the hands of Roman law enforcement. Since they didn’t merit their suffering, we know there’s such a thing as people who are unjustly accused, unjustly condemned, and unjustly executed.

Part of Jesus’s suffering was how he had to suffer injustice at the hands of his people, who didn’t study the Law to understand the Lawgiver, so it stands to reason they didn’t act like him. Now, are we gonna learn from their bad example? Or continue to repeat it?