Thomas Goodwin Answers: "Who Killed Jesus?"

"And therefore God's forsaking him was not such an one as befell Saul, when he also forsook God. No; Christ, though he kills him, does still trust in him." 

(Thomas Goodwin, Christ The Mediator, 280)

"See the love of God, who gave not his Son up only to the hands of men to be executioners of his body, but himself laid on upon his soul; and that because justice called for the soul, the very soul, ere it would be satisfied. Which no creature being able to reach, rather than we should not be redeemed, he will be the executioner himself; ties him to the cross, and with his own hand whips him, because no creature could strike strokes hard enough. A tender mother hath not the heart to whip her child for its own fault; God bruiseth Christ's soul himself for others; Zech. 13:7: 'Awake my sword against the man God's fellow;' yea, Isa. 53:10: 'It delighted the Lord to bruise him.' So much was his heart in our salvation, that this (otherwise the most abhorred act that ever was done) was sweetened to him by its end, our salvation, and made a matter of delight, not simply, but in relation to the end."

(Thomas Goodwin, Christ The Mediator, 286)

"They likewise see a greater and clearer instance and manifesto of his justice in putting to death his own Son, taking on him to be a surety for sinners, than if a world of worlds should have been damned for ever."

(Thomas Goodwin, A Discourse Of The Glory Of The Gospel, 10)

"There is the greatest of justice and wrath against sin. That God should put to death his own Son for sin, when he became but a surety for it, was a clearer manifestation of his anger, and a higher piece of justice against sin, than if he had made and there sacrificed millions of worlds."   

(Thomas Goodwin, A Discourse Of The Glory Of The Gospel, 21)

"If he be made sin, he must be made a curse; and which is more than all this, God himself must be the executioner, and his own Son the whipping stock."

(Thomas Goodwin, The One Sacrifice, 496)

"It was not the malice of the Jews, the falseness of Judas, the fearfulness of Pilate, or the iniquity of the times he fell into, that wrought his death, so much as God his father complotting with Christ himself, and aiming at a higher end than they did."  

(Thomas Goodwin, Christ Set Forth, 30)

"The death of Christ was the greatest and strangest design that ever God undertook and acted, and therefore surely had an end proportionable unto it. God, that 'wills not the death of a sinner,' would not for any inferior end will the death of his Son, whom he loved more than all creatures besides. It must necessarily be some great matter for which God should contrive the death of his Son, so holy, so innocent, and separate from sinners."

(Thomas Goodwin, Christ Set Forth, 31)

"And does it not move his Father, think you, who was the chief cause and motioner of his death, to think, my Son that was dead and died at my request for sinners is now alive again, and lives to intercede, and lives to 'see the travail of his soul' fulfilled and satisfied? " 

(Thomas Goodwin, Christ Set Forth, 120)