Jesus was arrested, tried, and condemned to die even though He did no wrong.
Scripture: Luke 22:66-71; 23:1-5,13-16,18-25
Central Truth
Jesus spent His life preparing for this moment. Because He is one with the Father, He trusted God’s plan for saving humanity. Jesus endured the cross because of the joy to come (see Heb. 12:2), and He obeyed the Father because He continually practiced obedience.
Key Question
How does it affect your understanding of God’s love to know he allowed Jesus to be falsely accused and condemned for us?
Keep in Mind
Most students have probably been falsely accused. It’s possible some of them have even endured very difficult situations, or they’ve watched as family members have encountered serious accusations. We want to be sensitive to this issue, not knowing what all students have experienced. The idea is it to shift the conversation to the why: Why did Jesus endure all of this when He was completely innocent? The answer to this question is the gospel, summed up in Jesus’s words in John 3:16—God loved us so much He sent His Son to endure hostility, accusation, and death on our behalf so that we could spend forever with Him. While students may endure hostilities and accusations too, they have this great hope in Jesus: He took our place, enduring the ultimate accusation and carrying the weight of all our sin and shame so we don’t have to.
APPLICATION
The crowd’s opinion of Jesus drastically changed from when He rode into town (see Matt. 21:8-11). When have you allowed others’ opinions to affect your obedience?
THE WIN
FOR THE STUDENT: It’s difficult for students to not get swept up in the opinions of their friends and our culture. Remind students that our standards and convictions must be based on God’s Word, and our knowledge of Christ must be founded in Scripture instead of people’s opinions. We must take anything we hear and place it next to God’s Word to determine what’s true.
FOR THE LEADER: We tend to think only students struggle with allowing the “crowd’s” opinion to influence them, but we struggle with this too. As we encourage our students to always base their opinions on God’s truth, we should model this for them, especially in the face of such great tension in our culture.
