by This may strike you as a strange question until you recall this was a question posed during Jesus’ lifetime. Here is the dialogue from the translation The Voice:
Jesus (to the crowds): 21 I am leaving this place, and you will look for Me and die in your sin. For where I am going, you are unable to come.
Jews: 22 Is He suicidal? He keeps saying, “Where I am going, you are unable to come.”
Given the strange things Jesus keeps saying, it is no doubt some of them wondered whether he intended to kill himself. Scholars think this kind of question persisted long after Jesus’ death. By the time of the Johannine community this may have been an ongoing charge against Jesus. If Jesus did kill himself, then he violated one of the ten commandments. Self-murder is still murder and is a grievous sin. How could Jesus then have been the Messiah?
If suicide means to take actions which will likely lead to one’s own death, then the charge may stick. In all four Gospels Jesus’ actions put him on a collision course with powerful people who had a vested interested in putting him to death. Jesus pushed them too far. Scholars think it was the temple incident—often mischaracterized as his cleansing of the temple—which put the nail in his proverbial coffin. Even at his defense or lack of defense, he handed his Jewish interrogators the charge that finally stuck: blasphemy. False witnesses were so inept they could not agree so Jesus came along and condemned himself with his own words.
Consider the modern example of suicide by cop. It happens dozens of times every year in this country. A person takes a handgun into a crowded mall and starts brandishing it about. He has no intention of hurting anyone other than himself. He wants to die and for whatever reason can’t bring himself to do it alone. Some terrorized person calls 911 and soon the police arrive. The man takes refuge in the back of a store. Perhaps he has taken a few faux hostages. It’s all part of the ruse. The man lowers the gun in the direction of the officers and a peace officer, fearing for his life, squeezes off three rounds in rapid succession. When they examine the dead man’s gun, they realize it was not loaded. Some poor policeman will have to live with it for the rest of his life. But he could not have known.
The man acted in a way which would likely lead to his death at the hand of another. Jesus did the same . . . or did he? One one level, the answer could be yes, until that is you factor in his motivation.
The suicide charge only works depending on one’s motive. In the case above of suicide by cop, the man wanted to die. He was hurting physically, mentally, emotionally and he wanted the hurting to stop. So he killed himself.
But there are those who sacrifice themselves for others. They act in such a way which will likely lead to their deaths, but they do so for noble reasons. Consider the soldier who falls on a grenade losing his life but saving the lives of his friends and others. Or consider the secret service agent who steps in front of a bullet meant for a presidential candidate. He loses his life to save another. Or consider the firemen who rush into a burning building to save a homeless man trapped in the building. The building collapses on them, and they all die. Factor in motive, then it changes everything. It is no longer suicide; it is now the greatest sacrifice of all.
I’ve always found it interesting when we talk about ultimate things we are driven to religious language. When firefighters give their lives in the line of duty we don’t turn to theater and say “they exited, stage left.” When soldiers give their lives in Afghanistan or any war for that matter, we don’t turn to sport and say, “they took one for the team.” No, we turn to religion because only religious language can carry the weight of ultimate things. This is why we say, the firefighters and soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice. Now, no one would say God was looking for human sacrifice because he wasn’t. He ruled that out a long time ago. Sacrifice is the only way we have to speaking of the sheer gravity of their selfless actions.
So Jesus did not kill himself, but he did act in such a way so as to bring about his death. In some extraordinary way he seemed to control those final hours and what ultimately happened to him. He could have avoided the cross altogether, gotten married and moved to the south of France. But Jesus had a different plan and a nobler motive grounded in love. Though he did not want to die, he did wish to lay down his life for others. When trying to make sense of the death of Jesus, early Christians turned where we do in order to talk about what happened. In some ways it was more natural for them because they lived in the shadow of the temple where real sacrifices went on daily. But again, no one was saying that God was looking for and demanding a human sacrifice. Still the language of sacrifice is the most satisfying way of thinking and pondering what happened to Jesus on the first Good Friday.
A Word in Edgewise 
In part, I guess the answer would depend on whether the question is asked by a Christian believer who holds that Christ was supernatural being as well as human, or whether the question is asked by someone who thinks he was a teacher but not supernatural. As being with godlike powers of omniscience, Christ would be born already knowing everything about his future including precisely how he would die. As preacher a crucifixion death would more likely be unintended consequence of stepping on the wrong toes.
But the question is actually more difficult than that. Although Old Testament canon suggests a final judgment by God, it’s far from clear from the texts exactly how God views human actions and the motives behind them, which is perhaps why one lives by prayer, “working out salvation with fear and trembling,” as Paul puts in in his letter to the Philippians. For instance, a commandment from the Pentateuch reads “Thou shalt not kill” in King James English, but has been re-translated as “You must not commit murder” based on what scholars think the original ancient Hebrew wording meant.
Meanings of ancient words, especially abstract terms arising within a legal context, will likely remain uncertain even to the best scholars. The author(s) of Exodus and Deuteronomy did distinguish deliberate from accidental killings, but don’t appear to have given legal prescriptions about suicide. Their society frowned on it, yet it’s likely that ancient Hebrews drew boundaries between all these acts differently than the modern West does, so that modern bible followers can get in over their head if trying to split hairs. In any event, the tradition of legal argumentation in Jewish life developed gradually and the Rabbinic phase taking every small point to a highly convoluted logical analysis seems to trace back to beginnings approximately at the Pharisees and other thought schools of Christ’s time, after the eastern Mediterranean had been exposed to Hellenism. Old Testament actors just seem to know whether they had sinned or not–after all, it was up to the citizen to approach the priests to be examined for religious purity, rather than for the priests (or later, the judges and then the kings) to act as detectives, nor does the OT ever mention the modern kind of trial where the parties retain legal counsel, as far as I know.
The gospel accounts do not show Jesus committing suicide by cop. In these affairs the subject actively does something to get police involved, then provokes the police to shoot, and does all this right away as a single sequence of events comprising an episode. Jesus ate the last supper and went to pray at Gethsemane; he did not go on a rampage or behave in any of the threatening ways one drawing police to scene usually would. He had disturbed the merchants in the temple, yet that was earlier–and not at all like a suicidal act. Jesus remained silent in custody, and never said anything effectively requesting that authorities issue a death sentence.
By the way, you obviously don’t need anything from my comment; I put it there to see if I understand your ideas correctly–yet the possibility that biblical-era classification of deaths and concepts of wrongdoing could be fundamentally alien to ours strikes me enough to ask. Best of God to you.
most logical act, is the act of suicide, to join heaven all bellowed and live a perfect life, for eternity … Amen
Some times I wish God I had granted me the same power and faith as Christ. That way I could know for sure that God and the afterlife were real. On the other hand if I was given that much faith and evidence of God’s existence then I’m sure the world and Satan would challenge me with much greater force. So if I’m to put my self in Christ’s position I imagine that his tremendous faith was met with tremendous opposition, which must have caused him a lot of pain and inner turmoil, so imagine escaping it into eternal life (death) would have been a relief but of course suicide wouldn’t be an option so the “death by cop” option seems very plausible to me. I once heard the all aborted children go to Heaven. If that’s true then they’re the lucky ones.
Some times I wish God had granted me the same power and faith as Christ. That way I could know for sure that God and the afterlife were real. On the other hand if I was given that much faith and evidence of God’s existence then I’m sure the world and Satan would challenge me with much greater force. So if I’m to put my self in Christ’s position I imagine that his tremendous faith was met with tremendous opposition, which must have caused him a lot of pain and inner turmoil, so I imagine escaping it into eternal life (death) would have been a relief but of course suicide wouldn’t be an option so the “death by cop” option seems very plausible to me. I once heard the all aborted children go to Heaven. If that’s true then they’re the lucky ones.
That Jesus could have gotten off the cross but instead passively died, one would think that He committed suicide since he chose to die. Perhaps He did die for a great cause, but I would think He also died to show how evil those who were executing Him were, much like the suicide by cop victim. Perhaps that person was so tormented that he feels he should not have to execute himself since he thinks the people around him are at fault. And of course that would inspire him to provoke people in authority to do the job, that they may appear evil and thus feel badly about what they have done. The death of Jesus was of course considered the PERFECT sacrifice. If Christians really took this seriously, why is it they seem to look for scapegoats today, usually from the non-Christian camps? Perhaps that’s what authorities want today, another sacrificial lamb. Therefore such a person gives them one. And when they get it, it seems to do anything but makes them feel good.
See the work of Rene Girard on the scapegoat issue. Especially his notion of unanimity minus one.
He could not get off, it’d theatrical
Although, the ethical and moral implications of this question remain; the “suicide by cop” (believe it or not, it is the first time I have heard of this term!) rational does seems to fit in with our need to logistically answer the question. I know what I believe. (But don’t wish to debate such). It appears that it will always be the eternal dilemma about: WHY WOULD GOD ALLOW THIS?, even if it were His “Beloved Son”? Was there absolutely no other way to do this? Apparently not, in many peoples minds. I think God knows best. Therefore, it is all according to how it should have been. I have peace with the whole scenario and it’s outcome. My faith lifts me above the things of this Earth. Apart from faith, it makes no sense to the average person.
Thanks for your reply. Take a look at the book on THE CRUCIFIXION by Fleming Rutledge. It is the best book I know on the topic, dealing with the what and why of the crucifixion.