Would you have saved Jesus?

I was listening to a radio drama with my kids that portrayed the (mock) trial and execution of Jesus. In it, a boy who saw the injustice of it all screamed and yelled at people to "do something to stop it", and it hit me, would I have tried to stop it if I were there and saw how evil it was? But then, to stop it would have been to "gum up the works" of God's plan for the redemption of his people and the restoration of creation; surely those are good things, right? And yet, to stand by and let an innocent man die, the only truly man innocent of all things wrong and lawless in the world, would surely be presumptuous - "After all," I can hear myself saying, "God's going to save me by his death, so let him die so I can live." What kind of nonsense would that make?

It strikes me that the Gospels everywhere portray the disciples, the Jews, the Romans, and every other involved party as truly ingorant of the true significance of what was being accomplished in all this, and that's why they did nothing, ran away, or hid. The horror was too great to bear, but they had no means by which to oppose it. This may be why Jesus, when Pilate tries to pull rank with his "authority", says to Pilate two things that sound odd when juxtaposed: "You would have no authority if it were not given you from above," and "he who delivered me up to you has the greater sin." It's as though the human agent(s) delivering Jesus up to Pilate are to blame precisely because they are working from their own agenda and not God's - much like Assyria's role in the destruction of the northern tribes of Israel in Isaiah 10. God calls Assyria down, like a tool off the workbench, and then chastises it for it's arrogance in not recognizing God's greater purposes than Assyria's victory. God was at work to bring Assyria against his own people, just as he was at work to bring the Jews and the Romans against his Son. And yet, it truly was an evil event, for which the Jews, the Romans, and ultimately all of humanity are to blame. Paradoxically, Jesus's death, though evil, was glorious, because it demonstrated the righteousness of God over against the indignity we heap upon God and each other.

Maybe I'd hide like everyone else; maybe I'd become a martyr of sorts. Either way it goes, the abuse, torture, and murder of Jesus is paradoxically both an incomparably heinous evil and the wisdom of God: "...to those who are called, Christ [crucified is] the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Corinthians 1:21-25)