The first official resolution to have Jesus put to death was taken by the Jewish Sanhedrin immediately after He raised Lazarus to life. John records it in ch. 11:45-53 of his Gospel: "Some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." It is quite extraordinary how like the murder of Abel by Cain it is. What brought thunder to Cain's brow was that Abel's sacrifice was accepted as his own was not. What stirred the priests to hatred was that Jesus was favoured by God as they were not. Like Cain therefore they will slay their brother.
One would have thought that when they saw the finger of God as they saw it in the raising of Lazarus they would recognise it and adore. But adore they did not. Instead … "If we let him go on like this everyone will believe in him, and where will that leave us?" Even Pilate "perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up" … plain old-fashioned jealousy.
Let us beware how we condemn them for it. Every jealousy of our own puts us firmly in their company.
They knew exactly what they stood to lose: "our place and our nation."
By their place they meant the Temple … with their fat profits from it, and their prestige … Jesus had a power it was plain to see they themselves did not: they felt inferior. Gain and status. How many industrial strikes have been fomented from just those motives? Not for justice, but for gain and status. How many reputations have we ruined by gossip? Not for truth's sake, but for gain and status - to appear in a favourable light ourselves by casting our brother in a poor one.
"And our nation," they said, meaning the power they wielded in it.
I have a bit of the world in my hands too. It may only be a small department of an office, or a store where I am foreman or supervisor, but how jealously I guard it. "Let no man take it from me."
Of course, they gave their hatred a high-sounding name. Patriotism they called it; zeal for the heritage of their past, they called it; public-spiritedness they called it; guardians of civil order and religious freedom they called themselves - and signed their names to murder.
They cannot come into the light, for their schemes are evil; so they mask that evil with a cloak of good. Caiaphas it was who found that cloak for them - necessity. "We must be cruel to be kind."
"Blind," all of you," said Caiaphas, "don't you see? Either this man goes or the people perish." How plausible, how sensible. Regrettable, but necessary. It's him or them: and it's them we must protect. But Caiaphas lied. He knew - they all knew - that the real issue was: "It's him or us."
He cast himself in the role, not of a participant, but of a referee. What better way to disguise your own interest than to ascribe it to others and then offer to champion their cause? Good Caiaphas, willing to do the dirty job to serve the public interest. The man must be sacrificed.
"It is expedient for you," he says to them - diverting attention from himself, note - "that one man should die for the people" "For the people," he says to them, "not for you" - enabling the Sanhedrin to divert attention from themselves. "That the whole nation should not perish." So he threw dust in their eyes.
Caiaphas is a cunning and wicked rascal; he has cast himself in a noble light while he sets his hand to infamy, and seduces others to join him in it.
John has an interesting comment on what Caiaphas said.
"He did not say this of his own accord, but as the High Priest in office that year - that fateful year - he was prophesying: prophesying that Jesus would indeed die for the nation - and not for the nation only but to gather into one all the scattered children of God."
Caiaphas said more than he knew.
John sees his statement in two lights - human and divine. In the human light what Caiaphas said was false and evil. In the divine light his words bear a meaning that is both true and good.
The subject is the sacrifice of Christ. You may take Caiaphas' view of it. Or you may take God's view of it. The same words express both views. Everything depends on who the speaker is, and of whom he speaks. When Caiaphas says, "He must be sacrificed," it means one thing. But if Jesus Himself says, "He must be sacrificed," it means quite another thing.
Is it true that "It is better that one should die than that the many perish" ?
It depends how the choice of the one is made.
How did Caiaphas make it?
Let me take a simple illustration to demonstrate this.
A family is fleeing across the Siberian
snows on a dog-drawn sled, pursued by a pack of hungry wolves. The
family huddles together out of fear while the father stands, whip in
hand, urging on his team of dogs and watching anxiously to see
whether the wolves are gaining ground on them. He sees they are.
Their situation is desperate. Soon the pack will be upon them, and
they will all perish. There is only one thing to be done: one of
their number must be thrown to the wolves. While the wolves stop to
devour him the rest will get free.
But which of them shall it be? It is an agonising choice. The father
looks at the huddled forms of his family. How can he sacrifice any of
them? Can he sacrifice their mother? No. Should it be the eldest of
his children then … or the youngest … or the most
rebellious? The responsibility of making the decision is a hard
thing, a thankless task. But it must be made. Firmly and with
resolution, he makes it. The youngest boy must go. Swiftly he gathers
the boy in his arms and flings him off into the snow. In a moment the
wolves are devouring him, but the family is saved. What else could he
do?
He could have flung himself off.
Caiaphas was that father, Jesus the child he threw to the wolves. It was a dread task he had, and it needed bold resolution to do it; "what else could he do?" Caiaphas wanted to know. But the solution to his dilemma was not the sacrifice of another, but self-sacrifice. It never occurred to Caiaphas, that. "Let Him die, not me."
That is Caiaphas' view of sacrifice.
Noble? It is base.
And I find it incredible that the sacrifice of Christ has been represented in just that light. God looked out upon the world, we are told, and saw that its sin was very great … so great as to bring on His pursuing wrath. Unless His wrath be appeased, the whole race of man must perish. So what did God do? Flung His Son to the wolves.
Did God resolve in fury to strike and so he had His blow, it mattered not on whom it fell? I tell you "No." For if that be the meaning of the Cross then is God no better than a Caiaphas.
No, no. In Christ, God flung Himself into the breach.
What was the Lord's own view of it?
"I am the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep," He said. He also said, "The Son does nothing of Himself but only what He sees the Father doing." God was in Christ, there at the Cross. It is God, revealed in the flesh of His Son I see there, mauled by the wolf-pack. "God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, laid down His life for the sheep."
Said Paul in a remarkable statement recorded by Luke in Acts, "God redeemed the flock with His own blood." Acts 20:28
"In Christ, God Himself fully dwelt, making peace by the blood of His Cross."
Wrote Dr. Campbell Morgan, "In the moment when man first sinned, God gathered into His own heart all the issue of that sin - and it is not by the death of a man, but by the passion of God embodied and revealed in the man Christ Jesus, that God is able to keep His face turned in love toward rebellious man." (The Bible and the Cross - p. 34)
The sacrifice of Christ is the cost God met to set us free. It is the self-sacrifice of holy and eternal love we there behold. Kneel at that Cross and worship there, for in Christ crucified it is God Himself we worship.
Caiaphas saw the necessity for sacrifice; Jesus saw the necessity for self-sacrifice … saw it because He beheld God.
Jesus said exactly what Caiaphas said, "It is necessary that one should die for the people, that the whole race perish not." But Caiaphas meant, "Let it be him." Jesus meant, "Let it be me."
"I am the Good Shepherd," He said, "who lays down his life for the sheep."
Where did Jesus get that picture of the Good Shepherd? He got it from the Old Testament where it is used as a picture of God. Isaiah used it, Ezekiel used it, David used it, Zechariah used it. God Himself is the shepherd of His people, who cares for the perishing, who seeks the lost, who heals the wounded, who does not desert His flock, who interposes Himself between his sheep and the danger that threatens them. In all these ways God revealed Himself in Jesus.
One of the books of the Old Testament commonly neglected, but which Jesus quoted many times and which must therefore have been much in His mind, has the astonishing statement, made by God Himself, "They shall look on me Whom they have pierced, and shall mourn as for an only child." (Zechariah 12:10)
When Jesus stood in the breach between me and my sin, He did so because that was where He saw God standing. They stood in it there together. The Bible will not allow us to separate God and Christ at the Cross. Whatever mystery of pain is revealed by the cry of Dereliction, Jesus did not believe Himself forsaken. "He trusted in God that He would deliver Him." Had He believed Himself forsaken He could not have cried, "Father into Thy hands I launch my Spirit." The cry of dereliction does not mean that we must see God and Christ set over against each other, but rather it reveals a rending of the heart of God: our sin tore Him apart. The wounds of Jesus are God's wounds. It is because Jesus reveals to me the heart of God that I believe in Him, and have peace with God.
And it matters whether we see His sacrifice the way Caiaphas saw it, or the way Jesus saw it. If we see it Caiaphas' way, it will make us selfish and brutal. It will make us say, "Let him suffer, only so I go free." If we believe God had to fling someone to the wolves so sin could be propitiated, then we will believe that before forgiveness can be offered, someone has to be made to pay. It injects a harsh, mean spirit into the very act of forgiving. Law has to be satisfied. Even God Himself has to satisfy it.
Is this Law then bigger than God? "But it is His own Law," you will say. Yes, but that Law is not something beyond God Himself; it is but the expression of His will for the creatures He has made in their mode of existence. What God has to satisfy is His own nature, not some Law beyond Himself. It is the necessity imposed by His own nature He honoured at the Cross, not some Law that is bigger even than He is. And the way He satisfied His own nature was to sacrifice, not another, but Himself.
If we believe God flung His Son off the sled so we might sail on unscathed then we shall see Christ's sacrifice in a selfish light. The need for sacrifice has been met - we don't have to meet it. "Thank you very much Jesus. Very noble of you! Shame you had to suffer, but thank you, now I don't." Is that what it means? If so, the spirit of His sacrifice will never touch us - will bear no fruit in us.
Our place is not on the sled He has vacated; our place is in the snows with Him, companions to Him there, sharing His suffering with Him. Is that not what the New Testament says, over and over? "In my own sufferings I complete something of the untold sufferings which Christ suffers on behalf of His body the Church," says Paul. That is where Paul saw Himself in relation to the sacrifice of Christ. Do we?
"By this we know love," said John, "that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." That is where John saw that the sacrifice of Christ places us.
The fruit of the travail of His soul will be satisfied only when we are fashioned into His image and are enabled thereby to live in His Spirit.
Not sacrifice - the sacrifice of another - but self-sacrifice.
If we understand our Lord's self-sacrifice for us rightly it will awaken a like spirit of self-sacrifice in us; but if wrongly it will not. Unless the way we understand it motivates us to follow His example we have surely not understood it at all.
Finally, a simple point from John's record of the trial before Caiaphas may be noted
When charges were brought against Jesus He made no reply to them. When false witnesses testified against Him He was strangely silent. Why? Many suggestions have been offered in explanation … that the charges were too silly to merit a defence … that to do so was beneath His dignity … that it was self-effacement of the highest order. There is some element of truth in them all.
But it may be there is another reason. The Law of Moses as recorded in Deuteronomy 19:16-18 reads: "If a malicious witness rises against any man to accuse him of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days; the judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother …" The witnesses against Jesus were false witnesses, conned or bribed to help secure His death. By defending Himself successfully against them as He might have done, Jesus would have rendered them liable to the death penalty they sought for Him. Did He, by His silence, interpose Himself between them and that? At cost to His own life did He abort their guilt before they could incur it?
If that be the Spirit of the Master I worship then it behoves me to serve Him in the same spirit. Unless I do, I am not truly His disciple. "If Christ be God … and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."
"He died, to gather into one all the scattered children of God." They are truly His children only inasmuch as the spirit of His self-sacrifice is found in them, only insofar as the family likeness appears in them. Like Father, like son! If the new life that is God's gift to the new-born is indeed Christ's own life, will not our lives betray our new heredity, our true lineage? Shall we not live as He lived?
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