Jesus before Annas and Caiaphas.
The ecclesiastical trial comes first. Owing to the relation between Annas and Caiaphas, they probably dwelt in the same house, and there may have been an informal trial by Annas before the acting high priest, Caiaphas, investigated the case of Jesus.
I. THE INQUIRY OF CAIAPHAS. "The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine."
1. The object was to extract from the tips of Jesus some answer that might become the ground of his condemnation.
2. The high priest was anxious to ascertain the number of Christ's disciples and the principles of his teaching.
II. THE ANSWER OF JESUS. "I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in open synagogue, and in the temple, whither all the Jews resort; and in secret have I said nothing."
1. He does not answer the inquiry concerning his disciples, whose safety he fears to compromise.
2. He protests the entire publicity of his teaching.
3. There was nothing secret or esoteric in his doctrine. He taught publicly what he taught secretly. The disciples were charged to proclaim on the housetops what they heard in the ear (Matthew 10:27).
4. He demands a formal trial, and the summoning of witnesses. "Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them."
III. THE FIRST ACT OF VIOLENCE AND INSULT OFFERED TO THE SAVIOR. "And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so?"
1. Jesus had done nothing to justify this rude assault; for in his answer he was only using the liberty the Law allowed him. He was, as always, an innocent Sufferer.
2. Our Lord's answer was a gentle reproof of public injustice. "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?"
(a) that it is not wrong to defend our innocence or good name;
(b) that there is no inconsistency between our Lord's action in this case and his counsel in the sermon on the mount: "If they smite thee on one cheek, turn the other also." This condemns revenge, but does not silence us in the presence of wrong. Our Lord's own practice, therefore, explains his precept (Matthew 5:39).
The three denials of Peter.
After all the disciples had fled, some, like John and Peter, returned to the scene of our Lord's last trials. This fact must be remembered to Peter's credit.
I. THE HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF PETER'S FALL.
1. The first circumstance was his introduction into the court of the high priest by John. This brought him into dangerous association with Christ's enemies.
2. The second was his recognition by those who had seen him in the garden at the time of our Lord's arrest.
3. The third was his Galilaean accent.
4. The fourth was the injury he had done with the sword to Malchus. There was thus a combination of fear and presumption in his presence among Christ's enemies.
II. PETER'S FALL The denial of Christ was:
1. A serious crime, regarded by itself and its repetition, and in the light of the warning that preceded it, and the oaths and the curses that followed it. It was a crime full of ingratitude, cowardice, and lies.
2. Mark the peculiarity of this crime.
(a) He was an apostle, a chosen "fisher of men."
(b) He was admitted to the closest intimacy with our blessed Lord, and honored with his deepest confidence and affection. He might well say, "To whom shall we go but unto thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
(a) He had passed the previous night in watching. He was nervous and excited from the want of sleep, as well as from the prospect of losing the best of Masters.
(b) He was deserted by the other apostles, who were scattered everywhere. Peter's courage was of that character that rises when the danger is to be encountered with surrounding circumstances of sympathy.
(c) The personal help of Jesus was, besides, now suddenly withdrawn.
(d) His attack upon Malchus weakened his courage. When a man does a wrong thing or takes up a wrong position, he is from that moment a weaker man.
(e) He did not yet comprehend the necessity of Christ's death. "Far be it from thee." He was not, therefore, himself in a position to die.
(a) confident and zealous, but
(b) wanting in firmness and resolution. His character was a curious mixture of courage and fear.
III. PETER ROUSED FROM THE SLUMBER OF HIS CONSCIENCE. The crowing of the cock, and our Lord's look, awakened him to his true state. The look had a penetrative force in his soul.
1. It was a look of lasting remembrance. "Did I not tell thee that thou wouldst deny me?"
2. It was a look of inward sorrow. "Is this thy sympathy f or thy Friend?"
3. It was a look of blessed consolation. "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not."
4. It was a look that, perhaps, gave a timely hint to the apostle to depart at once from the scene of danger.
IV. THE EFFECTS OF PETER'S FALL.
1. He went out, and wept bitterly.
2. His fall made him humble and sympathizing and consolatory in his relations with the Church. His Epistles contain traces of the effects of his fall and his restoration.
Verse 28—Jn 19:16
The trial before Pilate.
This was the civil investigation following the ecclesiastical. The Sanhedrin wanted Pilate simply to ratify the sentence of death they had pronounced upon Christ.
I. THE EARLY RESORT TO PILATE. "Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment-hall, lest they should be defiled; that they might eat the Passover?
1. The Sanhedrin were eager for the destruction of Jesus, and therefore sought Pilate at an unusually early hour of the morning. Their eagerness led them to disregard the law that did not allow sentence and execution to occur on the same day.
2. They were obliged to seek Pilate's intervention; for the Romans had deprived the Jews of the right of inflicting capital punishment. They might sentence Jesus to death; it was for Pilate to execute the sentence.
3. Mark their hypocrisy. They feared the defilement of approaching a Gentile tribunal, but they did not shrink from the greater defilement of shedding innocent blood.
II. THE FIRST PHASE OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE. The Jews want their sentence on Jesus confirmed without examination. "If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee." They had judged Jesus; it was for Pilate to act the part of the executioner.
1. Pilate's attempt to evade this demand. "Take ye him, and judge him according to your Law." The Jews still had the right of excommunication and scourging, but not of inflicting capital punishment. Pilate imagined that they would be content with the exercise of such inferior punishment as remained to them.
2. The Jews parried the thrust by declaring, in effect, that nothing but the capital sentence would satisfy them. "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." This language implied their dependence on Pilate for carrying out the sentence.
3. This fact led to the fulfillment of our Lord's own prophecy. "That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die?
III. THE SECOND PHASE OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE. The Jews frame a political accusation. "Art thou the King of the Jews?" He had made himself a King!
1. The question of Pilate implies a charge on the part of the accusers as having given rise to it. The Jews said, "We found him perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute unto Caesar, saying that he is Christ the King" (Luke 23:2).
2. It was a question which admitted of two very different answers.
3. Our Lord's method of answering Pilate's inquiry. "Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" Everything depended in the answer upon the fact whether it issued from Jewish or from Gentile lips. Jesus acted wisely; he neither affirms nor denies anything.
4. Pilate's hasty and contemptuous rejoinder. "Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?" What crime have you committed?
5. Our Lord's answer is at once an admission and a denial of kingship, according as the standpoint of interpretation is Gentile or Jewish. "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."
(a) The revelation of God is the true scepter in Christ's hands; as unlike as possible to the methods of Roman rule. Truth is the realm of Christ.
(b) The subjects of this realm are all who hear the truth. "Every one that is of truth heareth my voice." "The spiritual man judgeth all things."
6. Pilate's contemptuous dismissal of the whole subject. "What is truth?"
(a) Pilate presumed upon a popular reaction in Christ's favor.
(b) But the chief priests were masters of the situation. Barabbas, a robber, was chosen, and Christ left for crucifixion.
(a) He hoped in this way to avert the extreme punishment by conciliating the less violent of Christ's enemies, and awakening the compassion of the populace. But he utterly miscalculated the fierceness of Jewish fanaticism.
(b) The parody of Jewish royalty—the crown of thorns, the purple robe, the "Hail, King of the Jews!"—was the scornful act of the Roman soldiers, who wished to pour contempt upon the Messianic hopes of a people they despised.
(a) There is a tone of pity and respect in Pilate's words, which meets no response among the Jews.
(b) The chief priests and officers demand his crucifixion. "They cried out, saying, Crucify him! crucify him!" The name of the cross is now mentioned for the first time, and by Jewish lips. Concessions had only made them bolder. Pilate could not now resist their extreme demands.
IV. THE THIRD PHASE OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE—THE RELIGIOUS ACCUSATION. "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God."
1. The Jews point to the article of their code which punishes blasphemy with death, and demand Pilate's execration of their sentence.
2. The charge was true. Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God.
3. The charge had a startling effect upon the half-skeptical, half-superstitious nature of Pilate. "When Pilate therefore heard that saving, he was the more afraid." He asked Jesus, "Whence art thou?"
4. Jesus gives no answer to the question.
5. Pilate's offence at the silence of Jesus. "Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?"
(a) The answer displays at once piety and meekness.
(b) It implies a Divine government of society. Under God "kings reign and princes decree justice." It therefore implies that Pilate was responsible for the use of his power.
(c) It implied that it was in accordance with a Divine dispensation that he was now subjected to the disposal of human authority.
(a) The Sanhedrin subjected their King to the authority of the foreigner, and thus "committed an act of theocratic felony."
(b) The greater the light, the more aggravated is the guilt of offenders. The Jews were more guilty than the Gentiles in the whole transaction of our Lord's crucifixion.
V. THE FOURTH PHASE OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE. The intimidation of Pilate. "Pilate saith to them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar."
1. The Jews appealed to Pilate's fears; for he was vulnerable upon many points, and Tiberius the emperor was the most suspicious of despots. "If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar's friend."
2. Pilate, in turn, avenges himself upon the Jews by compelling them to forswear all their Messianic hopes. They pronounced with their own lips the abolition of the theocracy. "Such a victory was a suicide." It marked the extreme desperation of the Jews, and their utter unscrupulousness in the pursuit of their bloodthirsty ends.
3. The success of their last maneuver. "Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified." The death of Jesus was compassed by a double treason:
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
Gethsemane.
The mind of man is naturally interested in places, not so much for their own sake, as for the sake of associations connected with them. Religions have their sacred places: the Jew cannot forget Jerusalem; the Mohammedan venerates the holy Mecca; and the Christian regards Gethsemane with a tender and pathetic interest.
I. THE GARDEN WAS TO THE MINDS OF THE TWELVE A PLACE OF HOLY INTERCOURSE WITH THEIR LORD. "Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples." Doubtless they learned much from Jesus as he taught in the temple and in the synagogues, in the highways, and in the dwellings of the people. But there was much he wished to say to them which could be said better in private. He took them aside into a desert place, and in seclusion and quiet communicated to them tidings which were not for the multitude. He gathered them together in an upper room, and discoursed to them with such profundity and spirituality, that it needed the illumination of events that were yet to happen to make plain his wonderful sayings. He led them away from the thronged streets and temple-courts of the city, crossed the Kedron ravine, and took them into the retired garden, that he might, without interruption, reveal to them whatever truth they were able to bear. Gethsemane thus became a symbol for the "quiet resting-places," where the Savior meets congenial souls, and unfolds to them the volume of his truth, the mystery of his love. Such intercourse binds the heart of the scholar to his Master. Such fellowship makes its lasting mark upon the character. "Did not I see thee in the garden with him?"
II. THE GARDEN WAS TO THE LORD JESUS THE SCENE OF BITTEREST MENTAL ANGUISH. It seems strange that John, who, we know, was one of the chosen three who were near Jesus in his agony and bloody sweat, says nothing of his Master's conflict in Gethsemane. This silence cannot be attributed to want of sympathy, for the beloved disciple felt keenly with and for his Lord. He was content that his fellow-evangelists should tell the awful sorrows of the Redeemer. The unexampled pains which Christ endured, when with strong crying and tears he made supplication, constituted a phase of his mediatorial ministry, not only deeply affecting to the sensitive mind that contemplates the scene of woe, but doubtless ever memorable to our Divine Representative himself.
"Our Fellow-Sufferer yet retains
A fellow-feeling of our pains;
And still remembers, in the skies,
His tears, his agonies, and cries."
"Perfect through suffering," the Captain of our salvation looks back to the hour when he drank the bitter cup in our stead; and to him Gethsemane is for ever linked with his sacred undertaking of our cause, with the price he raid for our redemption.
III. THE GARDEN WAS TO JUDAS THE SPOT WHERE HE HEARTLESSLY BETRAYED HIS LORD. To the mind of the traitor the one point of interest in Gethsemane was this—it was a place where Jesus might be apprehended by the officers of the priests and Pharisees, with no fear of disturbance or opposition. The garden, though near Jerusalem, was secluded and solitary; no admiring and sympathizing crowd would there protect or rescue the honored and beloved Teacher and Healer. After the capture, during the few hours of life remaining to him, Judas could not think of Gethsemane without distress of mind, which deepened, not into repentance, but into remorse. The thought of his own sin and of his Master's innocence must have oppressed his guilty soul, until he was driven to confession and to suicide. Terrible is the state of that man before whose memory there constantly arises the scene of crime from which he sees no deliverance, for which he sees no expiation, the scene of violence and cruelty, of debauchery, or of profanity. "Better had it been for that man that he had never been born."
IV. THE GARDEN IS TO CHRIST'S CHURCH FOR EVER ASSOCIATED WITH DIVINE SACRIFICE AND REDEMPTION. The same place, the imagination of which awoke the guilty conscience of Judas to misery and despair, is associated in all Christians' minds with the ransom which was paid for the deliverance of many from sin and death. There the anguish was endured, the cry was uttered, the cup was drunk, the perfect submission was rendered, the death on Calvary was anticipated. Very dear to the heart, very present to the memory, of Christendom is the garden whither Jesus oft resorted, where Jesus suffered himself to be betrayed, where Jesus took upon his heart the burden of human sin, where Jesus cried, "Not my will, O my Father, but thine, be done!"—T.
The unselfishness of Christ.
Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane. He had passed through the agony. He was in the presence of the betrayer and his myrmidons. He was about to endure the indignities of the trials and the anguish of the cross. Yet his thoughts were not of himself, but of his friends. Knowing the danger to which they were exposed, the weakness which still characterized them, he was anxious on their behalf that they should not be exposed to a trial which they were not then ready to bear. Hence the stipulation and the plea to which, in surrendering himself, he gave utterance, "If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way."
I. THERE WERE SPECIAL REASONS WHY AT THIS CRISIS JESUS SHOULD TAKE MEASURES FOR THE LIBERTY AND SAFETY OF HIS FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS.
1. Jesus intended them to be his apostles, and therefore it was not in accordance with his purposes that they should at that time accompany him to trial and to death.
2. It was part of Jesus' plan to die alone. Malefactors, indeed, yielded up their breath by his side. But as his was a death unique in its import, it was not consonant with his wishes that any of his adherents should partake his Passion, and distract attention from himself.
3. In all likelihood the faith and devotion even of his nearest friends were not such as to enable them to endure participation in his death. They could not suffer for Christ until Christ had first suffered for them.
4. Our Lord designed to fulfill his own declaration uttered in his intercessory prayer—that of those given to him he had lost none.
II. This REGARD OF JESUS FOR OTHERS WAS IN HARMONY WITH HIS CONDUCT THROUGHOUT HIS MINISTRY. It was his habit to forget himself in his benevolent work and in his regard for those whom he came to save. E.g. his disinterested and generous treatment of his forerunner, John; the complete self-forgetfulness which he displayed in the season of his temptation, when he, for the sake of his mission to men, lost sight of hunger, reputation, power; his benevolent ministry to the multitude, to the sick, the suffering, the sinful. His own ease, comfort, or renown, never occupied his attention; but no pains did he ever spare that he might serve the objects of his Divine pity. Christ would not have been himself if he had not thought of and secured the liberation of his threatened friends.
III. THE UNSELFISHNESS WHICH JESUS DISPLAYED IN THE HOUR OF HIS ARREST WAS PERFECTED IN HIS SACRIFICIAL SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. It was his own profession that the laying down of his life should be for his friends—his sheep. Paul testified that he gave himself a Ransom for all, that he was a Propitiation for the sins of the whole world. When the Savior—in accordance with the appointment of Divine wisdom, and with a view to ends the most purely benevolent that were ever conceived in the whole history of the universe—hung upon the cross, it seems to us that he uttered a cry which was the earnest of the spiritual deliverance and emancipation of mankind, a cry which was the expression at once of the deepest agony and the kingliest gladness of his compassionate nature, and-that the purport of the cry was this: "Let these men go!"
IV. CHRIST'S BENEVOLENT SELF-FORGETFULNESS IS OFTEN NEGLECTED AND ABUSED. In a family we sometimes observe one person peculiarly kind and unselfish, whose demeanor, so far from being an example and an advantage to the other members of the household, is abused. The yielding and self-denial of one sets others at liberty to carry out their own favorite plans, to gratify their own selfish tastes. There is something parallel to this in the way in which some persons in Christian communities take advantage, for their own temporal comfort and prosperity, of the influences of Christianity, without at all recognizing their obligation to the Savior for all the benefits they have received, social and domestic. So tar as we can see, such persons are little the better for all that Christ has undergone for them, for the immunity from many ills which he has secured for them. The self-devotion, magnanimity, and pity of the Redeemer should surely be to such, first a rebuke, and then an exhortation to a nobler and a better life.
V. THE SELF-SACRIFICING DEVOTION OF THE SAVIOR IS THE EVERLASTING INSPIRATION OF THE HIGHER LIFE OF MANKIND. This was the intention of Christ; and it was this prospect which sustained him amidst the treachery, the hatred, the desertion, the malice, the indignities, to which he exposed himself. How sorely the world was in need of a principle and power which should correct and heal its selfishness, is well known to every one who is acquainted with his own heart, who has studied the moral ills of human society. The wars and enmities which even now disgrace humanity are sufficient evidence of this. There were others than Christ who to some extent saw the evil, and desired to do what in them lay to remedy it. Even the heathen Seneca could say, "I would so live as if I knew I received my being only for the benefit of others." But that which philosophical theory, ethical dogma, even serene example, could not effect, has been in some measure effected, and will be brought at last perfectly to pass, by him whose unselfish, self-sacrificing spirit found utterance in the cry, "Let these men go!"—T.