'And one of them, named Caiaphas being the high priest that same year,
said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is
expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the
whole nation perish not.'—JOHN xi. 49,50.
The resurrection of Lazarus had raised a wave of popular excitement.
Any stir amongst the people was dangerous, especially at the Passover
time, which was nigh at hand, when Jerusalem would be filled with
crowds of men, ready to take fire from any spark that might fall
amongst them. So a hasty meeting of the principal ecclesiastical
council of the Jews was summoned, in order to dismiss the situation,
and concert measures for repressing the nascent enthusiasm. One might
have expected to find there some disposition to inquire honestly into
the claims of a Teacher who had such a witness to His claims as a man
alive that had been dead. But nothing of the sort appears in their
ignoble calculations. Like all weak men, they feel that 'something must
be done' and are perfectly unable to say what. They admit Christ's
miracles: 'This man doeth many miracles,' but they are not a bit the
nearer to recognising His mission, being therein disobedient to their
law and untrue to their office. They fear that any disturbance will
bring Rome's heavy hand down on them, and lead to the loss of what
national life they still possess. But even that fear is not patriotism
nor religion. It is pure self-interest. 'They will take away _our_
place'—the Temple, probably—'and our nation.' The holy things were, in
their eyes, their special property. And so, at this supreme moment, big
with the fate of themselves and of their nation, their whole anxiety is
about personal interests. They hesitate, and are at a loss what to do.
But however they may hesitate, there is one man who knows his own
mind—Caiaphas, the high priest. He has no doubt as to what is the right
thing to do. He has the advantage of a perfectly clear and single
purpose, and no sort of restraint of conscience or delicacy keeps him
from speaking it out. He is impatient at their vacillation, and he
brushes it all aside with the brusque and contemptuous speech: 'Ye know
nothing at all!' 'The one point of view for us to take is that of our
own interests. Let us have that clearly understood; when we once ask
what is "expedient for us," there will be no doubt about the answer.
This man must die. Never mind about His miracles, or His teaching, or
the beauty of His character. His life is a perpetual danger to our
prerogatives. I vote for death!' And so he clashes his advice down into
the middle of their waverings, like a piece of iron into yielding
water; and the strong man, restrained by no conscience, and speaking
out cynically the thought that is floating in all their minds, but
which they dare not utter, is master of the situation, and the resolve
is taken. 'From that day forth' they determined to put Him to death.
But John regards this selfish, cruel advice as a prophecy. Caiaphas
spoke wiser things than he knew. The Divine Spirit breathed in strange
fashion through even such lips as his, and moulded his savage utterance
into such a form as that it became a fit expression for the very
deepest thought about the nature and the power of Christ's death. He
did indeed die for that people—thinks the Evangelist—even though they
have rejected Him, and the dreaded Romans _have_ come and taken away
our place and nation—but His death had a wider purpose, and was not for
that nation only, but that also 'He should gather together in one the
children of God that are scattered abroad.'
Let us, then, take these two aspects of the man and his counsel: the
unscrupulous priest and his savage advice; the unconscious prophet and
his great prediction.
I. First, then, let us take the former point of view, and think of this
unscrupulous priest and his savage advice. 'It is expedient for us that
one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.'
Remember who he was, the high priest of the nation, with Aaron's mitre
on his brow, and centuries of illustrious traditions embodied in his
person; set by his very office to tend the sacred flame of their
Messianic hopes, and with pure hands and heart to offer sacrifice for
the sins of the people; the head and crown of the national religion, in
whose heart justice and mercy should have found a sanctuary if they had
fled from all others; whose ears ought to have been opened to the
faintest whisper of the voice of God; whose lips should ever have been
ready to witness for the truth.
And see what he is! A crafty schemer, as blind as a mole to the beauty
of Christ's character and the greatness of His words; utterly
unspiritual; undisguisedly selfish; rude as a boor; cruel as a
cut-throat; and having reached that supreme height of wickedness in
which he can dress his ugliest thought in the plainest words, and send
them into the world unabashed. What a lesson this speech of Caiaphas,
and the character disclosed by it, read to all persons who have a
professional connection with religion!
He can take one point of view only, in regard to the mightiest
spiritual revelation that the world ever saw; and that is, its bearing
upon his own miserable personal interests, and the interests of the
order to which he belongs. And so, whatever may be the wisdom, or
miracles, or goodness of Jesus, because He threatens the prerogatives
of the priesthood, He must die and be got out of the way.
This is only an extreme case of a temper and a tendency which is
perennial. Popes and inquisitors and priests of all Churches have done
the same, in their degree, in all ages. They have always been tempted
to look upon religion and religious truth and religious organisations
as existing somehow for their personal advantage. And so 'the Church is
in danger!' generally means 'my position is threatened,' and heretics
are got rid of, because their teaching is inconvenient for the
prerogatives of a priesthood, and new truth is fought against, because
officials do not see how it harmonises with their pre-eminence.
It is not popes and priests and inquisitors only that are examples of
the tendency. The warning is needed by every man who stands in such a
position as mine, whose business it is professionally to handle sacred
things, and to administer Christian institutions and Christian ritual.
All such men are tempted to look upon the truth as their
stock-in-trade, and to fight against innovations, and to array
themselves instinctively against progress, and frown down new aspects
and new teachers of truth, simply because they threaten, or appear to
threaten, the position and prerogatives of the teachers that be.
Caiaphas's sin is possible, and Caiaphas's temptation is actual, for
every man whose profession it is to handle the oracles of God.
But the lessons of this speech and character are for us all. Caiaphas's
sentence is an undisguised, unblushing avowal of a purely selfish
standpoint. It is not a common depth of degradation to stand up, and
without a blush to say: 'I look at all claims of revelation, at all
professedly spiritual truth, and at everything else, from one
delightfully simple point of view—I ask myself, how does it bear upon
what I think to be to my advantage?' What a deal of perplexity a man is
saved if he takes up that position! Yes! and how he has damned himself
in the very act of doing it! For, look what this absorbing and
exclusive self-regard does in the illustration before us, and let us
learn what it will do to ourselves.
This selfish consideration of our own interests will make us as blind
as bats to the most radiant beauty of truth; aye, and to Christ
Himself, if the recognition of Him and of His message seems to threaten
any of these. They tell us that fishes which live in the water of
caverns come to lose their eyesight; and men that are always living in
the dark holes of their own selfishly absorbed natures, they, too, lose
their spiritual sight; and the fairest, loftiest, truest, and most
radiant visions (which are realities) pass before their eyes, and they
see them not. When you put on regard for yourselves as they do blinkers
upon horses, you have no longer the power of wide, comprehensive
vision, but only see straight forward upon the narrow line which you
fancy to be marked out by your own interests. If ever there comes into
the selfish man's mind a truth, or an aspect of Christ's mission, which
may seem to cut against some of his practices or interests, how blind
he is to it! When Lord Nelson was at Copenhagen, and they hoisted the
signal of recall, he put his telescope up to his blind eye and said, 'I
do not see it!' And that is exactly what this self-absorbed regard to
our own interests does with hundreds of men who do not in the least
degree know it. It blinds them to the plain will of the
Commander-in-chief flying there at the masthead. 'There are none so
blind as those who will not see'; and there are none who so certainly
will not see as those who have an uneasy suspicion that if they do see
they will have to change their tack. So I say, look at the instance
before us, and learn the lesson of the blindness to truth and beauty
which are Christ Himself, which comes of a regard to one's own
interests.
Then again, this same self-regard may bring a man down to any kind and
degree of wrongdoing. Caiaphas was brought down by it, being the
supreme judge of his nation, to be an assassin and an accomplice of
murderers. And it is only a question of accident and of circumstances
how far that man will descend who once yields himself up to the
guidance of such a disposition and tendency. We have all of us to fight
against the developed selfishness which takes the form of this, that,
and the other sin; and we have all of us, if we are wise, to fight
against the undeveloped sin which lies in all selfishness. Remember
that if you begin with laying down as the canon of your conduct, 'It is
expedient for me,' you have got upon an inclined plane that tilts at a
very sharp angle, and is very sufficiently greased, and ends away down
yonder in the depths of darkness and of death, and it is only a
question of time how far and how fast, how deep and irrevocable, will
be your descent.
And lastly, this same way of looking at things which takes 'It is
expedient' as the determining consideration, has in it an awful power
of so twisting and searing a man's conscience as that he comes to look
at evil and never to know that there is anything wrong in it. This
cynical high priest in our text had no conception that he was doing
anything but obeying the plainest dictates of the most natural
self-preservation when he gave his opinion that they had better kill
Christ than have any danger to their priesthood. The crime of the
actual crucifixion was diminished because the doers were so unconscious
that it was a crime; but the crime of the process by which they had
come to be unconscious—Oh how that was increased and deepened! So, if
we fix our eyes sharply and exclusively on what makes for our own
advantage, and take that as the point of view from which we determine
our conduct, we may, and we shall, bring ourselves into such a
condition as that our consciences will cease to be sensitive to right
and wrong; and we shall do all manner of bad things, and never know it.
We shall 'wipe our mouths and say: "I have done no harm."' So, I
beseech you, remember this, that to live for self is hell, and that the
only antagonist of such selfishness, which leads to blindness, crime,
and a seared conscience, is to yield ourselves to the love of God in
Jesus Christ and to say: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
II. And now turn briefly to the second aspect of this saying, into
which the former, if I may so say, melts away. We have the unconscious
prophet and his great prediction.
The Evangelist conceives that the man who filled the office of high
priest, being the head of the theocratic community, was naturally the
medium of a divine oracle. When he says, 'being the high priest _that
year_, Caiaphas prophesied,' he does not imply that the high priestly
office was annual, but simply desires to mark the fateful importance of
that year for the history of the world and the priesthood. 'In that
year' the great 'High Priest for ever' came and stood for a moment by
the side of the earthly high priest—the Substance by the shadow—and by
His offering of Himself as the one Sacrifice for sin for ever, deprived
priesthood and sacrifice henceforward of all their validity. So that
Caiaphas was in reality the last of the high priests, and those that
succeeded him for something less than half a century were but like
ghosts that walked after cock-crow. And what the Evangelist would mark
is the importance of 'that year,' as making Caiaphas ever memorable to
us. Solemn and strange that the long line of Aaron's priesthood ended
in such a man—the river in a putrid morass—and that of all the years in
the history of the nation, 'in that year' should such a person fill
such an office!
'Being high priest he prophesied.' And was there anything strange in a
bad man's prophesying? Did not the Spirit of God breathe through Balaam
of old? Is there anything incredible in a man's prophesying
unconsciously? Did not Pilate do so, when he nailed over the Cross,
'This is the King of the Jews,' and wrote it in Hebrew, and in Greek,
and in Latin, conceiving himself to be perpetrating a rude jest, while
he was proclaiming an everlasting truth? When the Pharisees stood at
the foot of the Cross and taunted Him, 'He saved others, Himself He
cannot save,' did they not, too, speak deeper things than they knew?
And were not the lips of this unworthy, selfish, unspiritual,
unscrupulous, cruel priest so used as that, all unconsciously, his
words lent themselves to the proclamation of the glorious central truth
of Christianity, that Christ died for the nation that slew Him and
rejected Him, nor for them alone, but for all the world? Look, though
but for a moment, at the thoughts that come from this new view of the
words which we have been considering.
They suggest to us, first of all, the twofold aspect of Christ's death.
From the human point of view it was a savage murder by forms of law for
political ends: Caiaphas and the priests slaying Him to avoid a popular
tumult that might threaten their prerogatives, Pilate consenting to His
death to avoid the unpopularity that might follow a refusal. From the
divine point of view it is God's great sacrifice for the sin of the
world. It is the most signal instance of that solemn law of Providence
which runs all through the history of the world, whereby bad men's bad
deeds, strained through the fine network, as it were, of the divine
providence, lose their poison and become nutritious and fertilising.
'Thou makest the wrath of men to praise Thee; with the residue thereof
Thou girdest Thyself.' The greatest crime ever done in the world is the
greatest blessing ever given to the world. Man's sin works out the
loftiest divine purpose, even as the coral insects blindly build up the
reef that keeps back the waters, or as the sea in its wild, impotent
rage, seeking to overwhelm the land, only throws upon the beach a
barrier that confines its waves and curbs their fury.
Then, again, this second aspect of the counsel of Caiaphas suggests for
us the twofold consequences of that death on the nation itself. This
Gospel of John was probably written after the destruction of Jerusalem.
By the time that our Evangelist penned these words, the Romans _had_
come and taken away their place and their nation. The catastrophe that
Caiaphas and his party had, by their short-sighted policy, tried to
prevent, had been brought about by the very deed itself. For Christ's
death was practically the reason for the destruction of the Jewish
commonwealth. When 'the husbandmen said, Come! let us kill Him, and
seize on the inheritance,' which is simply putting Caiaphas's counsel
into other language, they thereby deprived themselves of the
inheritance. And so Christ's death was the destruction and not the
salvation of the nation.
And yet, it was true that He died for that people, for every man of
them, for Caiaphas as truly as for John, for Judas as truly as for
Peter, for all the Scribes and the Pharisees that mocked round His
Cross, as truly as for the women that stood silently weeping there. He
died for them all, and John, looking back upon the destruction of his
nation, can yet say, 'He died for that people.' Yes! and just because
He did, and because they rejected Him, His death, which they would not
let be their salvation, became their destruction and their ruin. Oh!
brethren, it is always so! He is either 'a savour of life unto life, or
a savour of death unto death!' 'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation,
a tried Stone.' Build upon it and you are safe. If you do not build
upon it, that Stone becomes 'a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence.' You must either build upon Christ or fall over Him; you must
either build _upon_ Christ, or be crushed to powder _under_ Him. Make
your choice! The twofold effect is wrought ever, but we can choose
which of the two shall be wrought upon us.
Lastly, we have here the twofold sphere in which our Lord's mighty
death works its effects.
I have already said that this Gospel was written after the fall of
Jerusalem. The whole tone of it shows that the conception of the Church
as quite separate from Judaism was firmly established. The narrower
national system had been shivered, and from out of the dust and hideous
ruin of its crushing fall had emerged the fairer reality of a Church as
wide as the world. The Temple on Zion—which was but a small building
after all—had been burned with fire. It was _their_ place, as Caiaphas
called it. But the clearing away of the narrower edifice had revealed
the rising walls of the great temple, the Christian Church, whose roof
overarches every land, and in whose courts all men may stand and praise
the Lord. So John, in his home in Ephesus, surrounded by flourishing
churches in which Jews formed a small and ever-decreasing element,
recognised how far the dove with the olive-branch In its mouth flew,
and how certainly that nation was only a little fragment of the many
for whom Christ died.
'The children of God that were scattered abroad' were all to be united
round that Cross. Yes! the only thing that unites men together is their
common relation to a Divine Redeemer. That bond is deeper than all
national bonds, than all blood-bonds, than community of race, than
family, than friendship, than social ties, than community of opinion,
than community of purpose and action. It is destined to absorb them
all. All these are transitory and they are imperfect; men wander
isolated notwithstanding them all. But if we are knit to Christ, we are
knit to all who are also knit to Him. One life animates all the limbs,
and one life's blood circulates through all the veins. 'So also is
Christ.' We are one in Him, in whom all the body fitly joined together
maketh increase, and in whom all the building fitly framed together
groweth. If we have yielded to the power of that Cross which draws us
to itself, we shall have been more utterly alone, in our penitence and
in our conscious surrender to Christ, than ever we were before. But He
sets the solitary in families, and that solemn experience of being
alone with our Judge and our Saviour will be followed by the blessed
sense that we are no more solitary, but 'fellow-citizens with the
saints and of the household of God.'
That death brings men into the _family_ of God. He will 'gather into
one the scattered children of God.' They are called children by
anticipation. For surely nothing can be clearer than that the doctrine
of all John's writings is that men are not children of God by virtue of
their humanity, except in the inferior sense of being made by Him, and
in His image as creatures with spirit and will, but _become_ children
of God through faith in the Son of God, which brings about that new
birth, whereby we become partakers of the Divine nature. 'To as many as
received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to
them that believe on His name.'
So I beseech you, turn yourselves to that dear Christ who has died for
us all, for us each, for me and for thee, and put your confidence in
His great sacrifice. You will find that you pass from isolation into
society, from death into life, from the death of selfishness into the
life of God. Listen to Him, who says: 'Other sheep I have which are not
of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice: and
there shall be one flock' because there is 'one Shepherd.'