_THE ARREST._
"When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples
over the brook Kidron, where was a garden, into the which He
entered, Himself and His disciples. Now Judas also, which betrayed
Him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His
disciples. Judas then, having received the band of soldiers, and
officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, cometh thither
with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all
the things that were coming upon Him, went forth, and saith unto
them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, was
standing with them. When therefore He said unto them, I am He, they
went backward, and fell to the ground. Again therefore He asked
them, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
answered, I told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek Me, let
these go their way: that the word might be fulfilled which He spake,
Of those whom Thou hast given Me I lost not one. Simon Peter
therefore having a sword drew it, and struck the high priest's
servant, and cut off his right ear. Now the servant's name was
Malchus. Jesus therefore said unto Peter, Put up the sword into the
sheath: the cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink
it? So the band and the chief captain, and the officers of the Jews,
seized Jesus and bound Him, and led Him to Annas first; for he was
father-in-law to Caiaphas, which was high priest that year. Now
Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was
expedient that one man should die for the people."--JOHN xviii.
1-14.
Jesus having commended to the Father Himself and His disciples, left the
city, crossed the Kidron, and entered the Garden of Gethsemane, where He
frequently went for quiet and to pass the night. The time He had spent
in encouraging His disciples and praying for them Judas had spent in
making preparations for His arrest. In order to impress Pilate with the
dangerous nature of this Galilean he asks him for the use of the Roman
cohort to effect His capture. It was possible His arrest might occasion
a tumult and rouse the people to attempt a rescue. Perhaps Judas also
had an alarming remembrance of the miraculous power he had seen Jesus
put forth, and was afraid to attempt His apprehension with only the
understrappers of the Sanhedrim or the Temple guard; so he takes the
Roman cohort of five hundred men, or whatever number he would reckon
would be more than a match for a miracle. And though the moon was full,
he takes the precaution of furnishing the expedition with lanterns and
torches, for he knew that down in that deep Kidron gully it was often
dark when there was plenty of light above; and might not Jesus hide
Himself in some of the shadows, in some thicket or cavern, or in some
garden-shed or tower? He could not have made more elaborate
preparations had he been wishing to take a thief or to surprise a
dangerous chief of banditti in his stronghold.
The futility of such preparations became at once apparent. So far from
trying to hide Himself or slip out by the back of the garden, Jesus no
sooner sees the armed men than He steps to the front and asks, "Whom
seek ye?" Jesus, in order that He might screen His disciples, wished at
once to be identified by His captors themselves as the sole object of
their search. By declaring that they sought Jesus of Nazareth, they
virtually exempted the rest from apprehension. But when Jesus identified
Himself as the person they sought, instead of rushing forward and
holding Him fast, as Judas had instructed them, those in front shrank
back; they felt that they had no weapons that would not break upon the
calmness of that spiritual majesty; they went backward and fell to the
ground. This was no idle display; it was not a needless theatrical
garnishing of the scene for the sake of effect. If we could imagine the
Divine nobility of Christ's appearance at that critical moment when He
finally proclaimed His work done and gave Himself up to die, we should
all of us sink humbled and overcome before Him. Even in the dim and
flickering light of the torches there was that in His appearance which
made it impossible for the bluntest and rudest soldier to lay a hand
upon Him. Discipline was forgotten; the legionaries who had thrown
themselves on spear-points unawed by the fiercest of foes saw in this
unarmed figure something which quelled and bewildered them.
But this proof of His superiority was lost upon His disciples. They
thought that armed force should be met by armed force. Recovering from
their discomfiture, and being ashamed of it, the soldiers and servants
of the Sanhedrim advance to bind Jesus. Peter, who had with some dim
presentiment of what was coming possessed himself of a sword, aims a
blow at the head of Malchus, who having his hands occupied in binding
Jesus can only defend himself by bending his head to one side, and so
instead of his life loses only his ear. To our Lord this interposition
of Peter seemed as if he were dashing out of His hand the cup which the
Father had put into it. Disengaging His hands from those who already
held them He said, "Suffer ye thus far"[20] (Permit Me to do this one
thing); and laying His hand on the wound He healed it, this forgiving
and beneficent act being the last done by His unbound
hands--significant, indeed, that such should be the style of action from
which they prevented Him by binding His hands. Surely the Roman officer
in command, if none of the others, must have observed the utter
incongruity of the bonds, the fatuous absurdity and wickedness of tying
hands because they wrought miracles of healing.
While our Lord thus calmly resigned Himself to His fate, He was not
without an indignant sense of the wrong that was done Him, not only in
His being apprehended, but in the manner of it. "Are ye come out as
against a thief with swords and with staves? I sat daily teaching in the
Temple, and ye laid no hold on Me." Many of the soldiers must have felt
how ungenerous it was to treat such a Person as a common felon,--coming
upon Him thus in the dead of night, as if He were one who never appeared
in the daylight; coming with bludgeons and military aid, as if He were
likely to create a disturbance. Commonly an arrest is considered to be
best made if the culprit is seized red-handed in the very act. Why,
then, had they not thus taken Him? They knew that the popular conscience
was with Him, and they dared not take Him on the streets of Jerusalem.
It was the last evidence of their inability to understand His kingdom,
its nature and its aims. Yet surely some of the crowd must have felt
ashamed of themselves, and been uneasy till they got rid of their
unsuitable weapons, stealthily dropping their sticks as they walked or
hurling them deep into the shade of the garden.
This, then, is the result produced by our Lord's labours of love and
wisdom. His conduct had been most conciliatory--conciliatory to the
point of meekness unintelligible to those who could not penetrate His
motives. He had innovated certainly, but His innovations were blessings,
and were so marked by wisdom and sanctioned by reason that every direct
assault against them had broken down. He did not seek for power further
than for the power of doing good. He knew He could lift men to a far
other life than they were living, and permission to do so was His grand
desire. The result was that He was marked as the object of the most
rancorous hatred of which the human heart is capable. Why so? Do we need
to ask? What is more exasperating to men who fancy themselves the
teachers of the age than to find another teacher carrying the
convictions of the people? What is more painful than to find that in
advanced life we must revolutionise our opinions and admit the truth
taught by our juniors? He who has new truths to declare or new methods
to introduce must recognise that he will be opposed by the combined
forces of ignorance, pride, self-interest, and sloth. The majority are
always on the side of things as they are. And whoever suggests
improvement, whoever shows the faultiness and falseness of what has been
in vogue, must be prepared to pay the price and endure misunderstanding,
calumny, opposition, and ill-usage. If all men speak well of us, it is
only while we go with the stream. As soon as we oppose popular customs,
explode received opinions, introduce reforms, we must lay our account
for ill-treatment. It has always been so, and in the nature of things it
must always be so. We cannot commit a crime more truly hated by society
than to convince it there are better ways of living than its own and a
truth beyond what it has conceived, and it has been the consolation and
encouragement of many who have endeavoured to improve matters around
them and have met with contempt or enmity that they share the lot of Him
whose reward for seeking to bless mankind was that He was arrested as a
common felon.
When thus treated, men are apt to be embittered towards their fellows.
When all their efforts to do good are made the very ground of accusation
against them, there is the strongest provocation to give up all such
attempts and to arrange for one's own comfort and safety. This world has
few more sufficient tests to apply to character than this; and it is
only the few who, when misinterpreted and ill-used by ignorance and
malignity, can retain any loving care for others. It struck the
spectators, therefore, of this scene in the garden as a circumstance
worthy of record, that when Jesus was Himself bound He should shield His
disciples. "If ye seek Me, let these go their way." Some of the crowd
had perhaps laid hands on the disciples or were showing a disposition to
apprehend them as well as their Master. Jesus therefore interferes,
reminding His captors that they had themselves said that _He_ was the
object of this midnight raid, and that the disciples must therefore be
scatheless.
In relating this part of the scene John puts an interpretation on it
which was not merely natural, but which has been put upon it
instinctively by all Christians since. It seemed to John as if, in thus
acting, our Lord was throwing into a concrete and tangible form His true
substitution in the room of His people. To John these words He utters
seem the motto of His work. Had any of the disciples been arrested along
with Jesus and been executed by His side as act and part with Him, the
view which the Christian world has taken of Christ's position and work
must have been blurred if not quite altered. But the Jews had
penetration enough to see where the strength of this movement lay. They
believed that if the Shepherd was smitten the sheep would give them no
trouble, but would necessarily scatter. Peter's flourish with the sword
attracted little attention; they knew that great movements were not led
by men of his type. They passed him by with a smile and did not even
arrest him. It was Jesus who stood before them as alone dangerous. And
Jesus on His side knew that the Jews were right, that He was the
responsible person, that these Galileans would have been dreaming at
their nets had He not summoned them to follow Him. If there was any
offence in the matter, it belonged to Him, not to them.
But in Jesus thus stepping to the front and shielding the disciples by
exposing Himself, John sees a picture of the whole sacrifice and
substitution of Christ. This figure of his Master moving forward to meet
the swords and staves of the party remains indelibly stamped upon his
mind as the symbol of Christ's whole relation to His people. That night
in Gethsemane was to them all the hour and power of darkness; and in
every subsequent hour of darkness John and the rest see the same Divine
figure stepping to the front, shielding them and taking upon Himself all
the responsibility. It is thus Christ would have us think of Him--as our
friend and protector, watchful over our interests, alive to all that
threatens our persons, interposing between us and every hostile event.
If by following Him according to our knowledge we are brought into
difficulties, into circumstances of trouble and danger, if we are
brought into collision with those in power, if we are discouraged and
threatened by serious obstacles, let us be quite sure that in the
critical moment He will interpose and convince us that, though He cannot
save Himself, He can save others. He will not lead us into difficulties
and leave us to find our own way out of them. If in striving to
discharge our duty we have become entangled in many distressing and
annoying circumstances, He acknowledges His responsibility in leading us
into such a condition, and will see that we are not permanently the
worse for it. If in seeking to know Him more thoroughly we have been led
into mental perplexities, He will stand by us and see that we come to no
harm. He encourages us to take this action of His in shielding His
disciples as the symbol of what we all may expect He will do for
ourselves. In all matters between God and us He interposes and claims to
be counted as the true Head who is accountable, as that One who desires
to answer all charges that can be made against the rest of us. If
therefore, in view of much duty left undone, of many sinful imaginings
harboured, of much vileness of conduct and character, we feel that it is
ourselves the eye of God is seeking and with _us_ He means to take
account; if we know not how to answer Him regarding many things that
stick in our memory and conscience,--let us accept the assurance here
given us that Christ presents Himself as responsible.
It is not without surprise that we read that when Jesus was arrested all
the disciples forsook Him and fled. John, indeed, and Peter speedily
recovered themselves and followed to the hall of judgment; and the
others may not only have felt that they were in danger so long as they
remained in His company, but also that by accompanying Him they could
not mend matters. Still, the kind of loyalty that stands by a falling
cause, and the kind of courage that risks all to show sympathy with a
friend or leader, are qualities so very common that one would have
expected to find them here. And no doubt had the matter been to be
decided in Peter's fashion, by the sword, they would have stood by Him.
But there was a certain mysteriousness about our Lord's purpose that
prevented His followers from being quite sure where they were being led
to. They were perplexed and staggered by the whole transaction. They had
expected things to go differently and scarcely knew what they were doing
when they fled.
There are times when we feel a slackening of devotion to Christ, times
when we are doubtful whether we have not been misled, times when the
bond between us and Him seems to be of the slenderest possible
description, times when we have as truly forsaken Him as these
disciples, and are running no risks for Him, doing nothing to advance
His interests, seeking only our own comfort and our own safety. These
times will frequently be found to be the result of disappointed
expectations. Things have not gone with us in the spiritual life as we
expected. We have found things altogether more difficult than we looked
for. We do not know what to make of our present state nor what to expect
in the future, and so we lose an active interest in Christ and fall away
from any hope that is living and influential.
Another point which John evidently desires to bring prominently before
us in this narrative is Christ's willingness to surrender Himself; the
voluntary character of all He afterwards suffered. It was at this point
of His career, at His apprehension, this could best be brought out.
Afterwards He might say He suffered willingly, but so far as appearances
went He had no option. Previous to His apprehension His professions of
willingness would not have been attended to. It was precisely now that
it could be seen whether He would flee, hide, resist, or calmly yield
Himself. And John is careful to bring out His willingness. He went to
the garden as usual, "knowing all things that should come upon Him." It
would have been easy to seek some safer quarters for the night, but He
would not. At the last moment escape from the garden could not have been
impossible. His followers could have covered His retreat. But He
advances to meet the party, avows Himself to be the man they sought,
will not suffer Peter to use his sword, in every way shows that His
surrender is voluntary. Still, had He not shown His power to escape,
onlookers might have thought this was only the prudent conduct of a
brave man who wished to preserve His dignity, and therefore preferred
delivering Himself up to being ignominiously dragged from a
hiding-place. Therefore it was made plain that if He yielded it was not
for want of power to resist. By a word He overthrew those who came to
bind Him, and made them feel ashamed of their preparations. He spoke
confidently of help that would have swept the cohort off the field.[21]
And thus it was brought out that, if He died, He laid down His life and
was not deprived of it solely by the hate and violence of men. The hate
and violence were there; but they were not the sole factors. He yielded
to these because they were ingredients in the cup His Father wished Him
to drink.
The reason of this is obvious. Christ's life was to be all sacrifice,
because self-sacrifice is the essence of holiness and of love. From
beginning to end the moving spring of all His actions was deliberate
self-devotement to the good of men or to the fulfilment of God's will;
for these are equivalents. And His death as the crowning act of this
career was to be conspicuously a death embodying and exhibiting the
spirit of self-sacrifice. He offered Himself on the cross through the
eternal Spirit. That death was not compulsory; it was not the outcome of
a sudden whim or generous impulse; it was the expression of a constant
uniform "eternal" Spirit, which on the cross, in the yielding of life
itself, rendered up for men all that was possible. Unwillingly no
sacrifice can be made. When a man is taxed to support the poor, we do
not call that a sacrifice. Sacrifice must be free, loving, uncompelled;
it must be the exhibition in act of love, the freest and most
spontaneous of all human emotions. "It is a true Christian instinct in
our language which has seized upon the word _sacrifice_ to express the
self-devotion prompted by an unselfish love for others: we speak of the
_sacrifices_ made by a loving wife or mother; and we test the sincerity
of a Christian by the _sacrifices_ he will make for the love of Christ
and the brethren.... The reason why Christianity has approved itself a
living principle of regeneration to the world is specially because a
Divine example and a Divine spirit of self-sacrifice have wrought
together in the hearts of men, and thereby an ever-increasing number
have been quickened with the desire and strengthened with the will to
spend and be spent for the cleansing, the restoration, and the life of
the most guilty, miserable, and degraded of their fellows." It was in
Christ's life and death this great principle of the life of God and man
was affirmed: there self-sacrifice is perfectly exhibited.
It is to this willingness of Christ to suffer we must ever turn. It is
this voluntary, uncompelled, spontaneous devotion of Himself to the good
of men which is the magnetic point in this earth. Here is something we
can cleave to with assurance, something we can trust and build upon.
Christ in His own sovereign freedom of will and impelled by love of us
has given Himself to work out our perfect deliverance from sin and evil
of every kind. Let us deal sincerely with Him, let us be in earnest
about these matters, let us hope truly in Him, let us give Him time to
conquer by moral means all our moral foes within and without, and we
shall one day enter into His joy and His triumph.
But when we thus apply John's words we are haunted with a suspicion that
they were perhaps not intended to be thus used. Is John justified in
finding in Christ's surrender of Himself to the authorities, on
condition that the disciples should escape, fulfilment of the words that
of those whom God had given Him He had lost none? The actual occurrence
we see here is Jesus arrested as a false Messiah, and claiming to be the
sole culprit if any culprit there be. Is this an occurrence that has any
bearing upon us or any special instruction regarding the substitution of
a sin-bearer in our room? Can it mean that He alone bears the punishment
of our sin and that we go free? Is it any more than an illustration of
His substitutionary work, one instance out of many of His habit of
self-devotion in the room of others? Can I build upon this act in the
Garden of Gethsemane and conclude from it that He surrenders Himself
that I may escape punishment? Can I legitimately gather from it anything
more than another proof of His constant readiness to stand in the
breach? It is plain enough that a person who acted as Christ did here is
one we could trust; but had this action any special virtue as the actual
substitution of Christ in our room as sin-bearer?
It is, I think, well that we should occasionally put to ourselves such
questions and train ourselves to look at the events of Christ's life as
actual occurrences, and to distinguish between what is fanciful and what
is real. So much has been said and written regarding His work, it has
been the subject of so much sentiment, the basis of so many conflicting
theories, the text of so much loose and allegorising interpretation,
that the original plain and substantial fact is apt to be overlaid and
lost sight of. And yet it is that plain and substantial reality which
has virtue for us, while all else is delusive, howsoever finely
sentimental, howsoever rich in coincidences with Old Testament sayings
or in suggestions of ingenious doctrine. The subject of substitution is
obscure. Inquiry into the Atonement is like the search for the North
Pole: approach it from what quarter we may, there are unmistakable
indications that a finality exists in that direction; but to make our
way to it and take a survey all round it at once is still beyond us. We
must be content if we can correct certain variations of the compass and
find so much as one open waterway through which our own little vessel
can be steered.
Looking, then, at this surrender of Christ in the light of John's
comment, we see clearly enough that Christ sought to shelter His
disciples at His own expense, and that this must have been the habit of
His life. He sought no companion in misfortune. His desire was to save
others from suffering. This willingness to be the responsible party was
the habit of His life. It is impossible to think of Christ as in any
matter sheltering Himself behind any man or taking a second place. He is
always ready to bear the burden and the brunt. We recognise in this
action of Christ that we have to do with One who shirks nothing, fears
nothing, grudges nothing; who will substitute Himself for others
wherever possible, if danger is abroad. So far as the character and
habit of Christ go, there is unquestionably here manifest a good
foundation for His substitution in our stead wheresoever such
substitution is possible.
It is also in this scene, probably more than in any other, that we see
that the work Christ had come to do was one which He must do entirely by
Himself. It is scarcely exaggeration to say He could employ no assistant
even in its minor details. He did indeed send forth men to proclaim His
kingdom, but it was to proclaim what He _alone did_. In His miracles He
did not use His disciples as a surgeon uses His assistants. Here in the
garden He explicitly puts the disciples aside and says that this
question of the Messiahship is solely His affair. This separate,
solitary character of Christ's work is important: it reminds us of the
exceptional dignity and greatness of it; it reminds us of the unique
insight and power possessed by Him who alone conceived and carried it
through.
There is no question, then, of Christ's willingness to be our
substitute; the question rather is, Is it possible that He should suffer
for our sin and so save us from suffering? and does this scene in the
garden help us to answer that question? That this scene, in common with
the whole work of Christ, had a meaning and relations deeper than those
that appear on the surface none of us doubts. The soldiers who arrested
Him, the judges who condemned Him, saw nothing but the humble and meek
prisoner, the bar of the Sanhedrim, the stripes of the Roman scourge,
the material cross and nails and blood; but all this had relations of
infinite reach, meaning of infinite depth. Through all that Christ did
and suffered God was accomplishing the greatest of His designs, and if
we miss this Divine intention we miss the essential significance of
these events. The Divine intention was to save us from sin and give us
eternal life. This is accomplished by Christ's surrender of Himself to
this earthly life and all the anxiety, the temptation, the mental and
spiritual strain which this involved. By revealing the Father's love to
us He wins us back to the Father; and the Father's love was revealed in
the self-sacrificing suffering He necessarily endured in numbering
Himself with sinners. Of Christ's satisfying the law by suffering the
penalty under which we lay Paul has much to say. He explicitly affirms
that Christ bore and so abolished the curse or penalty of sin. But in
this Gospel there may indeed be hints of this same idea, but it is
mainly another aspect of the work of Christ which is here presented. It
is the exhibition of Christ's self-sacrificing love as a revelation of
the Father which is most prominent in the mind of John.
We can certainly say that Christ suffered our penalties in so far as a
perfectly holy person can suffer them. The gnawing anguish of remorse He
never knew; the haunting anxieties of the wrong-doer were impossible to
Him; the torment of ungratified desire, eternal severance from God, He
could not suffer; but other results and penalties of sin He suffered
more intensely than is possible to us. The agony of seeing men He loved
destroyed by sin, all the pain which a sympathetic and pure spirit must
bear in a world like this, the contradiction of sinners, the provocation
and shame which daily attended Him--all this He bore because of sin and
for us, that we might be saved from lasting sin and unrelieved misery.
So that even if we cannot take this scene in the garden as an exact
representation of the whole substitutionary work of Christ, we can say
that by suffering with and for us He has saved us from sin and restored
us to life and to God.