DISCOURSE XXI.
THE DEATH FOR ALL NATIONS.
[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday after Trinity, June 22, 1856.]
St. John XI. 49, 50.
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.
We naturally ask ourselves why Caiaphas should have taken this tone in speaking to his colleagues in the Sanhedrim? What did he wish them to do which they had not shown themselves ready to do? Had they not sent officers to take Jesus? Had they not encouraged the impulse of some amongst His hearers to stone him, if they had not issued a formal decree that He should be stoned? The explanation lies, I think, in the fact that Caiaphas was a Sadducee. It might be straining the words, 'Then gathered the chief priests AND the Pharisees a council,' to conclude from them that the priests in general were not Pharisees. But there are other good reasons for thinking that the accession of Caiaphas to the office of High Priest marks the commencement of a Sadducean ascendency. Now, the views of these schools respecting Jesus, however they might ultimately coincide, must have been determined by their other opinions. The Sadducees will have been much more disposed to regard Him as a fanatic than as a blasphemer; they will have dreaded His doctrine much less than the belief of His kingship among the multitude; consequently, they may have thought the experiment of putting Him to death by stoning very unwise. It was making a trial of their native jurisdiction which was, at least, hazardous; it might lead both to a tumult among their countrymen, and to interference from their masters. In the council which was held after the raising of Lazarus, it is evident that the indignation against Jesus for 'making Himself equal with God,'—even the indignation at a Galilæan for pretending to be a prophet—has been merged in the fear, lest if 'they let Him alone, the Romans should destroy both their place and nation.' Caiaphas takes advantage of the feeling, by whomsoever it may have been expressed, to state and defend his own policy. 'Ye know nothing at all'—'you who are trying to punish Him by your own laws. You do not consider that if we are in the danger you apprehend, "it is expedient that one man should die for the people:" that we should give Him up to the Romans, as a rebel against them; gulping down our scruples about our dignity and our reluctance to ask aid from the Cæsar for crushing an enemy, rather than that "the whole nation" should "perish," through our obstinacy in maintaining an ancient and doubtful privilege.'
This was genuine Sadducean language,—precisely what one would expect to come from such a mouth. But it was also triumphant language. The Pharisee must yield to it, or else forego the gratification of his own chief desire. He might very much have preferred to assert Jewish law. He might have been willing to run some risk in enforcing it. To do otherwise was to stoop to the maxims of a sect which he detested. But a compromise was the only possible course. By adopting it, he could ensure a general agreement among the rulers in bringing about the death of Jesus at the next Passover. And there would be some compensation. The death would be more ignominious than the national customs would have made it. We are told, therefore, that 'from that day forth they took counsel to put Him to death.' There was now no division, either about the end or the means. Pilate was to be the judge; the death they were to aim at was the death of the Cross.
Such, I suppose, was what Caiaphas himself understood by the words, 'It is expedient for us that one man should die for the nation, and that the whole nation perish not.' A narrow meaning enough,—one in which there was nothing of patriotism, in the vulgarest sense of that word. Caiaphas would save his nation by binding the chains of foreign domination more strictly upon it; he would put on a new badge of slavery, that it might be permitted to exist. But then, as now, men utter words—made, as they think, to fit an occasion—intended to express only some paltry device of their minds—which are pregnant with a signification that ages unborn will confess and wonder at. St. John does not say to his Ephesian readers or to us,—'We can see another force in the words of the High Priest than that which he put on them; we can translate them in our way and to our use.' But he says, 'There was that force in them always.' Caiaphas had not the power to contract his speech to the dimensions of his wit. 'Being high priest that year, he prophesied.' The grandeur of the office, which had witnessed the relation of God to His people for fourteen hundred years, manifested itself through the poor creature, who could look no further than the expediency of the moment; to whom the past and the future were as nothing. He who believed in no angel or spirit was compelled to be the spokesman of the Divine Word, even when he was plotting His death. Strange and awful reflection! And yet so it must be,—so experience shows us continually that it is. Our words are not our own,—we are not lords over them, whatever we may think. Is it not well for us to ask who is Lord over them; how such terrible instruments—so immeasurably more terrible than swords or rifles—may be used lawfully, for the protection, and not the destruction, of our brethren; how we may be the willing, and not merely, like Caiaphas, the unconscious, proclaimers of a Divine purpose; how we may execute it by obeying it, not by the crimes which strive, vainly, to defeat it?
Caiaphas prophesied, says St. John, that 'Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God which were scattered abroad.' It is not chiefly the form of the High Priest's sentence which suggests this thought to him; he does not play upon the words of it. The proposition, that Jesus should not be tried for violating Jewish law, but should be given up as a treasonable subject of Rome, involved the breaking down of barriers between the nations. The cross was emphatically a message to mankind,—to all tribes and races within the circle of the empire that had appointed this punishment for rebels and slaves. It is a thought which possessed the minds of all the apostles,—of none more than St. John. The cross was to do what the eagle had tried to do. It was to bind men in one society. I shall not dwell upon the words that announce that doctrine here, because it forms the most prominent subject in the following chapter of which I am going to speak. We shall find, I think, that every discourse and narrative in it is penetrated with the idea of crucifixion. So it becomes the suitable close to the records of our Lord's public ministry,—the right preface to those private interviews of which St. John is the only historian.