The Adventure Link
CSI: Jerusalem
The Participants in the Conspiracy
We continue our investigation into the events in Jerusalem around Easter. The first bit of evidence we are examining is the plot or conspiracy to murder Jesus. The apostle John underscores that fact in his account of the conspirators’ private discussions. John may have obtained details about what was said at the meeting from someone actually present when the conspiracy was being planned—probably Nicodemus, who is identified as a ruler of the Jews (John 3:1), yet seems to have been secretly sympathetic to Christ .
John reports that the Jewish leaders were fearful that Christ’s popularity among the people would result in pressure to recognize Him as Messiah and rightful ruler of the Jews. That would disrupt the uneasy peace with Rome, and it would enflame the anti-Roman Zealots, a rogue political faction who wanted to overthrow Roman rule. That in turn would pose a threat to the status of the high priest and Sanhedrin, who wielded a token authority in Jewish society (especially in religious affairs) by permission of Rome (John 11:48). The Jewish leaders were therefore doing all they could to quell messianic fervor in Israel. Moreover, Pilate was already responding to Jewish Zealotry by suppressing it with violence (Luke 13:1). So the Jewish leaders concluded that they had to silence Jesus, without regard to whether He was the true Messiah or not.
The leading character in this scene is Caiaphas, the high priest that year.
Caiaphas was a politically motivated, pragmatic opportunist. Biblically, of course, the high priesthood was passed through the Levitical line. During the Roman occupation, however, high priests were approved and appointed by Rome. Historical evidence strongly suggests that the office was often purchased with money or granted as a political favor. Caiaphas had married the daughter of Annas, former high priest (John 18:13). Annas still wielded significant power through his son-in-law, so that the office amounted to a kind of joint priesthood (Luke 3:2).
History records that Caiaphas held the office for more than two decades—an extraordinarily long time when we consider that in a hundred years of Roman occupation, twenty-eight men served as high priest. (When Caiaphas was finally deposed from the high priesthood in a.d. 36–37 by the Roman governor Vitellus, his successor lasted a mere fifty days.) The length of Caiaphas’s tenure suggests that he had somehow gained unusual favor with Rome. He was certainly corrupt. It was under his authority that the moneychangers plied their trade on the temple grounds. This had no doubt made him an extremely wealthy man. And given the fact that Christ had driven the money-changers from the temple it is no wonder Caiaphas hated Him so much.
Caiaphas was a Sadducee. The Sadducees were an aristocratic sect who controlled the temple in Jesus’ time. They were religious liberals and utter materialists, denying the resurrection of the dead, heaven, angels, and all the supernatural elements of Scripture (Acts 23:8). They interpreted the law of Moses with a rigorous literalism but tended to discount or downplay the rest of Scripture. They were therefore normally in opposition to the Pharisees, but the two groups had often conspired together to try to discredit Christ, and in each case He had silenced and embarrassed them (Matthew 16:1–4; 22:34–35; Mark 12:13–23).
Now they were united once more in the plot to kill Him.
It was Caiaphas who said, “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50). Although Caiaphas was talking about murdering Jesus to suppress a political threat, John saw an unintentional prophetic significance in his words: “Now this he did not say on his own authority; but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad” (vv. 51–52).
In other words, what Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin were planning for evil reasons, God intended for good . They wanted to kill Jesus in order to save the nation from the immediate threat of violent destruction at the hands of Rome. God was willing to sacrifice His Son in order to save the nation—indeed, people from every nation—from eternal condemnation because of their sin. The apostle John would employ almost identical language in a later epistle, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
And thus the evil plans of these conspirators coincided precisely with the eternal plan of God.
The timing was also in precise accord with the plan of God.
It was Passover, when the sacrificial lambs were slain. And Christ was to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He was the divine fulfillment of what Passover had always foreshadowed. “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
Notice that the scheme of the Sanhedrin was “to take Jesus by trickery and kill Him. But they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people’ ”(Matthew 26:4–5). They no doubt hoped to kill Him with as little fanfare as possible, and therefore they resolved to wait until the Passover season was over and Jerusalem would be less crowded. Their concern for avoiding the feast was not to preserve the sanctity of the feast (for criminals were often executed during the feasts, precisely because there were more witnesses at those times). But they wanted to avoid public scrutiny, and above all they did not want to provoke a public uproar.
This again reveals the sovereignty of God over the schemes of men. They wanted to avoid a public scandal on the feast day; God’s design was for Christ to die on Passover, in as public a manner as possible. “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). “Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass, when the Lord has not commanded it?” (Lamentations 3:37).
Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims from every corner of the empire who had come to celebrate the Passover. The historian Josephus estimated that more than a quarter-million sacrificial lambs would be slain in Jerusalem during a typical Passover season. On average, ten people would partake of one lamb, suggesting that the Jewish population in Jerusalem during Passover could swell to between 2.5 and 3 million. Even the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate (whose headquarters were in the coastal town of Caesarea) came to Jerusalem during the Passover. From the conspirators’ perspective, it was the worst time to seize Jesus, if they wanted to do it quietly. They had seen Him receive adulation from the crowds, and they knew they risked provoking a riot.
But Passover was His time—the time God had chosen, the time most fitting for the Lamb of God to die for the sins of the world. And the conspiracy would ultimately be carried out according to God’s timing, not Caiaphas’s. Always before, when the conspirators had tried to kill Jesus prior to His time, God had thwarted their plans. Now that they wanted to delay until a more expedient time, they could not postpone the perfect timing of God.
The Investigation Continues..
The Adventure Continues....
