45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what He did, believed in Him, 46 but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. 48 If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. 50 Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. 53 So from that day on they made plans to put Him to death.
54 Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there He stayed with the disciples.
55 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. 56 They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That He will not come to the feast at all?” 57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest Him.
Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead, and the people who witnessed this miracle were now faced with a choice. Would they believe in Jesus, or not? Would they become His followers or His enemies? Verse 45 tells us that many did believe, however, the next verse begins with the word “but” as it describes the reaction of those who stubbornly refused to believe that Jesus was who He had been saying He was all along.
“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what He did, believed in Him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.” (John 11:45–46)
The reality is that those who have made up their minds that they will not believe, will never be convinced, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is. Verse 47 says the chief priests and Pharisees acknowledged the miracles Jesus had performed. They couldn’t dispute the evidence, but their minds were made up. Because of the hardness of their hearts, they simply refused to believe the truth which was staring them in the face.
Christians often wonder how people we know who have heard the Gospel continue in unbelief, but as we read the account of the meeting of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council in the closing verses of John 11, we can see how deeply rooted the sin of unbelief can be.
“The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him.’” (John 11:47–48) Their hearts were so darkened that it never occurred to them that Jesus might just be who He claimed to be. The Sadducees and Pharisees were the political and religious leaders of the nation of Israel, and they called a meeting immediately after the raising of Lazarus to discuss just what to do about the Jesus problem.
The question “What are we to do?” did not include belief in Jesus as one of the possible answers. Jesus had become an insurmountable problem for the ruling class, and the miracles He performed merely underlined their predicament. They admitted that Jesus had performed many miracles, but by refusing to believe in Him, they condemned themselves. Why did they refuse to believe? They didn’t want to believe because they preferred their sins to the Saviour.
Their problem was that the signs Jesus performed validated His claims to be the Son of God, while at the same time the signs exposed their illegitimacy as spiritual leaders. They were meant to be the spiritual leaders of the people. They should have been the first to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, but they were not interested in truth. All they wanted was to preserve their positions of authority.
The fact that they were under Roman rule worsened their problem. As Jesus’ popularity grew, there was a very real possibility of a religious uproar against the Pharisees, and any kind of civil unrest would have been ruthlessly stopped by the Roman army. When they said in verse 48, “the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation,” by place, they meant not only the temple, but also their privileged positions of power, which were granted by the Roman governor. By “our nation,” they meant the limited self-government they had, so they were clearly concerned about losing their authority.
The Jewish leaders were given a fair amount of latitude when it came to governing their own people. So long as the Jews behaved themselves and paid taxes to the Romans, they were in no danger, but Jesus had a lot of support, so they were worried that Pilate would not only deploy his troops to stop any uprising, but he might also punish an uprising by removing the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council. Even the temple might be destroyed, which actually did happen about 40 years later.
The solution was for the Sadducees and Pharisees to come together to plot against Jesus. This was a very unusual coalition, because they were enemies. The Pharisees were the religious leaders, and not a political party. Their task, as they saw it, was to be the religious watchdogs of the people by ensuring that the law was strictly obeyed to the letter.
And then you had the Sadducees. They were the politicians. They were the wealthy aristocrats who had worked with the Romans to preserve at least part of their privileged position, which was the main reason the religious leaders, the Pharisees, hated them so much. The Sadducees had much to lose, especially if there was some kind of civil uprising.
We also need to remember that this was less than a week before the annual Passover, so there were many visitors in Jerusalem at the time. It was a volatile situation, and tensions were high. The Roman oppressors were hated by the Jews, and the Passover was the most sacred of Jewish festivals, so it wouldn’t take much for things to spiral out of control.
And so you have these two enemies working together in their opposition to Jesus, because their common hatred of Jesus was more important than their rivalry with each other. The Pharisees hated Jesus for His religious views, because He exposed their sin, while the Sadducees hated Him because He was a threat to their privileged position. Not that Jesus had any political ambitions, but if He did, the Sadducees would’ve been the biggest losers.
The Pharisees and Sadducees hated each other, but they hated Jesus even more, so they decided to work together for their common cause. Later on we see the same thing in Luke 23 when Pilate, the Roman governor, and the Jewish king Herod, sworn enemies under normal circumstances, working together because it suited them both to do away with Jesus.
This gives us an insight into the hearts of sinful men.
People would rather form an alliance with their enemies than follow Jesus, and we see the same kind of opposition to Jesus whenever sin and the cross as the solution to the sin problem is proclaimed. Jesus was a threat to those who loved their sin 2000 years ago, and nothing has changed in our day.
The first step to salvation is recognising our sin for what it really is, but our sinful nature fights against that. Whenever we find ourselves rationalising our sin by saying that we’re not really that bad, and not as bad as so-and-so, we are in danger of making the same mistake as the Pharisees and Sadducees in John 11.
Caiaphas, the high priest, was the leader of the Sanhedrin, but he had no idea what he was really saying in verses 49 and 50. “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He thought he was being wise by basically saying that there are times when putting up with a lesser evil will prevent a larger one. As the high priest, the temple was his domain (or so he thought). His biggest concern was his own position. The worst case scenario for Caiaphas was the Romans destroying the temple, which would leave him with nothing, so his evil solution was to have Jesus put to death in order to save his own skin.
Had he rightly interpreted the Scriptures like he was supposed to, Caiaphas would have understood that the temple was a picture of Jesus. He was meant to fear God, not the Romans. His job was to uphold justice, not compromise with the Romans in order to protect his lofty position. The great irony here is that by putting Jesus to death, Caiaphas did not ensure Israel’s security, but rather its destruction. Because the Jews, led by Caiaphas, rejected the true Messiah, they went on to follow false messiahs who eventually led them in revolt against Rome, resulting in the total destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. The very thing they did to try and save themselves eventually destroyed them.
It never pays to oppose God, because you will pay the price of your rebellion against Him.
Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand,” or as John puts it in verse 51, “He (Caiaphas) did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation.” Without even realising it, Caiaphas had spoken the truth, but he was too blinded by his own arrogance to realise what he had said.
John MacArthur writes, “Caiaphas did not realise the implications of what he spoke. While he uttered blasphemy against Christ, God parodied his statement into truth. The responsibility for the wicked meaning of his words belonged to Caiaphas, but God’s providence directed the choice of words so as to express the heart of God’s glorious plan of salvation.”
Caiaphas unwittingly answered the great question, “Why did Jesus die?”
We find the answers to this question throughout the pages of the Bible. Caiaphas and his fellow Jews were about to observe the Passover, which formed part of the Old Testament sacrificial system, requiring spotless lambs to be sacrificed for human sin. During the annual Passover, the Jews were reminded of the events of Exodus 12, just before the Exodus itself from slavery in Egypt. That night the angel of death put to death the first born in every household, except those houses where the Jews put the blood of the sacrificial lamb on their doorframes. When the angel saw the blood, God’s wrath passed over them, and they were spared. Now, all these years later, in less than a week, Caiaphas’ words in verse 50 would come true. “One man should die for the people.”
This was a prophecy of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus died in the place of the guilty, as He bore the payment of our sins on Himself. As the blood of the lambs in Exodus 12 spared the lives of God’s people, so the sacrificial blood of the perfect, spotless Lamb of God spares us from the punishment we deserve, when we believe.
We looked at these verses from Isaiah 53 a couple of weeks ago: “He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:5-6)
Why did the Pharisees and the Sadducees hate Jesus so much? Why is He so hated today? The answer is that the Gospel is so offensive to sinful human beings. Sinners object to being told that their sin is their great problem, and the only way they can be made right with a holy God is by the atoning death of Jesus on the cross for their sins.
Part of the problem is that we have no idea of the severity of our sin. You hardly ever hear the word being used outside of the Church these days. We make far too light of our sin. About a thousand years ago, Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury wrote “You have not yet considered the heavy weight sin is.” Until such time as the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, and drives us to the cross in repentance, we will never understand the extent of the depravity of our hearts. The main obstacle to this is our failure to recognise the true gravity of sin. This is why “one man should die for the people.” Not to spare them from the wrath of the Romans, but to spare them from the righteous wrath of God.
Most of us treat sin far too lightly, almost as if it doesn’t really matter, but it matters to God, because He is holy and His justice is perfect. How often do we hear, even in Christian circles, “My God is a God of love, not a God of judgment.” But it is that same God of love who is so offended by our sin, and who judges all sin. Yes, God is love, and as 1 John 1:5 reminds us, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all,” but we cannot pick and choose the attributes of God that suit us and ignore those that we don’t like. Paul writes in Romans 1:18 that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
There are also many who object to the idea of God sacrificing His own Son. Some high profile atheists have even called the substitutionary atonement of Jesus a form of “cosmic child abuse.” But that just shows a total lack of willingness to properly study what the Bible teaches about who Jesus is, and why His death is so necessary for salvation. Jesus is God the Son, which is what makes His death on the cross not only necessary for us to be reconciled to God, but also sufficient for us to be forgiven for our sins.
The theologian John Gresham Machen wrote, “It is perfectly true that no mere man can pay the penalty of another man’s sin. But it does not follow that Jesus could not do it; for Jesus was not mere man but the eternal Son of God. The Christian doctrine of the atonement, therefore, is altogether rooted in the Christian doctrine of the deity of Christ. In the mystery of the Godhead, not only did God the Father give His only Son, but God the Trinity suffered self-sacrifice to redeem lost sinners. In the perfect unity of wills between Jesus the Son and God the Father was a loving resolve to free us from our sins.”
Harold Guilleboud was a French missionary in Ruanda about 100 years ago. He wrote of the atoning death of Jesus, “The divine Son, one of the three persons of the one God, He through whom, from the beginning of the creation, the Father has revealed Himself to man, took man’s nature upon Himself, and so became our representative. He offered Himself as a sacrifice in our stead, bearing our sin in His own body on the tree. He suffered, not only awful physical anguish, but also the unthinkable spiritual horror of becoming identified with the sin to which He was infinitely opposed. He thereby came under the curse of sin, so that for a time even His perfect fellowship with His Father was broken. Thus God proclaimed His infinite abhorrence of sin by being willing Himself to suffer all that, in place of the guilty ones, in order that He might justly forgive.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
What all of this means is that we can do nothing about our sin problem. Only God Himself can do that, and this is why the cross of Christ and the Gospel message is so offensive to the lost - to people like Caiaphas.
To him, having to put Jesus to death was a sordid, yet necessary thing to do, but the Bible reveals to us that the atoning death of Jesus is the greatest act of amazing grace. This is why the cross of Christ is central to all Christian teaching. I love the way Charles Spurgeon put it. He was once asked why all his sermons sounded the same. His answer was, “That’s easy. I take my text for the day, and I make a beeline straight for the cross.”
As I mentioned last week, John 11 brings to a close the first half of John’s Gospel, as Jesus’ public ministry comes to an end. The remaining chapters deal with the cross and the empty tomb.
We end chapter 11 with three distinct groups: Jesus and His disciples, the uncommitted crowd, and the hostile religious leaders.
In verse 54 John says, “Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there He stayed with the disciples.”
He was preparing Himself and His disciples for what He knew was coming - His death and resurrection. Jesus knew exactly about the plans to have Him executed. God is never caught off guard or surprised by the works of man. There is such a contrast between Jesus and His enemies. They were quite happy to break the Law of God because it suited them and their sinful plans, while Jesus takes the greatest crime ever committed by man and turns it into the greatest saving act in history.
The second group of people are the uncommitted or undecided crowds. “Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, ‘What do you think? That He will not come to the feast at all?’” (John 11:55–56)
The way this question is phrased shows that they didn’t expect Jesus to attend the Passover feast, because by now, everyone knew that the leaders had decided to have Jesus arrested and executed. So they did nothing, other than go through the motions of religious ritual, knowing full well that Jesus, once He was found and apprehended, would be put to death.
James Montgomery Boice writes, “Surely this is a deplorable picture. True, they had not yet set themselves in opposition to Jesus, as the Pharisees and chief priests had done. But neither had they come out for Him. Moreover, they were content merely to observe the outcome, which they knew might well mean the execution of a perfectly innocent man - and to do it even while they went about the aspects of their ceremonial religion.”
The point is that you cannot be neutral about Jesus and His claims. He has left no room for us to shrug our shoulders and say, “Whatever,” when it comes to making up our own minds about who He is. He said in Matthew 12:30, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
And then we have the third group, the religious leaders. “Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest Him.” (John 11:57) They had put their plans into place, and they would not be swayed. Jesus had to be put to death. Their own reputations depended on it.
These three groups of people represent all of humanity when it comes to deciding who Jesus is. In verse 56 the crowds asked, “What do you think?” And in verse 47 the Sanhedrin asked, “What are we to do?”
We have to answer those questions too. What do you think, and what are you going to do with Jesus?
There really are only three options, as we see with these three groups in John 11. You can try shrugging your shoulders and avoid making a decision like so many people today, but you have the same problem now as then: The evidence supporting Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God and the only means of being reconciled to God is simply too strong. Any honest study of the facts of Jesus’ life proves that He is the Son of God, just as the facts of His death and resurrection prove Him to be the only Saviour of the world.
You can try to ignore Him and get on with your own life, but Jesus will not go away. One day you are going to have to face up to what He said in John 8:24. “Unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins.” You can ignore Him for a season, but you won’t be able to ignore Him on the great day which is coming when He will return. As Philippians 2:10-11 tells us, there is coming a day when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Secondly, you can openly oppose and hate Jesus, just as Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin did. But in doing so, you will condemn yourself to face the eternal wrath of God. Contrary to the false teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, there is only one unpardonable or unforgivable sin: the sin of unbelief in Jesus Christ. Reject Him, and you will die in your sins, no matter how nice or how good a person you may think you are. There is no forgiveness for those who die without faith in Christ.
The only option which makes any sense and the only one which will bring forgiveness of your sins is by echoing the words of Lazarus’ sister Martha in verse 27. “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
Recognise the depravity of your heart, agree with the clear teachings of Scripture that you are in rebellion against a thrice holy God, and confess that there is nothing you can do to save yourself. Turn to Christ, repent of your sins, and He will forgive you. God will then declare you to be justified and righteous in His sight because of the sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf, and He will adopt you as His own child for all of eternity. Everlasting glory will be yours, because of Christ and Christ alone.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 11:45-57
The raising of Lazarus is the seventh sign or miracle recorded in the Gospel of John. All of these signs provide proof that Jesus is who He said He was: the Son of God.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, the Pharisees and many others refused to believe.
Why do so many continue to reject the truth of Jesus Christ?
Discuss the unwitting prophecy Caiaphas makes in verses 49 and 50.
What other instances can you think of where God has used the evil intentions of man for His greater purposes and His glory?
In verses 45, 53 and 56 we see three different groups of people: Those who believe in Christ, those who openly reject and hate Him, and those who are undecided.
Discuss the differences between these groups.
Pay particular attention to those who prefer to “remain neutral.” Why is it impossible to be uncommitted about Jesus and His claims?
How would you answer a friend who says that if Christianity “works for you,” that’s fine, but it’s not for them?