The Unjust Sentence of Jesus

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 21 June 2015

We are tracing our Lord’s steps to the cross, to the resurrection, to His ascension, and His commissioning of His own for the ministry that He left behind. There are great truths coming to us from the Lord Himself. We will conclude this evening the unjust sentence of Jesus. It now is Friday morning, just after midnight. Jesus has celebrated the Passover with His disciples on the Thursday evening, instituted the Lord’s Table, and taught them some great truth recorded in John 13 through 16, and prayed to the Father for them in John 17.

Then, leaving the upper room with the eleven disciples, since Judas is already dismissed to carry out his act of betrayal, they proceed to the Mount of Olives, to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus enters into long prayer sessions with the Father, three of them, in which He does battle with Satan. And out of those times of prayer, He comes strengthened and ready for the cross. Then the garden is approached by Roman soldiers, temple police, Jewish leaders and Sanhedrin members, including the high priest. They have all come to arrest Jesus. There is no crime, no indictment, but they want Him dead and out of the way.

We know that this is the hour of Satan. Jesus said to those leaders in Luke 22:53, “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” When Judas left the upper room, before Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, John 13 tells us, “Satan having entered into Judas, he immediately went out, and it was night.” This is something new for Satan, because most of the time prior to this, Satan has been trying to prevent Christ from going to the cross. But by now, he is resigned to the fact that Jesus is going to the cross. And so Satan’s effort now is to cause the cross to be so terrible, and the death there so fatal, that Christ cannot rise again.

And after Jesus did rise, Satan continues to spread lies that He had not risen, trying to stop the message of the resurrection. In John 8:44, Jesus said to those leaders who wanted Him dead, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

But it is important to understand that it is also a holy moment; where God is at work. And here God uses the anger, hatred and evil of Satan, to fit within His own holy redemptive purpose. It is like Genesis 50:20, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” We must always remember that whatever Satan does, is always within the confines of God’s will and purpose. So it is a plan that has its origin, in one sense in hell, but has its genuine heavenly source in heaven.

There’s a third party involved in the arrest and execution of Christ, and that is evil men. In John 11:47-48, just after Lazarus had been raised from the dead, a few weeks before this very hour, they met together and said, “He does many miracles, and 48 if we don’t kill Him, the Romans are going to come and take away our temple and our nation.” In other words, they would take away their position, destroy their temple, wipe out their nation, and that would be the end of them.

And that is what prompted Caiaphas then to say in verse 50, “it is better that one man should die, rather than the whole nation.” And from John 11:53 we know that he didn’t realize that that was a prophecy that Jesus would in fact die for His nation. And so, unwittingly and out of a mouth of hatred, came a prophecy of the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ for the redemption of His people. But the Jewish leaders only saw it as a threat to their existence.

Now understand this: because this is the plan of God, in no way this lessens the evil of Satan’s conspiracy and the evil of the men who carried it out on earth. Because this is God’s plan; He overrules their chosen evil to do His good work. And so let us look at this scene where they have come and taken Jesus captive in the garden of Gethsemane and they have tied Him up. Here they come to take Jesus Christ, the King of glory and the Son of God, and they come quite determined.

At Jesus very appearance, John 18:6 says, the whole crowd of almost one thousand fell down to the ground. And lying there, they were exposed to the power and judgment of the Son of the living God. Now, any thinking person is going to say to himself, “This is not just another man.” But there was absolutely no response in their hard hearts, and no response in their cold heads. The power that crushed them to the ground brings about no reality of the deity of Jesus Christ or His lordship.

A little later, Peter takes out his sword and slices off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. Jesus walks up and said, “That’s enough; let’s stop before we have a battle.” He touches his head and creates instantaneously a new ear on that man. Now, that is a miracle not of power and judgment, but of kindness and mercy. Many people would think, “Wow, this power that gives an ear instantaneously to someone who has lost his is something to reckon with; we better examine who He is.” But no they go right pass that warning sign as well.

They were so locked into their own false religion, they were so locked in to their own self-righteousness, into their own style of living and worshiping, and into their own power and prestige such that they were so threatened by Jesus’ holiness and purity and power that they were afraid to find out the truth. Because if they found out that He was the Messiah, His own words had damned them. And rather than find out the truth, they wanted Him gone. And so the scene is filled with a recklessness, to get rid of Him in spite of all this.

We discussed last Sunday their wonderful system of jurisprudence and justice, right? Their supreme court was the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council that met in Jerusalem, made up of 71 elders, priests with the high priest so they would always have a majority in voting. And it was built on the premise that everyone in a trial is entitled to first, a public trial, secondly an opportunity for defense, and thirdly, no conviction without the conformation of at least two or three witnesses. Built into their laws was that any false witness would pay the same penalty he sought for the one he witnessed against.

They built into their safeguard system also that no court could convene at night, or in any other place than the Judgment Hall itself. That no one could be executed the same day in which he was tried. That there always had to be a day intervening. Then all the votes had to be carefully counted; that no one could incriminate himself by giving testimony against himself, which testimony could stand alone against him. All those were built-in safeguards. But they violated every single one of them in this trial.

Now, beginning at verse 59, we find out that they can’t come up with anything to accuse Jesus of, so they look for false witnesses. They can’t even find people to do that and successfully get it across. Finally they come across two of them, verse 61, “They say that He said He was able to destroy the temple of God and build it in three days.” And we know from Mark’s gospel, that even those two couldn’t agree on what Jesus said. So now no one can find anything, because He didn’t ever do anything wrong; He was God in human flesh. So it was impossible to get an accusation.

Now we come to the illegal and unjust condemnation. Notice that they are in a big hurry, they have to get Jesus convicted, and do it all before dawn, before the people come and start milling around, because the people like this man Jesus. So Caiaphas in verse 62 “stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” They have just had a group of these false witnesses coming and going, trying to concoct lies about Jesus, none of it successfully. And Jesus stands there, with a gaze right into the eyes of Caiaphas that must have burned his soul, without saying a word.

Up to this point, all they can hear is the echo of their own stupidity and anger, and it is bad. But Jesus said nothing, because there was nothing to say. If they weren’t going to uphold their own Jewish law, He would. Maimonides, the Jewish scholar said, “The law does not permit the death penalty as a sentence for a sinner by his own confession.” And that had always been Jewish law. Their law provided for Him to stand there silent.

The calmness of Christ against the fury of Caiaphas is very visible. You see, nobody really here sees Jesus on trial when you look at the story, in fact you see them on trial. It’s clear who Jesus is. And verse 63 says, “Jesus remained silent.” Isaiah 53:7 said when He was led to His trial, “Like a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.” And Caiaphas knew it was the silence of innocence.

So Caiaphas became totally frustrated, such that he changed further plans for bringing in false witnesses. Verse 63, “And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” ‘I adjure you,’” means I call you to a solemn oath, “by the living God.” This is the most sacred oath that a Jew could ever call for. You vow before the living God who hears you and who punishes liars, who is a God of truth, “that you tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.”

This is that which they want Jesus to say, because to them to claim to be the Son of God is to claim to be deity, and that is blasphemy, if you are not God. Only God has the right to claim that. And so they want Jesus with His own mouth to blaspheme, and then they will have their reason for execution, because in Leviticus 24:16, it says, “If anyone blasphemes the name of God, he is to be put to death.”

The only crime they could come up with was that He said He was God, and that wasn’t a crime, because that was the truth. So Jesus was executed not for saying He was God apart from truth, but for being the God He said He was. Remember in Luke 4:21, He read the scripture from Isaiah in the synagogue, closed the scroll in His hands, set it down and said, “This day is this fulfilled in your ears.” In other words, I am the Messiah. I am the one the Scripture speaks of.

When Jesus met with the woman of Samaria at the well in John 4:25, she said, “I know that the Messiah comes whose name is Christ.” And He said in verse 26, “I that speak to you am He.” He claimed overtly that He was the promised Messiah. And when He rode into Jerusalem in Matthew 21, the people said, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” All those were Messianic titles. But He had not flaunted that. In Matthew 16:20, He said to His disciples, “Tell no man that I am the Messiah.”

Jesus also claimed to be the Son of God. That’s why Caiaphas asks Him that, “Are You the Son of God?” What did he mean by that? Did he mean just another creature God made? No, he meant deity. Why else would they call it blasphemy? When Jesus said He was Son of God, He meant He was equal with God, a Father and a Son of the same essence, the same nature. And Jesus also said He was one with God, “I and the Father are one.” In John 19:7, the Jews said, “He has to die because He made Himself the Son of God.”

And Jesus answered by oath by the living God in verse 64, “Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Yes, I am the Messiah, I am the Son of God, I swear by the living God. Jesus here quotes Daniel 7:13-14, this prophecy of the Messiah, “hereafter shall you see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Jesus speaks here of being exalted for a coronation, and He will return to earth as judge and King to establish His eternal kingdom.

In other words, “Caiaphas, you are going to see Me again when I come in clouds of glory as judge of all the earth. You are going to see Me at the Great White Throne when I call out of the graves all those that have lived and rejected Me and My Father, and I become your eternal judge. And He calls Himself here “Son of Man,” because that is the phrase that is used in the prophecy of Daniel, and that was His common title for Himself. And so He has condemned Himself in their eyes by His own words, which their own law says is unjust.

Verse 65, “Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy.” Well, was it really blasphemy? No, because what He said was true. But the high priest didn’t want to know the truth. In John 10:38, Jesus said, “even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” They knew He raised Lazarus from the dead.

There are many people like that today, who reject Christ not because they have examined Him, but because they are afraid to examine it, because it will overturn their life and expose them for what they are. And so, Caiaphas did what a high priest had a right to do; according to Leviticus 21:10, to tear his garments when God was dishonored, and so he does a little theatrics. He’s not grieved because God’s name is dishonored, he is happy because Jesus can now be executed.

No one is there to prepare a defense for Jesus. No evidence of anything. Verse 66, “What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.” This again is not according to judicial protocol at all. Where is the scribe who is writing down the “yeas” and the “nays,” and the waiting for a pause, so that each one knows the seriousness of his decision? It’s a mad mob, screaming for His blood. Mark 14:64 says it was unanimous. The usual careful vote was thrown out. And the law of the Mishnah said you had to postpone the vote for a death a day was also ignored. They wanted Him dead fast.

Look how the supreme court of Israel responds. Verse 67-68, “Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, 68 saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?” This is supposedly the best of all the leaders, who come together to constitute the Supreme Court. And in Luke 22:65, it says “they did many other things to blaspheme Him.” Jesus told the truth, that’s not blasphemy. Spitting in the face of God that is blasphemy of an absolutely inconceivable type.

And then Mark indicated that when the Sanhedrin got tired of it, they turned Him over to the temple police, and they kept slapping Him and doing the same thing. This is a group of people who have abandoned all sense of virtue, righteousness and holiness. And any person who rejects Jesus Christ stands with the spitters and slappers. Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, “If you are not with Me, you are against Me.”

If you wrongly judge Jesus Christ, He won’t wrongly judge you. He will rightly judge you. The sin here is the sin of proud, self-sufficient unbelief. It is the sin of thinking you can be right with God by ignoring the mediator. I’m overwhelmed at the grace of Christ. My deserved condemnation is carried out in His undeserved condemnation.

I place my faith in Jesus Christ. I was once a captive at the will of Satan, but Christ became a captive that I might be set free. I was once an outcast forsaken, a soul lost without fellowship, but Christ became forsaken, that I might be made forever a member of the family of God. I was once accursed from God, but Jesus became accursed for me. I was dead, but Jesus died that I might live. Let’s bow in prayer.