43. The religious trial

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Our Blessed Lord had two natures: Divine and human. Both were on trial and on totally different charges. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of Simeon that He was a “sign to be contradicted.” The judges could not agree as to why He should die; they could only agree that He must. The religious judges, Annas and Caiphas, found Him guilty of being too Divine; the political judges, Pilate and Herod, found Him guilty of being too human. Before the one, He was too unworldly; before the other, He was too worldly; before the one, He was too heavenly; before the other, too earthly. From that day on, His Church too would be condemned on contradictory charges, either for claiming to be too divine by some, or else for being too human by others. Condemned on contradictory charges, He was sentenced to the symbol of contradiction, which is the Cross.

If Our Lord had been taken in the temple or stoned on the many occasions when His enemies prepared to do so, the many prophecies concerning His appointed sacrifice as the Lamb of God would not have been fulfilled. When earlier the Pharisees had told Him that Herod had a mind to kill Him, Our Lord said that He would not deliver Himself to death in Galilee, but in Jerusalem. Furthermore, He told them no man could take His life away from Him; He would lay it down of Himself.

But in the garden, when:

All His disciples abandoned Him, and fled.

MATTHEW 26:56 

 

He said to the chief priests:

This is your hour and the power of darkness.

LUKE 22:53

He meant that, when He had taught publicly, voyaging through Judea and Galilee, none of them ever laid hands on Him nor did they succeed in throwing Him over the precipice at Nazareth. But evil had its Hour, the Hour of which He had so often spoken. In that Hour, God gave to evil the power to affect a momentary triumph in which the spiritually blind would think they had gained a victory. The hands of the wicked are bound until God allows them to work, nor can they master a stroke one moment after God commands them to stop. The powers of darkness could not touch Job’s property or person until God allowed them; nor could they prevent Job’s prosperity returning when God willed it. So too, in this Hour, darkness would have a power that would be powerless at the Resurrection.

The soldiers bound Him and led Him away. Perhaps one of the reasons for doing so was because Judas had given orders to hold Him fast. Furthermore, the type of Christ’s sufferings was foretold in Isaac when Abraham, preparing to offer his son to God as a sacrifice, implied such forced holding:

Then he bound his son Isaac.

GENESIS 22:9

Then they led Him off; He was not driven nor dragged because of His willing submission. As Isaias foretold, He would be led like a lamb to the slaughter. As the new Jeremias, the Man of Sorrows, He was put in chains for His testimony to the truth.

The route taken was across the brook of the Cedron, then through the “Sheep Gate” which was near the temple and through which the sacrificial animals passed. He was first led away to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiphas, the high priest of that year. Inasmuch as the Romans were in authority in the country, it is likely that a high priest was elected every year; Annas, however, was actually the prominent figure of the day, even though Caiphas was the presiding officer of the Sanhedrin at the moment.

Inasmuch as both were representatives of religious power, the first trial was on the grounds of religion. Annas had five sons, and we learn from another source that they had booths in the temple and were among the buyers and sellers cast out by Our Lord when He purged the temple. From Annas, Christ was led to Caiphas. The Old Law ordained that each animal sacrificed for the sins of the people be led before the priest. So Christ, the representative of the priesthood of the Spirit, is led before Caiphas, the representative of the priesthood of the flesh. It was this same Caiphas who had said:

It was best to put one man to death,

For the sake of the people.

JOHN 18:14

It was thus evident that he and the Sanhedrin had resolved upon the death of Christ before the trial took place. A night trial of the Sanhedrin was illegal, but in the mad desire to do away with Christ, it was held nevertheless. Though it had no right to proceed to a capital execution, it did retain, however, the power to institute trials. As the trial began:

The high priest questioned Jesus

About His disciples,

And about His teaching.

JOHN 18:19

Since Caiphas had already determined that Our Lord should die, he had no intention of learning anything; rather he sought to find some excuse for the planned injustice. The first questions were about Christ’s organization and followers, whom the Sanhedrin feared as a threat to themselves; for earlier the Pharisees had reported:

Look, the whole world has turned

Aside to follow Him.

JOHN 12:19

The judge was not so much concerned with the names of Christ’s followers as with their number; the purpose of this inquiry was to draw from Him an answer suited to their condemnation. The query about His doctrine was to discover if He was the head of a secret society or if He was preaching some novelty or heresy.

Our Lord saw the trickery behind the questions, and with absolute fearlessness, born of innocence, answered that His doctrine was known to the people and those who heard Him could give testimony thereof. He had no underground, no Fifth Column, no doctrine that was for the few. There was nothing secret about His doctrine; everyone heard it, for He preached in public.

I have spoken openly before the world;

My teaching has been given in

The synagogue and in the temple,

Where all the Jews forgather;

Nothing that I have said was said in secret.

Why dost thou question Me?

Ask those who listened to Me what My words were;

They know well enough what I said.

JOHN 18:20, 21

Christ spoke to the world, as well as to the Jews. He would not testify in His own behalf; everyone knew what He taught. Caiphas was only pretending to be ignorant of that which was common knowledge. Had not the Sanhedrin already excommunicated anyone who believed in Christ? In His humility, He did not ask that the dumb, the halt, the blind, and the lepers be summoned, but rather only those who had heard Him. The temple authorities had long been turning their backs upon the people; now He bade them summon those whom they despised. Against this aristocratic isolation between office and people, Christ placed His doctrine and His followers. It was the first Christian approval put upon the opinion of the man in the street. Thus in reply to the double enquiry, He answered the first by an appeal to the common folk; and the second by affirming that the book of His teaching was never closed; it was open to all.

When Our Lord answered thus, one of the officers who stood nearby struck Him with the palm of his hand saying:

Is this how Thou makest answer to the High Priest?

JOHN 18:22

Was it the hand of Malchus, he whose ear was cured by the Savior an hour or so before? In any case, it was the first blow struck against the Body of the Savior—a blow unreprimanded by the judges. Thus Caiphas and the court really put Christ outside the sphere of the law. To escape the content of the message, the soldier criticized its form a common reaction to religion. Those who have not the capacity to criticize Christ resort to violence. They made Him an outlaw. In all meekness, Our Blessed Lord answered him:

If there was harm in what I said,

Tell us what was harmful in it;

If not, why dost thou strike Me?

JOHN 18:23

With one breath, Our Lord might have hurled the offender into eternity, but since He was to be stricken for the transgressions of men and to be bruised for their iniquities, He would accept that first blow in patience. But at the same time, He bade the man to testify, if possible, against Him so that there might be a reason for the violence. Our Lord once said that when struck we should turn the other cheek. Did He? Yes! He turned His whole Body to be crucified.

Failing to convict Him out of His own mouth on either His doctrine or His disciples, they now hoped to do so by the testimony of false witnesses:

The chief priests and elders and

All the council tried to find

False testimony against Jesus,

Such as would compass His death.

But they could find none, although many

Came forward falsely accusing Him.

MATTHEW 26:59

Now anxious to put Him to death rather than to judge justly, they summoned false witnesses who contradicted one another. Finally two witnesses came forward with conflicting testimony. One of them quoted Him as saying:

I will destroy this temple that is

Made by men’s hands, and in three days

I will build another, with no hand of man to help Me.

MARK 14:58

These words were a perversion of those which Our Blessed Lord spoke at the beginning of His public ministry when He referred to what was now beginning to take place. After driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple, the Pharisees asked Him for a sign of His authority. Our Lord, referring to the temple of His Body said:

Destroy this temple, and in three days

I will raise it up again.

JOHN 2:19

Now the false witnesses claimed that Jesus had said that He would destroy the temple; but what He actually had said was that they would destroy it and the temple would be His Body, which had just received a violent blow. Their earthly temple would have its blow too from the hands of the Romans under Titus. He did not say, “I will destroy,” but rather, “You will destroy.” Nor did He say, “I will build another,” but He said, “I will raise it up,” referring to His Resurrection. The distortion of His saying was nevertheless a witnessing to the purpose of His coming and a fixing in their minds of His Cross and glory. As the concave and convex of a circle are made by the same line, so their voluntary wickedness and His voluntary suffering are united. Divine purposes will be attained now as they were in Joseph, His prefigurement, who told his brethren who sold him that they intended evil, but that God would make good come from it. In his delivery into the hands of evil, Judas delivered Our Lord to the Jews, the Jews delivered Him to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles crucified Him. But, on the other side of the picture, Our Lord said that the Father had delivered His Son as a ransom for many. Thus the evil but free actions of men are overruled by God, Who can make a fall a felix culpa, or a “happy fault.”

The Incarnate Word was wordless during the false testimony. Caiphas, annoyed because thwarted by the contradictions, exclaimed:

I adjure Thee by the living God to tell us

Whether Thou art the Christ, the Son of God?

MATTHEW 26:63

Caiphas here addressed Our Lord in his capacity as high priest or minister of God, and put Christ under an oath to make an answer. Caiphas raised no question about the destruction of the temple or His disciples. The question was: Was He the Christ or the Messias; was He the Son of God; was He clad with Divine power; was He the Word made flesh? Was it true that God, Who has at sundry times and in diverse manners spoken to us through the prophets, in these last days has spoken to us through His Son?

Art Thou the Son of God? Jesus opened His mouth and said two words:

I am.

MARK 14:62

With sublime consciousness and majestic dignity, He answered that He was the Messias and the Son of the Living God. There was a hidden allusion to the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses. Then, passing from His Divine nature to His human nature, He added:

Moreover I tell you this;

You will see the Son of Man again,

When He is seated at the right hand of God’s power,

And comes on the clouds of heaven.

MATTHEW 26:64

First He affirmed His Divinity, then His humanity; but both under the personal pronoun “I.” In the hour when the greatest indignities were heaped upon Him, He gave testimony of being at the right hand of God, whence He will come on the last day. But if He would sit at the right hand of the Father He would ascend into heaven; if He was to have a Second Coming, it would be to weigh on the scales the reception souls gave to His First Coming, “His humbled existence on earth.” Our Lord was also referring to Psalm 109, which predicted the exaltation of the Son of God after His humiliation, when He will make His enemies His footstool. Despite the certain condemnation facing Him, He permitted His glory to shine forth amidst the civil injustice as He proclaimed His triumph, His reign, and the fact that He would judge the world. The Psalmist had already prophesied what He had spoken and Daniel more clearly had foretold:

Then I saw in my dream, how one came

Riding on the clouds of heaven,

That was yet a son of man; came to where

The Judge sat, crowned with age,

And was ushered into his presence.

With that, power was given him, and glory,

And sovereignty; obey him all must, men of every race

And tribe and tongue; such a reign as his

Lasts for ever, such power as his the ages cannot diminish.

DANIEL 7:13, 14

A few years after this trial, as Stephen was being martyred and as he fell crushed beneath the weight of stones, He saw what Christ now said to Caiphas:

I see heaven opening, and the Son of Man

Standing at the right hand of God.

ACTS 7:55

A storm broke over His head as the Sanhedrin heard Him admit His Divinity. The clock was about to strike twelve; the first trial ended as the high priest rendered his decision that He was guilty of blasphemy:

At this, the high priest tore his garments

And said, He has blasphemed!

MATTHEW 26:65

It was customary with the Hebrews to rend their garments as a manifestation of great grief and pain, as Jacob rent his garments when he received news of the death of his son Joseph, and as David rent his clothes at hearing of the death of Saul. In tearing off his garments, Caiphas was actually stripping off his priesthood, putting an end to the priesthood of Aaron and opening the way to the priesthood of Melchisedech. The robes of priesthood were rent and destroyed by the hands of the high priest himself, but the veil of the temple would be rent by the hand of God. Caiphas rent from bottom to top as was the custom; God rent the veil from top to bottom, for no man had a share in it. Caiphas now asked the Sanhedrin:

What further need have we of witnesses?

You have heard His blasphemy for yourselves;

What is your finding? And they all pronounced

Against Him a sentence of death.

MARK 14:63, 64

The conclusion was quickly reached; the Prisoner had blasphemed God. Life itself must taste death. But His death was determined precisely because He had proclaimed His Eternal Divinity. Caiphas before had said that it was useful that one man should die rather than that the Romans should, more than ever, take over the nation. Now he and the Sanhedrin took a different position; shifting from the utilitarian and the legal, they argued that His death was necessary to preserve the spiritual unity existing between God and His people. The Sanhedrin divested itself of the responsibility for the charge by invoking God against God.

Now that He was condemned as a blasphemer, all things were allowable, for He had no rights.

Then they fell to spitting upon His face

And buf eting Him and smiting Him on the cheek,

Saying as they did so, Show Thyself a prophet,

Christ; tell us who it is that smote Thee.

MATTHEW 26:67, 68

They covered His face and thus shut out the light of heaven; and yet in covering His eyes, it was their own they blinded. The veil was really on their hearts, not on His eyes. They who were so proud of their earthly temple now buffeted the Heavenly Temple, for in Him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead. They used the title “Christ” sarcastically; but they were more right than they knew, for He was the Messias, the Anointed of God. Caiphas had obtained what he wanted, namely, to convict Christ by His own words of blasphemy, for He had claimed to be the Son of God by nature. The inquiry was whether or not He was both the Messias and the Son of God, who had been foretold by the prophets. It was Christ the Prophet, therefore, Who was on trial before Caiphas; it would be Christ the King Who would be on trial before Pilate; and it would be Christ the Priest who would be disowned on the Cross as He offered His life in sacrifice. In each instance, there would be mockery of His office. Here the mockery was directed to Christ the Prophet in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaias:

I of erred My body defenseless to the men

Who would smite Me,

My cheeks to all who plucked at My beard;

I did not turn away My face when

They reviled Me and spat upon Me.

ISAIAS 50:6

The religious trial was over. The Son of God was found guilty of blasphemy; the Resurrection and the Life was sentenced to the grave; the eternal High Priest was condemned “by the high priest for a year.” It is now the Sanhedrin that mocked Him; next it will be the Roman Empire, and then at the Cross it will be both combined. But now that the Sanhedrin had found Him guilty, it proceeded to deliver Him over to Pilate, thinking that he who alone had authority to put Christ to death would do so without hesitation. The prophecy that He would be delivered up to the Gentiles was now fulfilled. But as Judas brought on himself the death he had prepared for Christ, so Caiphas in deciding to put Christ to death out of fear of the Romans, merely prepared for the ultimate destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the temple. As the people gave up Christ to the Romans, so were they later given up to the Roman power.

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