John 11:48Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

And yet this happened, contrary to their expectation. The Romans took both the nation and the city. They took them because the Jews put Him to death.

Indeed, His deeds were above every suspicion. He who healed the sick, taught a virtuous life, and commanded obedience to the authorities surely did not plan to seize supreme authority. On the contrary, He destroyed every attempt to seize authority.

"We draw this conclusion," they say, "from what happened before." But those men taught revolt, while He taught the opposite. Do you see that their words were feigned? Indeed, did He display anything of the kind? Did He introduce fearsome armed guards? Did He drag along chariots? Did He not, on the contrary, seek the deserts?

But lest they seem to speak under the impulse of their own passion, they assert that the whole city is in danger, that calamities threaten the commonwealth, and that they fear the consequences.

Not this, but the opposite, was the cause of your captivity: the present one under the Romans, the Babylonian one, and the one there under Antiochus. It was not that you had men who honored God. Rather, it was that among you were unrighteous men who provoked God to wrath. This made you captives.

But envy is like this. Having blinded the soul, it does not allow it to see anything that it ought to see. Did He not teach men to be meek? When they strike one cheek, to turn the other also? To bear insults magnanimously and to show greater readiness to suffer evil than others show inclination to do evil?

Tell me, is this characteristic of one who plots to seize supreme authority? Is it not, rather, characteristic of one who abolishes every attempt at usurpation?

But, as I said, envy is a terrible evil and full of hypocrisy. It has filled the world with countless calamities. Through this disease, courts are filled with defendants. From it comes the passion for glory and gain. From it come love of power and pride.

From it come criminal robbers on the roads and pirates on the seas. From it come murders throughout the world. From it comes the division of our race. Whatever evil you see, know that it comes from envy.

It has invaded the churches as well. From ancient times it has been the cause of many evils. It gave birth to love of money.

"The nations have sunk into the pit which they made. In the net which they hid, their own foot has been caught" (Ps 9:16). This happened to the Jews. They said that Jesus had to be put to death so that the Romans would not come and take away their nation and city. Yet when they put Him to death, they suffered this very thing.

Thus, what they seemed to act in order to avoid, they did not avoid, precisely because they acted so. He whom they put to death is in heaven. Those who put Him to death inherit Gehenna, though this was not what they intended.

What, then, did they intend? "From that day," it is said, "they resolved to kill Him" (Jn 11:53), because, they said, "the Romans will come and take away our nation."

They feared losing temporal goods and did not think about eternal life. Therefore they lost both. For after the Passion of the Lord and His entrance into glory, the Romans took both their place and their nation, conquering the city and scattering the people. And what is said elsewhere happened to them: “The sons of this kingdom will be cast into the outer darkness” (cf. Mt 8:12). But they feared that, if all believed in Christ, no one would remain to defend the city and temple of God from the Romans. For they supposed that Christ’s teaching was directed against the temple itself and against the laws of their fathers.

True, these chief priests, Pharisees, and all the Jews in general did not really expect danger from the Romans. Out of envy, they only pointed to it as a plausible pretext. Yet they suffered from the very thing they had set forth as a pretext. They suffered not because they followed Jesus Christ, but because they did not obey Him. Josephus also testifies that it was precisely because of Jesus Christ that the Jews were handed over to the Romans. See the explanation of Jn 8:28. As a pretext for killing Jesus Christ, the Jews set forth the desire not to perish at the hands of the Romans. Yet they perished because they killed Jesus Christ. They did not escape what they did in order to escape destruction, precisely because they did it, that is, because they killed Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees, in fact, would have found the Prophet of Nazareth useful, if only He had agreed to appear as the national and political Messiah. That was the only kind of Messiah they imagined. They also would have accepted Him if He had not exposed their inner hypocrisy and false piety with such severity. But the Sadducean party owed all its prosperity to the people’s present humiliated condition. Through the Roman appointees, the Herods, it held the high priesthood in its hands, which was a great source of enrichment for them. It feared every popular disturbance and was ready to resort to every possible measure. Its aim was to remove any occasion for Roman suspicion and displeasure.

It was the capital of the nation and the center of the people’s whole life, religious and political, with its temple, worship, and so forth. They would also have taken the nation itself, that is, destroyed its political existence as a nation, a separate political entity. Later experience showed the justice of this judgment, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, devastated Palestine, and erased the Jews as a political nation from the list of peoples. But the fatal falsehood in this judgment of the leaders of Jewish national life lay here. They considered such a popular uprising possible under the leadership of Jesus Christ. Decisively refusing to recognize the Lord Jesus as the Messiah, because He did not fit their ideal of the Messiah, they judged Him according to distorted and false notions of what the Messiah should be. They supposed that this Wonderworker could stand at the head of a popular revolt and bring calamity on the whole nation. This fatal falsehood in their judgment about the Lord led to fatal errors in all the Sanhedrin’s later actions toward Jesus Christ. These were foreseen by God and directed toward the great work of redeeming all mankind by the death of the unrecognized but true Messiah.

They did not need such a One as Christ Jesus, who preached self-denial, turned hearts not to earth but to heaven, and exposed the vices of the people’s leaders. “If we let Him alone,” they say, “the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” Base hypocrites attribute their own unclean thoughts and desires to Jesus. They say that Jesus wants to be an earthly king, and that His followers are ready to rebel against Roman authority. Therefore they received the very thing they expected. Thirty years later the Romans truly took and destroyed the city, and scattered the people throughout the whole world. This happened precisely because, after slandering heavenly innocence and putting Him to death, they rebelled against Roman authority. “But one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said: You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is better for us that one man should die, and not that the whole nation should perish.” “High priest that year” means that Caiaphas was presiding that year, as in verse 51. But this does not exclude the thought that he had also been high priest before that. Caiaphas held power throughout the whole proconsulship of Pilate. After Pilate’s removal, he was deposed by the proconsul Vitellius (Winer, Realworterbuch, 2nd ed., 1, 759). “You know nothing at all”: you understand nothing; you are darkened men. The words are sharp and reveal a troubled soul. Who, then, troubled Caiaphas? Since this was now a full assembly of the Sanhedrin, there were certainly such members as Nicodemus (Jn 3:2; 7:50; 9:16), Joseph of Arimathea, and others like them. The resurrection of Lazarus strengthened the respect of such members for Jesus, verse 45. They did not fail to say a few words on behalf of Jesus in the Sanhedrin. These very words drove Caiaphas out of himself. In a movement of anger, he pronounced the sentence that Jesus must die, lest the whole nation perish.

We have more than once spoken above about the meaning of the words "chief priests and Pharisees." They represent two parties constantly hostile to each other. Yet they unite in common malice and strive toward one goal: to destroy Him who exposes and abolishes them by preaching goodness and righteousness, and by speaking the words of God.

By the name "chief priests" in the plural, one should understand not the high priest alone, but his whole family and all his relatives. In a broader sense, it means the whole Sadducean party.

That the name "chief priests" means the whole clan of the high priest who occupied that position is clear from Acts 4. There it concerns the assembly that wished to judge Peter and John: "Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family."

But we know that Annas was no longer actually high priest. He only played an influential role in his party, being the father-in-law of Caiaphas (cf. Jn 18:13). Apparently the whole party called Sadducees in the other Gospels was related by kinship.

It was a group of families educated chiefly in Alexandrian philosophical views. They attached themselves closely to the rulers of Judea because they lacked fanaticism and were inclined to receive the Greco-Roman worldview and civilization.

Therefore both the Idumeans and the Romans always chose high priests from this group of families. These families gave them convenient instruments for governing the land.

The Pharisees, because of their intolerance and the narrowness of their views, were hated by the rulers of Judea. Yet in the Sanhedrin they played an important role. They were an extraordinarily influential element because they held the people in their hands.

This people was always unrestrained and cruel, and submitted only to the yoke laid upon it by the Pharisees and scribes. Moreover, in the assembly, or Sanhedrin, the Pharisees probably had an overwhelming majority. Therefore the Sadducees could not fail to reckon with this power.

But in the Sanhedrin, on the question of the Lord Jesus, we see no disagreement. Both parties realized that danger threatened them both. In the words of the Psalmist, "The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ" (Ps 2:2).

The deliberations taking place in the Sanhedrin are highly remarkable. We said above that all these Sadducees and Pharisees show no moral feeling. They cannot deny the signs and miracles, but either they do not understand the presence of God, or they directly decide to wage war against God, as their fathers did in the wilderness.

Both parties indifferently point only to political considerations, as though they did not even suspect the hand of God governing the world. When they say that the Romans will come and take away their place and nation, they evidently mean that the Lord Jesus will certainly be proclaimed king of Judea by the people, and that He will not refuse the throne.

They remain silent about the fact that this election would horrify them already because there would be no place for them under the King of righteousness. Instead, they put forward that, if this happened, the Romans would use it to take final possession of the country and enslave it.

Until then, the Romans had granted the Jews a shadow of self-government. The pretext would be that the Jews entrusted with authority could not manage the people and had lost all influence over them.

Apart from the fact that such an opinion could be expressed only by those wholly unbelieving in the providence of God, we note that they consciously spoke a lie. They understood very well that He who openly declared, "My kingdom is not of this world" (Jn 18; cf. Jn 6:15), and said, "Who appointed Me a judge or divider over you?" (Lk 12:14), would not accept a human kingdom.

Even Pilate understood that the chief priests and scribes "handed the Lord over out of envy" (Mt 27:18; cf. Lk 23:14-16; Jn 19:12). But the time of the prince of this world and the power of darkness was coming (Jn 14:30; Lk 22:53).