One For All
We are only a few days away from celebrating Jesus Christ, the Son of God rising from the dead. Many are preparing messages regarding the importance of what Jesus did on the cross as payment for the sins of the world. While many others are simply looking at Resurrection Sunday as any other day, ignoring the importance that it plays with reconciling themselves to God the Father. This attitude is really no surprise, although I wish it wasn’t so. In fact, John 11 shows us that this attitude has always taken place.
“Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council meeting, and they were saying, “What are we doing in regard to the fact that this man is performing many signs? 48 If we let Him go on like this, all the people will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take over 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 are you taking into account that it is in your best interest that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish instead.”
John 11:47-50
This passage occurs after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, we find that when news of this and the other acts of Jesus Christ reached the Pharisees ears, they become afraid of what Jesus is doing. In their eyes, Jesus is a man who is going about healing individuals, who is not abiding by the Pharisees laws, and who is proclaiming that He is the Son of God. Jesus is directing the Jewish nation away from the legalistic religion and towards a personal relationship with God. Not only that, by the Pharisees are afraid that by directing the people away from their religiosity that the Romans will come and tear down the temple thus removing them from their jobs as priests as well as uprooting the nation.
And so we find that the chief priest’s solution is to state that it is better for one man to die for the whole nation. However, he did not understand or see the big picture of God’s promises for salvation. What the Pharisees believed would happen once Jesus Christ was killed, would be that all that He had preached would die with Him, thus in the eyes of the Pharisees saving the nation. Born-again believers know that the Pharisees were missing the mark when it came to the importance of the death of Jesus Christ, a fact that John points out in John 11:51-52.
Now he did not say this on his own, but as he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation;52 and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
Despite having the Old Testament scriptures which provide many examples of how God was going to bring salvation to mankind, the Pharisees and others were looking for a political savior not a spiritual savior. And so they placed the Son of God on the cross to “save” the nation. Unknowingly to them, they were fulfilling the scripture and being apart of God’s plan for bringing salvation to the world. With the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, He is the answer to bring everyone together into the family of God. An act meant to “save” the Jewish nation, instead brought salvation to the whole world.
And now as we are preparing to celebrate the day that Jesus was crucified and then rose from the dead three days later, I ask you what this means for you? Do you believe as the Pharisees did that Jesus was just another man, one who was interfering with the legalistic religion? Or do you believe that He is Lord and Savior, come to earth as wholly man and wholly God, who lived the perfect life, who died on the cross for our sins, was raised to life, and now sits at the right hand of God?
Seek the truth and encourage one another,
Alex