NOTES for Joh 11:45-57

Many people today would agree with the motives of the chief priests and Pharisees: after all, they are concerned for the people's well-being and security and do not want to bring a Roman blow upon their compatriots. We have often heard the argument that it is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish, with only the adjustment that the number of those proposed for sacrifice was many times greater than one. It brings to mind how, many years ago, a class of senior pupils was asked, “If a physicist and a mechanic were drowning at the same time, which one would you save?” The audience answered with one voice: “The physicist!”

But anyone who sees no problem in destroying one person is capable of destroying everyone else as well. Every person rejected in the name of a “higher purpose” is priceless, and together with that person Christ is rejected yet again.

The person who sacrifices others hopes to be among the survivors. But the reprisal did not help: forty years later, precisely what the members of the Sanhedrin had feared came to pass. Caiaphas did not intend his words to mean what the evangelist draws from them, yet John's words are not strained. Christ died for the people, not in the sense Caiaphas intended, but He died to save us.