The Jewish religious authorities had a dilemma. Jesus’ ministry was rising in popularity to the point that it was becoming a threat to both the Jewish leadership and to their Roman overlords. The high priest, Caiaphas, thought the answer to this was obvious.
“You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed,” he is quoted as saying in John 11. With that, John begins chronicling the process of nailing Jesus to death on the cross.
It is interesting to contemplate how Jesus received the enmity of the religious status quo because they feared that Jesus’s power would supplant their own, although if they understood Jesus’s message they were being invited into a relationship with the divine that would have given them even greater power.
And yet it was also true what Caiaphas had perceived and thus prophesied earlier: that Jesus would give his life not just for the Jewish nation but for the whole world, in order to “gather into one the dispersed children of God.” Since no amount of obedience to laws and regulations could repair our fractured relationship with God, Jesus had to sacrifice his life so that we could have a pathway to reconciliation with God through grace.
What the leaders who were condemning Jesus to death did not realize at the time was that this was not about maintaining their position and status. It was about freeing all of humankind. It would not be long before they would witness how God would work this out for humankind’s good.