One Man’s Death

John 11:45-57

Main Idea: John answers the question of why Jesus died both from the perspective of the religious leaders and from God’s perspective.

1. The Death of Jesus Was Politically Expedient (11:45-50).
2. The Death of Jesus Was Spiritually Effective (11:51-52).
   1. His death satisfied the just wrath of God.
   2. His death secured redemption for his children.

The cross is violent, bloody, and the pivotal moment in the Bible’s overarching story; everything that came before the cross pointed ahead to it, and everything that has come after looks back. Our focus on the cruel and bloody death of Jesus Christ does not stem from an unhealthy fascination with violence. It flows from a proper understanding of God’s Word. From this point forward the Gospel of John is focused on the cross. Beginning with the death and resurrection of Lazarus, the focus of this Gospel is the impending sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The raising of Lazarus from the dead assures us of Jesus’s power over death before he goes to the cross to die.

This passage contains a clear, powerful, and somewhat ironic instruction about the purpose of his death. Historically, the death of Jesus Christ cannot be denied. Too many valid sources record the death of Jesus of Nazareth on a cross. The real question revolves around its purpose. What was accomplished on the cross? This passage offers two perspectives on the death of Jesus: that of the religious leaders and that of God.

The Death of Jesus Was Politically Expedient

John 11:45-50

After the resurrection of Lazarus, several people believed on Jesus (v. 45), but some present informed the religious leaders—the Pharisees—of what happened (v. 46). The Pharisees called the other religious leaders—the Sadducees—together for a meeting of the Sanhedrin (v. 47). The Sanhedrin was the highest judicial body in Israel. They had both political and spiritual power but served under Roman authority. For them the power and popularity of Jesus was a significant problem.

They accepted the eyewitness testimony as true and then went about trying to figure out how to stop Jesus (vv. 47-48). They couldn’t bear the thought of a man running loose who could heal people and raise them from the dead. They didn’t protest the authenticity of the healing. (They tried that when Jesus healed the man born blind—ch. 9—and it made them look foolish.) They say matter-of-factly, “This man is doing many signs” (v. 47). They acknowledge Jesus has supernatural power to raise the dead. Even their word choice is remarkable. They used the word sign (semeion), which means “an event which is regarded as having some special meaning; something which points to a reality with even greater significance” (Louw and Nida, Lexicon, 33.477). They acknowledge that the works of Jesus are so phenomenal that they must point to something more significant, yet they refuse to ask what the works point to. These religious leaders see all of these signs and fail to consider what’s being advertised: Jesus is the Messiah. How do we explain their failure to see the truth? The answer is not a lack of information. Jesus gave the answer back in chapter 9 when he told them they were blinded by their sin.

Their unbelief is even more startling when you consider the occupation of these men. They each had years, if not decades, of religious service. These were supposed to be the most spiritual men in the nation. If we could have been present at the meeting, we would have listened as they opened the meeting in prayer. We would have been impressed by the priestly robes of the Sadducees and the phylacteries—little boxes containing Scripture—on the hands and foreheads of the Pharisees. All of this religion and all of this biblical knowledge were theirs, yet they were unable to see the glory of God’s Son. You can be religious but lost. You can memorize Scripture and still be ignorant of its truth. You can say all of the right things but have a heart that has not been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.

Their primary concern was maintaining control. Jesus threatened their position and influence. If people continued to believe Jesus was the Messiah, then Rome would sweep in and take away the leaders’ authority. They would lose their position and their freedom. You could better translate the end of verse 48, “The Romans will come and take away from us both our place and our nation.” Their concern wasn’t for the people but for themselves. They were focused on maintaining their own positions of power.

We see in them a clear and striking picture of the self-centeredness of empty religion. Empty religion—practiced by people who come to church, give money, say and do the right thing, and are moral but have no relationship with Jesus Christ—is always revealed by a person’s focus. If someone has been truly converted and is following Jesus, his focus will be first on Jesus, second on other people, and finally on himself. But empty religion is focused first on me. It’s based on my effort. It’s about maintaining my good works. It’s primarily concerned with my blessing and my safety. Ultimately, I am the one who receives the praise for it: “Look at all the good choices he’s made.”

A similar error is apparent when we begin to evaluate spiritual realities by how we will be affected. Their concern wasn’t whether Jesus was right or good but how his actions would affect them. This is a dangerous path but one we so easily travel. When our decisions are not based on clear, biblical standards of holiness but on how they will affect our own comfort and convenience, then we’re committing the error of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their fear of loss of influence and loss of income pushed them to disobey God’s will.

In response to their problem, Caiaphas, the high priest, offers a plan (vv. 49-50). Jesus was a problem, and problems need to be eliminated. With cunning and coldness, the high priest calls for Jesus’s death. His statement reveals another reality of religion. Religion is self-centered and fear motivated, and it always leads to spiritual rationalization. Since it’s not rooted in the unchanging grace of God, it will waver based on circumstances. We will make decisions based on our own perception of what benefits us—what we think keeps us in God’s favor. Ultimately, religion is our attempt to maintain our position. It’s rooted in what we believe others think about us and what we believe God thinks about us. So we begin to play this game: we look at an action that is wrong, and we begin to justify why it’s really not that bad. What we’re doing is coming up with a defense for our actions; we’re justifying ourselves. Christian, our justification doesn’t rest on us! It can’t. Our justification comes through Jesus and him alone.

What Caiaphas is doing here is self-justification. The religious leaders wanted to kill an innocent man because it benefitted them—it was politically expedient—but they needed to come up with some type of justification. If they could justify it (their thinking goes), then God could not hold it against them. On the scales of good and bad, their good motive would outweigh the evil of the actual deed.

Caiaphas’s speech must have been convincing because they made plans to kill Jesus (v. 53). It’s gone beyond impulsive attempts to stone him and become premeditated murder. However, Jesus avoided them until the appropriate time (v. 54). He would not die because of the whims and wishes of the religious establishment. His death was not the tragic death of a religious zealot. He would die at the time chosen by his Father. His life would not be taken from him, but he would willingly sacrifice it.

The Death of Jesus Was Spiritually Effective

John 11:51-52

Caiaphas’s words reveal a second perspective on Jesus’s death. God planned Caiaphas’s words to serve his own purpose. They held greater meaning than Caiaphas had planned. Caiaphas’s intention was evil, but God had ordained the death of Jesus. Peter makes this point clearly during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost: “Though he was delivered up according to God’s determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and kill him” (Acts 2:23).

God decided for Jesus to die. His death was not an accidental tragedy. It fulfilled God’s eternal plan. But that doesn’t get Caiaphas off the hook. He was not an unwilling puppet. We shouldn’t look at him as a spiritual dummy with God’s hand up his back moving his mouth. Once again we see the interplay between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. As John MacArthur wrote, “God sovereignly turned his wicked, blasphemous words into truth” (John, 484). The death of Jesus Christ may have been politically expedient for the leadership of Israel, but it accomplished more important purposes.

His Death Satisfied the Just Wrath of God

There’s a key word that’s easy to overlook both in Caiaphas’s prophecy (John 11:50) and John’s interpretation of it (vv. 51-52): for. You understand the significance a little more if you substitute the words “in place of” or “on behalf of.” Jesus was dying in place of someone else. This is the language of temple sacrifice. The Gospel of John constantly points us to the Passover Festival, when lambs would be brought into Jerusalem and sacrificed in the temple. In chapter 1 John the Baptist twice introduced Jesus by saying, “Here is the Lamb of God” (vv. 29, 36). Beginning in chapter 12, the rest of the Gospel takes place during the Passover Festival. To understand this prophecy, we need to understand what took place at Passover.

The first Passover is recorded in Exodus 12. God had just brought nine plagues on the Egyptians, warning Pharaoh to let the people of God go. Pharaoh wouldn’t, so one final plague was coming: the killing of the firstborn. However, God made a provision so that his people would not have to suffer the death of their firstborn sons. They needed to take an unblemished lamb, kill it, and put some of its blood on the doorposts of their house. When God saw the blood, he would pass over them, and their sons would be safe. To save the life of their son, each family had to take the life of a lamb.

Another significant time on the Jewish calendar focused on a sacrifice. It was called the Day of Atonement. On that day two goats were brought to the priest. One of them was sacrificed to the Lord, and the other was released into the wilderness as the scapegoat. It’s a beautiful picture of what was necessary to atone for the sins of man. The goat that was released pictured expiation: the removing or covering of sin. The goat that was slaughtered pictured propitiation: pacifying the just wrath of God. One goat would not have been enough. God could not just place the sin of the people on the back of the scapegoat and send it away. His holiness and justice demands blood be shed for the forgiveness of sin. Whenever sin is forgiven, someone must pay. If I get angry and smash your windshield and you forgive me, someone still pays. We sometimes view God’s forgiveness as him sending our sin away into oblivion, but the reality is that our sin is still counted, just not against us. Sacrifice is necessary because of our guilt (Isa 53:6).

When Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus would die for or on behalf of the children of God, he reminds us that someone must satisfy the debt of sin. Only a perfect Lamb could do that and only by shedding his blood. Jesus was not a helpless child; he was a willing Savior. This sacrifice was not contrary to love; it was the ultimate expression of it. Through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, the just wrath of God has been removed, and forgiveness can be offered and fellowship restored between Creator and creature. John Piper says it clearly:

There was only one hope for me—that the infinite wisdom of God might make a way for the love of God to satisfy the wrath of God so that I might become a son of God. (“Foreword,” 14)

His Death Secured Redemption for His Children

As John interprets Caiaphas’s words, he adds a note of great certainty. The death of Jesus Christ “was going to” accomplish what God intended. It was going to save those it was intended to save, and it was going to gather them into one people. The certainty is unmistakable. The death of Jesus Christ did not secure the possibility of salvation. It actually secured salvation for those whom God had chosen—those referred to as the “children of God.”

Sometimes Christians talk like the death of Christ simply made atonement for sins possible. That’s not what the Bible teaches. The death of Christ actually atoned for the sins of those, both Jew and Gentile, who were the children of God. Who are the children of God? Those who were chosen by God and who responded by believing on the name of Jesus (1:12-13). In the classic book Redemption Accomplished and Applied, John Murray helps us better understand what was accomplished on the cross:

Did Christ come to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people? Did he come to put all men in a salvable state? Or did he come to secure the salvation of all those who are ordained to eternal life? Did he come to make men redeemable? Or did he come effectually and infallibly to redeem? . . .

What is offered to men in the gospel? It is not the possibility of salvation, not simply the opportunity of salvation. What is offered is salvation. To be more specific, it is Christ himself in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work who is offered. And he is offered as the one who made expiation for sin and wrought redemption. He could not be offered as Savior and as the one who embodies in himself salvation full and free if he had simply made the salvation of all men possible or merely had made provision for the salvation of all. It is the very doctrine that Christ procured and secured redemption that invests the free offer of the gospel with richness and power. It is that doctrine alone that allows for a presentation of Christ that will be worthy of the glory of his accomplishment and of his person. It is because Christ procured and secured redemption that he is an all-sufficient and suitable Savior. (Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 63, 65).

The death of Christ would gather all of his sheep into one fold with one shepherd. None would be lost. None would be forgotten. All would, by the power of the shepherd and through the offering of his life, be brought safely into the flock of God. We sing and preach and meditate on the death of Jesus, not to bask in the gory details but to celebrate the glorious victory. “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood; sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!” (Philip Bliss, “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”).

Reflect and Discuss

1. According to the Jewish leaders, why did Jesus die?
2. What caution should we take from the leaders’ acknowledging the “signs” Jesus performs while still plotting to kill him?
3. Compare the empty religion of the religious leaders with the true faith of those who believe in Jesus.
4. How will the focus of a true follower of Jesus change?
5. Why can those who believe in Jesus have unchanging confidence despite circumstances?
6. Describe how this passage reveals both the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God in salvation.
7. What did Jesus accomplish on your behalf on the cross?
8. Why is the preposition for in verses 50-51 so significant?
9. Why were two goats needed for the Day of Atonement sacrifices? How does Jesus meet those needs on the cross?
10. Why is it incorrect to speak of the cross as making atonement for sins possible?