As Mark’s account of Jesus’ arrest and trial progresses, we reach the point where Christ is brought before the Jewish council: “They led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together” (Mark 14:53). With the climax of Mark’s Gospel approaching, the situation has gone sour. Arrested in the garden, Jesus is bound and on His way to His trial—before men who have been looking for an opportunity to kill Him. (See, for example, Mark 3:6.) It would seem that Jesus and His disciples have pretty well had their day in the sun.
By nature, men and women are opposed to the story of Jesus of Nazareth.
The immediate outcome has been predetermined: “The chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death” (v. 55). Verdict and sentence are ready at hand; the only thing missing is the charge. No one is trying to discover if Jesus is really the person He claimed to be. No one is investigating whether He has done good or evil. The council is simply marshalling the evidence that will allow them to kill this person whom they hate because His good works put them to shame. Yet, we read, even their false witnesses could not agree (vv. 57–59)!
By nature, men and women are opposed to the story of Jesus of Nazareth—even today—because it is offensive to our pride. It’s offensive intellectually, challenging our preconceptions by asking us to believe that this person who lived so long ago is actually the Savior of the world. We find ourselves saying, “You can’t possibly ask me to believe this!” And it is offensive to us morally, because Jesus pronounces on our morality. To a self-help culture, He comes with the message that we are helpless and hopeless and unable to fix ourselves.
Because of these spiritual realities, our position as twenty-first-century men and women is not all that different from that of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. As we consider this poignant scene, we need to ask ourselves: Are we seriously willing to give the Messiah of God a fair hearing?
The Silence
One element of the story that may jump out to us is Jesus’ silence in the face of His accusers. When the false witnesses fail, the high priest jumps in: “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But Jesus, we read, “remained silent and made no answer” (vv. 60–61).
Perhaps this silence confuses us. But why should Jesus put an answer to false and contradictory charges? Why should He cast His pearls before swine (Matt. 7:6)? Jesus had all the time in the world for those who were least, last, and left out, who were longing, who were clear, who knew their need. Yet He had very little time for religious hypocrisy and arrogance.
While God in His mercy may cater to intellectual integrity, He will not pander to intellectual arrogance.
There is a lesson for us in this silence of Jesus: While God in His mercy may cater to intellectual integrity, He will not pander to intellectual arrogance. He does not disclose Himself to the proud; He “gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). Jesus says, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15)—that is, trusting, believing, loving.
The Declaration
The high priest, unsatisfied, then cuts to the chase: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (v. 61). This is the fundamental question about Jesus that we all need to answer. If He is not, then He was merely a man. If He claimed to be and was not, then He was a liar or a lunatic. If He really is, then we must bow before Him.
In contrast to the treachery and to the hypocrisy of those who’ve come to accuse Him, Jesus here has a clarity and an authority to His words, drawing on imagery from the messianic predictions of the Old Testament: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (v. 62; cf. Ps. 110:1; Dan. 7:13).
The reports of the presence of the risen Jesus of Nazareth will be so extensive and the conviction in the hearts of the witnesses so deep that the word will be unstoppable.
Jesus does not leave the council without evidence. The religious leaders had asked for a sign, and He had promised them “the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matt. 12:39)—that He would rise again from the dead after three days. They think they will put Him to an ignominious death, they will bury Him in a Palestinian tomb, and it will be over. The reality, however, is that His death will be for the sins of the world and to win the forgiveness of sinners and that God will raise Him from the dead in triumph. This is exactly what Jesus came to accomplish.
Eventually, the religious leaders will be confronted by the fact that in the period of time immediately following the resurrection, the reports of the presence of the risen Jesus of Nazareth will be so extensive and the conviction in the hearts of the witnesses so deep that the word will be unstoppable. Jesus Himself will have ascended and clothed His people with power as they prepare for Him to come again. Ultimately, all the world will see Him return in glory, and they will rejoice in their love or rue their rejection of Him.
The Verdict
The high priest then does a little drama for everybody present: We read that he “tore his garments” (v. 63). The tearing of clothes was an expression of grief—but, as one commentator notes, here “it had become strangely warped into a sign of savage joy at a wicked purpose well-nigh accomplished.”1
Just as His followers had “all left him” (v. 50), so now His accusers all agree: “What further witnesses do we need?” Yet what an irony this proves to be! The only good witness—and the only one who has told the truth—is Jesus Himself. And so by His own words the council that had set out from the beginning to condemn Him does so.
The only good witness—and the only one who has told the truth—is Jesus Himself.
As readers of the Gospel more than two thousand years on, we are confronted by a similar question as those first-century religious leaders: What will our verdict be? Will we give Jesus a fair hearing? Or, like the council, will we despise Him—and share in their surprise and horror on the day of His return?
There is no more important question we can ask. And if we are going to ask it, we cannot make the question a farce as the religious leaders did. We owe Jesus a fair hearing—and we only stand to benefit by giving one.
This article was adapted from the sermons “Jesus Condemned to Death — Part One” and “Jesus Condemned to Death — Part Two” by Alistair Begg.
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R. A. Cole, The Gospel According to St. Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 230. ↩︎