nor consider that it is profitable for you that one man die for the people, and not that the whole nation perish.
Caiaphas was the high priest, and the council had met to decide what to do about Jesus. His cold political advice turned out, without his knowing it, to state the meaning of the cross.
Caiaphas breaks into the council's debate with a calculation.
They have to confess that He whom they are relentlessly pursuing "does many signs." Their only argument from this is that if they let Him alone, all men will believe on Him. Then the Romans will take away their place and nation. This brings forward Caiaphas. He rebukes them for failing to do so simple a sum: the value of one man set against a nation. He does not speak of right but of profit, and claims this for his own side of the account. Nor does he realise the blinding nature of self-interest, nor question his own conclusion in the least. His arithmetic is so simple it can hardly be worked wrong.
The verse asks what is "better for you." The man who held Israel's highest religious office decided the case on profit alone.
Caiaphas throws aside all claim to righteousness and acts only on what is profitable. He pleads that whatever Jesus might have done, or whatever people might think of Him, it is better that He should die than that the whole nation should perish. With Caiaphas, as too often with the politicians of this world, it is no question of what is right, but of what is expedient (or "profitable"). This man is ready to crucify a just Man to preserve, if possible, the position of a guilty nation.
John treats these words as prophecy. He and Caiaphas meant very different things by the same word: perish.
This was the last real prophecy ever spoken by a man holding the high priest's office in Israel. Little indeed could he have understood what the Evangelist saw lay hidden in those words. Caiaphas only thought of calming Roman jealousy by putting the Lord to death. John saw in them a prediction of the Lord as the sin offering. He would meet the claims of a holy God on behalf of the godly remnant of the nation. "That the whole nation perish not," said Caiaphas. Precisely so, John could have replied. But the high priest's thought and John's understanding of his words were far apart. Caiaphas considered the Roman power and feared its wrath. John thought of divine judgment, and of God's provision to escape it by the substitute of His choice.
Much hangs on the little word "for." One writer reads it as substitution.
"For the nation." This is plainly substitution: not "on behalf of," but "instead of." Our Lord died as Saviour or Redeemer of Israel, as well as of the Church. "For the transgression of My people was He stricken."
Scripture is explicit that Caiaphas did not speak from himself. That raises a striking question: how can God's Spirit use a man whose plan at that moment was murder?
This is a remarkable instance of how far God's Spirit can overrule a human mind, with no connection at all to that mind's moral state. Caiaphas was a witness to his nation's turning away from God. The Spirit made him voice their desire to murder the Messiah — and turned those words into a prophecy of the purpose of the Messiah's death for the nation he represented.
Caiaphas meant his own nation. But one writer points to a second purpose in that death.
God's purposes for that nation were surely before the Lord Jesus as one object of His death, just as Caiaphas had prophesied (though not of himself). But there was another object nearer and dearer to His heart... the blessed Lord died so that the children of God should no longer be scattered. Until then they had no sense of their relationship to Him or to one another. He died to gather them together in one on earth.
- Profit. Caiaphas argued from profit, not justice. He weighed one life against a nation, and self-interest did the counting.
- Prophecy. The Spirit took that cold sum and made it a true statement of why Christ would die. The speaker never grasped it.
- Perish. Caiaphas feared Rome. John saw divine judgment, escaped only through God's chosen substitute.
- Place. "For" here means instead of — Christ died in the place of others, as Redeemer of Israel and of the Church.
- People. The death reached past the one nation, to gather into one the scattered children of God.
But this he did not say of himself; but, being high priest that year, prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation;
The council has decided that Jesus must die, and Caiaphas has given the advice. John breaks in to tell us who was really speaking, and what that death would actually do.
The phrase "high priest that year" points to a priesthood that had drifted far from God's original design.
Caiaphas, we are told, was high priest that year. Herod set up and removed high priests to suit himself at any time — of course a contradiction to God's original appointment. Puffed up with pride in his own position, Caiaphas tells his colleagues they know nothing. He shows off his own better wisdom by finding some justification for their murdering the Lord Jesus.
John's comment takes the words out of Caiaphas' hands. God had done this before, with a prophet hired to curse His people.
It was He who spoke by Balaam against his will, to bless His people, though Balak had hired Balaam to curse them. Balaam showed afterwards, not only by his corrupting schemes but to his own destruction, how little those prophecies came from himself. It is He who now speaks by Caiaphas, whose high priesthood in that year gave his words the more official weight... No wonder that God, long silent, should speak by the high priest of that year. He is Sovereign. He can employ evil as well as good — the good willingly, the evil against their own will, and if their own will is in it, with a purpose as wicked as themselves.
This is the rare exception, not God's usual way of giving prophecy:
It is true that, on rare occasions, the Holy Spirit may use a wicked man to utter a prophecy. Balaam in the Old Testament and Caiaphas in the New are such cases. But if so, He will make it plain that the prophet is a wicked man, who seeks to oppose but is forced to speak the truth. It is, however, the way of the Spirit to use "holy men".
The same words carried two meanings. Caiaphas was managing Rome; John was reading God's own plan.
This was the last real prophetic announcement that fell from a holder of the high priest's office in Israel. Little indeed could he have understood what the writer of the Gospel saw hidden in those words. Caiaphas only thought of calming Roman suspicion by putting the Lord to death. John saw in them a prediction of the Lord as the sin offering, meeting the claims of a holy God on behalf of the godly remnant of the nation. Caiaphas considered the Roman power, and feared its wrath. John thought of divine judgment, and of God's provision to escape it by the substitute of His choice.
Everything turns on the small word "for."
"For the nation." This is clearly substitutionary. It does not mean "on behalf of," but "instead of." Our Lord died as Saviour or Redeemer of Israel (Isaiah 45; Isaiah 49), as well as of the Church. He was "stricken for the transgression of my people."
If He died for the nation, the nation still has a future. What that future is not matters as much as what it is.
To the cynical remark of the wicked high priest God gave a turn of incomparable grace. The Jews adopted it in unbelief, in the political sense Caiaphas meant, and it brought the ruin of their place and their nation by the Romans. By and by mercy will prevail according to the oath sworn to Abraham, glorying over judgment. Jesus died for the nation. He did not die to gather it into the church, as some wrongly imagine, nor to make it an object of ruin that can never be undone. He died to save and bless Israel as such at the end and for ever.
The same truth touches how we read the cross ourselves:
Believers should see more in the cross of Christ than the mere putting away of our sins. Thank God, He has borne our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24); but there is a part in that cross for Israel also. They will be brought to know this by and by.
- One office. Herod handed out the priesthood at will, yet God still spoke through the office He Himself had once appointed.
- One mouth, not his own. Caiaphas meant political convenience; the Spirit meant prophecy. As with Balaam, God can force an enemy to speak the truth, though He normally uses holy men.
- One meaning underneath. Caiaphas feared Rome; John saw divine judgment, and Christ as the sin offering God Himself provided.
- One substitution. "For the nation" means in its place, not merely for its benefit — the Redeemer of Israel as well as of the Church.
- One death, still reaching. Because He died for that nation, mercy for Israel is secured at the end. The cross holds more than the forgiveness we already have.