Has any one of the rulers believed on him, or of the Pharisees?
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But this crowd, which does not know the law, are accursed.
The Pharisees demand to know whether any ruler or Pharisee has believed in Jesus. Their next words write off the crowd as ignorant and accursed — a verdict that exposes the men who spoke it.
The officers had just admitted the power with which Jesus spoke. Their masters answer them with scorn, not with an argument. The scorn falls on their own countrymen.
There were darker traits in the religious leaders than in the crowd... In the officers, conscience answered to the words of the Lord — at least enough to draw from them, before their masters, an unwilling confession of the power with which He spoke. But the Pharisees, with unbreakable hardness, throw the officers' weakness back at them. They challenge them to name any of the rulers or Pharisees who believed, and they let their contempt for the mass of their own countrymen show. Boasting in law, they were at that very moment dishonouring God by breaking the law, and by far worse.
The leaders make knowledge of the law their test. So what did that word cover for a Jew?
A brief look at the Gospels would have shown what the single word "law" meant. The Jews understood it to mean the first five books, and not just the Ten Commandments.
Their logic runs backwards. They have rejected Jesus, so anyone who has not must be beneath notice.
They had no shortage of conceit. They were sure that their own rejection of Jesus was beyond dispute, and so final that everybody ought to accept it. If the crowd, or any of them, did not, it only showed them to be ignorant and accursed. So these false shepherds just cursed the sheep, and left it at that. Yet their own ignorance began to show. They asked in triumph whether any of the rulers or Pharisees had believed in Him. Nicodemus spoiled the effect of that question, for he was both a Pharisee and a ruler.
Read on to the end of the chapter, and the verdict turns around.
The Pharisees were a group among the Jews who were most zealous for the law. They were the teachers of the law to the people. Yet in the last verses of chapter 7 this group, who did not know the Lord, are themselves shown to be accursed. The Pharisees thought they were the best part of the people. On the outside they were, as their judgment of their fellow Israelites showed. Yet these very people, whom the Lord did not know, were themselves accursed.
One man in the room answers them on their own ground. He does not preach. He asks whether their own law condemns a man before it hears him. Their complaint about the crowd's ignorance falls apart.
Notice, too, how their plans are frustrated. "But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed." But what stops them? "Does our law judge any man before it hears him?" And what is this timidity of Nicodemus? He shelters himself under the plea of their law. That takes their complaint about the people's ignorance of the law out of their mouth. And it throws the breaking of the law on them, if they carry out their purpose. Oh, if only we had faith to trust God! But if we are not willing to suffer in the flesh, we never shall.
Their problem was not a lack of learning. It was what grace did to their standing.
Their pride of heart and mind could not stand the grace that put them in the same class as the people who did not know the law.
The distance the leaders put between themselves and the crowd did not last. At the cross the two joined forces.
All classes fell into line that day, so that each could play its own part in that most sinful of sins. Jews and Gentiles agreed for once. Rival leaders buried their jealousies. Proud religious men joined hands with the crowd they treated at another moment with their deepest contempt (John 7:48-49).
- Contempt — The officers came back moved by Christ's words. Their masters answered with scorn for ordinary people, not with an argument.
- Boast — They boasted in the law, the first five books. At that very moment they were breaking it and dishonouring God.
- Curse — They were sure their rejection of Jesus settled the matter, so these false shepherds cursed the sheep and left it there.
- Rebound — The teachers of the law did not know the Lord, and the curse they spoke rests on them.
- Grace — Their pride could not bear a grace that ranked them with the people they despised. One question from Nicodemus, asked on their own legal ground, undid their boast.