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I. WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND PRIESTHOOD IN COMPASSING THE DEATH OF CHRIST? It was the one fixed idea of devotion to the law of Moses. It was the stubborn toughness of character which made the Jewish people the backbone of the world. It was the hereditary mark of the house of Levi, which in their zeal for their race knew no other ties. When they took up stones they could not bear to think that Christ was greater than Abraham. When the council met at the raising of Lazarus, Caiaphas declared that one man must die for the people, that was the concentrated essence of the general feeling that the national existence was at stake. And when on that second meeting, convened in the dead of the night in the high priest's palace, it was no want of solemnity which called forth the adjuration, no false assumption of horror when he rent his robes and demanded the sentence of death. And when they saw their designs accomplished it was doubtless with a proud satisfaction that they were fifty celebrating their festival. "We have a law." Yes, a Divine law, the type and centre of all law. "And by that law He ought to die" (see Leviticus 24:16). Often has Jesus declared Himself the Son of God. True, there is in Him an authority which teaches not as Scribes teach; a wisdom which forces us to acknowledge that never man spake as this Man; a power before which storms are hushed and sick healed; a goodness which rises above all legal institutions. All this might seem to be a far higher fulfilment of the law than could be attained by His death. But still the letter of the law, immemorial usage, say that He must die, So they argued, and with such arguments must have acted as they did. They little thought how that nation and those institutions which they had endeavoured to preserve at so dreadful a cost, were doomed by the very act by which they sought to save them.

II. WHAT ARE THE PRACTICAL LESSONS? The fact that this crime was not the result of rashness, but was the result of fixed adherence to usage, and resistance to change, might teach us —

1. That there are times when such a frame of mind is not the sign of a religious spirit, but a mark of audacious and reckless presumption.

2. That the most enormous evils may flow from carrying to excess any one idea however good. In the story of the Crucifixion we may see reflected the evil of narrowness of purpose, exclusiveness of admiration, idolatry of a single principle, the bowing down to "the idols of the cave," the idols of the party, shop, or sect that happens to be ours. Common sense is the one salt which alone can save such exaggerations from their own corruption. Had Caiaphas been open to the new influences, he would have seen in the very law and prophets he was upholding the best witness to Him he was condemning for blasphemy.

3. The value of those feelings of common humanity which justly resist all efforts of hard logic or dry reason to set them aside. Nothing could be more complete than the arguments by which the conduct of the priests was sustained; but within and above all they might have seen a pathos of suffering to which they were nevertheless wholly insensible, by which the whole world has since been moved to sympathy. Witness the revulsion of feeling with reference to other historical events — the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the outrage on Cromwell's remains, &c.

(Dean Stanley.)

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KJV: The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.

WEB: The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God."