Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: The Mob, Man’s Motives, and the Messiah.

SUB-TITLE: Meditations on the Mechanics of Matthew 27.

The Passion narratives are a work of genius, and can be read at multiple levels simultaneously.

(Image from smartdecostyle.com.)

If we ask the question, ‘Why did Jesus die?’, our natural instinct as Christians would probably be to provide a *divinely-oriented* answer to the question.

To save his people from their sins (Matt. 1.21), we might say.

And rightly so.

We can also, however, provide a *human* answer to the question,

which is what Matthew does, e.g., because Jesus aroused the hatred of the religious authorities of the day.

Despite what is often implied, these answers don’t conflict with or even *compete* with one another.

Rather, they come together in perfect harmony in order to provide a fuller of account of the crucifixion than an uninspired author might have given us.

Below, I’ll consider some of the parties involved in Jesus’ crucifixion

and how their motives and actions accomplish God’s purposes.

As we pick up the story in 27.1, it’s daybreak (πρωια),

and Jesus is in the hands of ‘the chief priests and elders’.

The verbs employed to describe the priests’ treatment of him speak volumes (27.2).

Jesus is ‘bound up’, like a sacrifice,

‘led away’ (per the curse of exile in Deut. 28.37, etc.),

and ‘delivered over’ to Pilate (παραδιδωμι), i.e., betrayed.

In human terms, the chief priests’ motive is simple: to have Jesus put to death (27.1).

Jesus is everything they want to be, but are not—righteous, godly, empowered by the Spirit, and popular with the people.

As such, the chief priests are bitterly jealous of Jesus, as even Pilate can see (27.18).

And, as we know, ‘jealousy makes a man furious’ (Prov. 6.34). Indeed, ‘jealousy is as pitiless (קשה) as the grave’ (Sgs. 8.6b).

Jealousy is not, however, the only force/emotion at work in the chief priests.

They are also driven by a fear of ‘the crowds’ (21.46).

The last thing they want is to be responsible for the death of the people’s chosen Messiah.

That’s why we find the chief priests up at daybreak in ch. 27.

And that’s why, rather than kill Jesus themselves, they lead him away to Pilate. (They want someone else to do their dirty work for them.)

With the advent of 27.11, then, we find Jesus before Pilate in the judgment hall.

Exactly what the priests *charged* Jesus with when they brought him before Pilate is not stated (in Matthew).

But it’s not too hard to fill in the gaps.

The first question Pilate asks Jesus is whether he (really) is ‘the King of the Jews’ (27.11),

which suggests the priests portrayed him as a political revolutionary—a man who rejects Pilate’s authority and, like many other before him, wants to liberate the Jewish people.

(As such, Matthew presupposes a detail which is made explicit in Luke 23.2.)

A casual reader might, therefore, expect Jesus to be summarily sentenced to death.

But events don’t pan out so straightforwardly.

The chief priests aren’t the only movers behind the events of Matthew 27.

Pilate has motives and concerns of his own (both conscious and unconscious), and is affected by many different forces.

He wants to be seen as a man who punishes lawbreakers,

and he wants to keep the people of his province as happy as is reasonably possible.

Yet he can see the chief priests are up to something,

and he has no desire to be a pawn in their plans (whatever they are),

much less to have the blood of an innocent man on his hands (27.24).

Furthermore, Pilate is unnerved by Jesus’ silence and refusal to defend himself (27.14).

And he becomes even more unnerved when he receives a message from his wife,

who tells him to steer clear of Jesus because of a dream/vision she has recently received (27.19).

Pilate therefore decides to plays his get-out-of-jail card.

Each Passover, he has the authority to release/pardon a prisoner chosen out by the Jews.

With that in mind, Pilate presents the crowd with (what he thinks is) a no-brainer of a choice:

to have Jesus released, a man known for his good works, or to have Barabbas released, a man known to be a criminal.

In recent chapters, however, the notion of ‘the crowds’ has become shadowy and unpredictable (20.31, 26.47).

And, in 27.20, the chief priests seek to turn the crowd in their favour.

Sadly, they succeed.

Stirred up by the chief priests, the crowd bay for Jesus’ blood.

And, the more Pilate seeks to pacify them, the louder their cries become, until a riot begins to break out (27.21–24).

Pilate therefore capitulates, and Jesus is handed over to Rome’s soldiers to be crucified.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

REFLECTIONS:

The interplay between man’s motives and God’s purposes is a significant and remarkable feature of Matthew’s narrative.

Each character in Matthew’s cast has his own motives and concerns,

which he is both acted upon by and acts in light of.

And each character makes his own decisions,

which he is under no compulsion to make.

And yet, at the same time, what is ultimately enacted is the sovereign purpose of God.

🔹 In human terms, the chief priests hand Jesus over to Pilate because they do not want to be responsible for his death.

And yet, in the purpose and plan of God, they do so because Jesus is destined, not to be stoned (and hence to die with his bones broken in pieces),

but to be *pierced* (Psa. 22, Zech. 12.10), with his blood poured out and his bones intact, like the Passover lamb (Exod. 12.46).

🔹 In human terms, Jesus does not defend himself before Pilate because his trust is in the Most High God.

(‘You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them,...and what you are to say will be revealed to you in that hour: cp. 10.17–20.)

And yet, in the purposes and plans of God, he does so because he is destined to remain silent before his shearers, like a lamb led to the slaughter (Isa. 53).

🔹 And, in human terms, Pilate refuses to comply with the priests’ demands because he has no desire to become embroiled in their religious quarrels.

And yet, in the purposes and plans of God, he does so because God does not want the chief priests to be able to blame someone else for Jesus’ death.

Jesus is hence ultimately sentenced to death against the roar of the words, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children!’.

Before we close, two further points should be noted.

First, the NT does *not* teach the idea of a ‘continued blood-guilt’ on the Jewish people, much less does it endorse anti-Semitism.

Fundamental to Matthew’s narrative is the way in which every character plays a part in Jesus’ death—Jew and Gentile, leader and commoner alike.

And, only fifty days later, just as the crowd have made themselves and their children guilty of Jesus’ death, so Peter offers forgiveness to that same crowd, as well as to ‘their children’ (Acts 2.39).

Furthermore, when those people reject Peter’s offer, judgement comes upon *them*, i.e., on ‘that generation’ (Matt. 23.36, Acts 2.17–21, 40, Heb. 6, etc.)—an issue which I may tweet about some other time.

Over the years between Jesus’ death and the destruction, no sacrifice remains for sins, and sin slowly mounts up,

until the only way in which it can be removed from the Temple is by the Temple’s destruction (cp. Dan. 9.26).

Indeed, in the 40 years prior to its destruction (in 70 AD), Jewish tradition preserves a memory of highly unusual events in and around the Temple.

The day of Atonement sacrifice—i.e., the release-valve which keeps the threat of exile at bay (Lev. 16.20–22)—does not appear to have been accepted by God in the usual way (cp. b. Yoma 39b w. m. Yoma 4),

and the Temple doors are said to have mysteriously flung themselves open—events which would seem a remarkable coincidence if they were unconnected to the crucifixion of Jesus.

When the Temple falls, therefore, it does so because of God’s judgment on Jesus’ generation.

*Jesus’* generation are the people who ‘denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer (to be pardoned) instead’ (Acts 3.14–15).

Today’s generation of Jews are not.

Second, while the cast of Matthew 27 are motivated by a whole array of different motives and motions, one of them is a model of calmness, courage, and clarity of thought.

As death looms over his head, he *should*, by all rights, be filled with fear.

He could also, legitimately, have been filled with hatred for his enemies, or anger at the injustice of his plight.

Yet he is moved by none of these things.

He is moved neither by fear, nor by hatred, nor by jealousy, nor by the angry multitudes.

He instead acts from start to finish out of a single steadfast motive—love for his people and his heavenly Father.

And, happily, while jealousy may well be ‘as pitiless (קשה) as the grave’ (Sgs. 8.6b), ‘love is as strong as death’ (Sgs. 8.6a).

THE END.