Monday in Jerusalem

173:2.1On Sun­day the tri­umphal en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem so over­awed the Jew­ish lead­ers that they re­frained from plac­ing Je­sus un­der ar­rest. To­day, this spec­tac­u­lar cleans­ing of the tem­ple like­wise ef­fec­tively post­poned the Mas­ter’s ap­pre­hen­sion. Day by day the rulers of the Jews were be­com­ing more and more de­ter­mined to de­stroy him, but they were dis­traught by two fears, which con­spired to de­lay the hour of strik­ing. The chief priests and the scribes were un­will­ing to ar­rest Je­sus in pub­lic for fear the mul­ti­tude might turn upon them in a fury of re­sent­ment; they also dreaded the pos­si­bil­ity of the Ro­man guards be­ing called upon to quell a pop­u­lar up­ris­ing.

173:2.2At the noon ses­sion of the San­hedrin it was unan­i­mously agreed that Je­sus must be speed­ily de­stroyed, inas­much as no friend of the Mas­ter at­tended this meet­ing. But they could not agree as to when and how he should be taken into cus­tody. Fi­nally they agreed upon ap­point­ing five groups to go out among the peo­ple and seek to en­tan­gle him in his teach­ing or oth­er­wise to dis­credit him in the sight of those who lis­tened to his in­struc­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, about two o’clock, when Je­sus had just be­gun his dis­course on “The Lib­erty of Son­ship,” a group of these el­ders of Is­rael made their way up near Je­sus and, in­ter­rupt­ing him in the cus­tom­ary man­ner, asked this ques­tion: “By what au­thor­ity do you do these things? Who gave you this au­thor­ity?”

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

173:2.4The rulers of the tem­ple came be­fore Je­sus at this af­ter­noon hour chal­leng­ing not only his teach­ing but his acts. Je­sus well knew that these very men had long pub­licly taught that his au­thor­ity for teach­ing was Sa­tanic, and that all his mighty works had been wrought by the power of the prince of dev­ils. There­fore did the Mas­ter be­gin his an­swer to their ques­tion by ask­ing them a counter-ques­tion. Said Je­sus: “I would also like to ask you one ques­tion which, if you will an­swer me, I like­wise will tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these works. The bap­tism of John, whence was it? Did John get his au­thor­ity from heaven or from men?”

173:2.5And when his ques­tion­ers heard this, they with­drew to one side to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what an­swer they might give. They had thought to em­bar­rass Je­sus be­fore the mul­ti­tude, but now they found them­selves much con­fused be­fore all who were as­sem­bled at that time in the tem­ple court. And their dis­com­fi­ture was all the more ap­par­ent when they re­turned to Je­sus, say­ing: “Con­cern­ing the bap­tism of John, we can­not an­swer; we do not know.” And they so an­swered the Mas­ter be­cause they had rea­soned among them­selves: If we shall say from heaven, then will he say, Why did you not be­lieve him, and per­chance will add that he re­ceived his au­thor­ity from John; and if we shall say from men, then might the mul­ti­tude turn upon us, for most of them hold that John was a prophet; and so they were com­pelled to come be­fore Je­sus and the peo­ple con­fess­ing that they, the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers of Is­rael, could not (or would not) ex­press an opin­ion about John’s mis­sion. And when they had spo­ken, Je­sus, look­ing down upon them, said, “Nei­ther will I tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these things.”

173:2.6Je­sus never in­tended to ap­peal to John for his au­thor­ity; John had never been or­dained by the San­hedrin. Je­sus’ au­thor­ity was in him­self and in his Fa­ther’s eter­nal su­prem­acy.

173:2.7In em­ploy­ing this method of deal­ing with his ad­ver­saries, Je­sus did not mean to dodge the ques­tion. At first it may seem that he was guilty of a mas­terly eva­sion, but it was not so. Je­sus was never dis­posed to take un­fair ad­van­tage of even his en­e­mies. In this ap­par­ent eva­sion he re­ally sup­plied all his hear­ers with the an­swer to the Phar­isees’ ques­tion as to the au­thor­ity be­hind his mis­sion. They had as­serted that he per­formed by au­thor­ity of the prince of dev­ils. Je­sus had re­peat­edly as­serted that all his teach­ing and works were by the power and au­thor­ity of his Fa­ther in heaven. This the Jew­ish lead­ers re­fused to ac­cept and were seek­ing to cor­ner him into ad­mit­ting that he was an ir­reg­u­lar teacher since he had never been sanc­tioned by the San­hedrin. In an­swer­ing them as he did, while not claim­ing au­thor­ity from John, he so sat­is­fied the peo­ple with the in­fer­ence that the ef­fort of his en­e­mies to en­snare him was ef­fec­tively turned upon them­selves and was much to their dis­credit in the eyes of all pres­ent.

173:2.8And it was this ge­nius of the Mas­ter for deal­ing with his ad­ver­saries that made them so afraid of him. They at­tempted no more ques­tions that day; they re­tired to take fur­ther coun­sel among them­selves. But the peo­ple were not slow to dis­cern the dis­hon­esty and in­sin­cer­ity in these ques­tions asked by the Jew­ish rulers. Even the com­mon folk could not fail to dis­tin­guish be­tween the moral majesty of the Mas­ter and the de­sign­ing hypocrisy of his en­e­mies. But the cleans­ing of the tem­ple had brought the Sad­ducees over to the side of the Phar­isees in per­fect­ing the plan to de­stroy Je­sus. And the Sad­ducees now rep­re­sented a ma­jor­ity of the San­hedrin.