Before the Sanhedrin Court

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

184:4.2Dur­ing this tragic hour of suf­fer­ing and mock tri­als be­fore the ig­no­rant and un­feel­ing guards and ser­vants, John Zeb­e­dee waited in lonely ter­ror in an ad­join­ing room. When these abuses first started, Je­sus in­di­cated to John, by a nod of his head, that he should re­tire. The Mas­ter well knew that, if he per­mit­ted his apos­tle to re­main in the room to wit­ness these in­dig­ni­ties, John’s re­sent­ment would be so aroused as to pro­duce such an out­break of protest­ing in­dig­na­tion as would prob­a­bly re­sult in his death.

184:4.3Through­out this aw­ful hour Je­sus ut­tered no word. To this gen­tle and sen­si­tive soul of hu­mankind, joined in per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ship with the God of all this uni­verse, there was no more bit­ter por­tion of his cup of hu­mil­i­a­tion than this ter­ri­ble hour at the mercy of these ig­no­rant and cruel guards and ser­vants, who had been stim­u­lated to abuse him by the ex­am­ple of the mem­bers of this so-called San­hedrist court.

184:4.4The hu­man heart can­not pos­si­bly con­ceive of the shud­der of in­dig­na­tion that swept out over a vast uni­verse as the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences wit­nessed this sight of their beloved Sov­er­eign sub­mit­ting him­self to the will of his ig­no­rant and mis­guided crea­tures on the sin-dark­ened sphere of un­for­tu­nate Uran­tia.

184:4.5What is this trait of the an­i­mal in man which leads him to want to in­sult and phys­i­cally as­sault that which he can­not spir­i­tu­ally at­tain or in­tel­lec­tu­ally achieve? In the half-civ­i­lized man there still lurks an evil bru­tal­ity which seeks to vent it­self upon those who are su­pe­rior in wis­dom and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. Wit­ness the evil coarse­ness and the bru­tal fe­roc­ity of these sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized men as they de­rived a cer­tain form of an­i­mal plea­sure from this phys­i­cal at­tack upon the un­re­sist­ing Son of Man. As these in­sults, taunts, and blows fell upon Je­sus, he was un­de­fend­ing but not de­fense­less. Je­sus was not van­quished, merely un­con­tend­ing in the ma­te­rial sense.

184:4.6These are the mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s great­est vic­to­ries in all his long and event­ful ca­reer as maker, up­holder, and sav­ior of a vast and far-flung uni­verse. Hav­ing lived to the full a life of re­veal­ing God to man, Je­sus is now en­gaged in mak­ing a new and un­prece­dented rev­e­la­tion of man to God. Je­sus is now re­veal­ing to the worlds the fi­nal tri­umph over all fears of crea­ture per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion. The Son of Man has fi­nally achieved the re­al­iza­tion of iden­tity as the Son of God. Je­sus does not hes­i­tate to as­sert that he and the Fa­ther are one; and on the ba­sis of the fact and truth of that su­preme and su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence, he ad­mon­ishes ev­ery king­dom be­liever to be­come one with him even as he and his Fa­ther are one. The liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­li­gion of Je­sus thus be­comes the sure and cer­tain tech­nique whereby the spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated and cos­mi­cally lonely mor­tals of earth are en­abled to es­cape per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion, with all its con­se­quences of fear and as­so­ci­ated feel­ings of help­less­ness. In the fra­ter­nal re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven the faith sons of God find fi­nal de­liv­er­ance from the iso­la­tion of the self, both per­sonal and plan­e­tary. The God-know­ing be­liever in­creas­ingly ex­pe­ri­ences the ec­stasy and grandeur of spir­i­tual so­cial­iza­tion on a uni­verse scale—cit­i­zen­ship on high in as­so­ci­a­tion with the eter­nal re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine des­tiny of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.