Christ In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 04. Chapter 4: The Vicious Circle Condemns Christ

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Christ In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 04. Chapter 4: The Vicious Circle Condemns Christ



TOPIC: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 04. Chapter 4: The Vicious Circle Condemns Christ

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C H A P T E R F O U R

The Vicious Circle Condemns Christ

And they led Jesus away to the high priest: and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together. And there arose certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and within three days I will build another made without hands. But neither so did their witness agree together.

—Mar_14:53 and Mar_14:55-59.

OUR preceding chapter was an exposition of the thought that the vicious circle in which, according to the Preacher, the whole world is ensnared as long as it shuns the Christ, is pointed out and condemned by Christ. It was His privilege and it was His duty to do so. Hence He presents Himself to us in the hall of Annas as the one solution to all questions. Moreover, His solution is not only the closing speech of all human argument, but also the beginning, the first contention, the word “which was from the beginning” proceeding as it did from the revealed God.

Now the Gospel turns the tables around. It shows us that darkness prefers itself to the light. Christ who would break through the vicious circle is in turn broken by it Himself.

For in the session of the Sanhedrin that which demands the death of Christ, God’s great Answerer, is its obstinate clinging to an unsolvable riddle. We shall investigate precisely that in greater detail now. It will be a piteous story about the wrath of the vicious circle.

Jesus is taken from Annas to Caiaphas. The preliminary hearing in the presence of Annas has produced no results. They did not know what to do with the Nazarene there. Accordingly, Annas rids himself of this great burden. He can do this very easily because his time has already been served. Thus Christ is led to the Sanhedrin. This body was present in toto (Mar_14:53-55; Mat_26:59). By that we do not mean to say that every last member was present, for it is also possible that the constituent colleges of the Sanhedrin were present in sufficiently adequate numbers to constitute a quorum. The assembly meets in the palace of Caiaphas. That is not surprising. It was night and the gate of the hill of the temple, accordingly, was closed, so that they could not meet in their official assembly hall. The work of darkness was in a hurry.

This was a very tragic spectacle, this opening of the session. They knew just what they wanted. Caiaphas said as much at the time. All they needed now was a formal basis for the sentence, a kind of formulation of the charge which could be made public to God and men. But that was not easy. We say again, that the preliminary hearing had proved fruitless and the Sanhedrin virtually was turning around in the same impotent situation. The Gospel according to Mark, particularly, points out very clearly how they must coil and twist themselves about in their attempt to arrive at some legal version of a charge and of a condemnation. At first all the members of the assembly set themselves to work at the task. All of the respectable gentlemen together try to find some testimony against Jesus. However, they find none. True, there were false witnesses enough but these contradicted each other badly. At least no one could find a harmony in the several testimonies which they presented.

Then, at long last, there were a few who found something. From the variety and abundance of the testimony heard, the subject they wished to discuss comes into the foreground sharply accentuated. Among this group, too, there is still some difference of opinion about the exact formulation and the precise phrasing of what Jesus has done amiss. But, after all, one cannot be too particular in a situation like this one. An argument which really carries weight has now been brought to the fore. It concerns a certain statement which Jesus made long ago when He had been challenged by the Jews to authenticate His, messianic rights.

Now the fact that the issue concerned messianic rights tells us that it was indeed one which could legitimately be raised here. For Christ’s messianic qualifications are indeed the major consideration in any trial which the world engages in against Him. Everyone should sit at attention now, for it seems that the main issue has finally been reached.

Just what is it that they have found? Well, let them tell it themselves. Everyone remembers that Christ once purged the temple. He found all kinds of traders there who were teaching the people to play with the law of sacrifice. A false desire for comfort had made God’s commandments impotent by means of caricatured human promises. Everywhere the doors of the temple had the superscription, “Open for business.” That holy zeal which gives God what is God’s due was gone. The temple had been turned into a den of murderers.

When Christ noticed that, He had arisen in opposition. He had arisen by virtue of His authority as the Messiah. He had said to Himself — as He did so He was employing the logic of the Son thinking about His Father’s house — that they had no right to defile or profane the house of His Father. If they persisted in doing that the task of the Son was clear. And thereupon Christ had whipped these people out of His Father’s splendid palace. He had driven those out who had defiled the temple and whose conduct sent its foul stench up to heaven.

After this zealous business had been completed, the authorities had come to Jesus. Just what had He taken into His hands? Who had given Him the authority? Where were His credentials? Naturally, Jesus did not have these, at least no credentials written by men. Neither the political nor the spiritual authorities had qualified Him for such or for any other conduct. Nevertheless Jesus insisted that He was qualified to act as He did. His credentials, He suggested, came from above.

Well, if that were true, there was only one thing to do: to demand a sign. If He as a worker of miracles could exhibit some convincing token (just what kind they would consider in greater detail afterwards), they might be willing to consider the fact that indeed Jesus did get His rights from above.

In response to the request to show some sign by way of proving His qualifications, Jesus gives a very fitting answer. On the other hand He answers the fools according to their folly, for He suggests a sign which not one of them is willing to challenge. He tells them that they can go ahead and break the temple down, and within three days He will build it up again.

Naturally Christ knew very well that they would not proceed to break down the stone temple in the shadow of which this dispute was being carried on. To that extent, therefore, His answer begs the question, and rules out of consideration the request they have put to Him. Why does He do it? Why? Because Christ is willing to show a sign only when it is accompanied by the Word. A sign which does not come accompanied by the Word cannot possibly convert anyone. A sign cannot in itself convince anyone. True, it makes its appearance in the phenomenal world, but if it is not explained in terms of the prophecy of special revelation, the sign is the exact equivalent of anything else in that world of phenomena. Then the sign also is but a part of the vicious circle of all natural, mundane life. Unless the sign is accompanied by the Word, it cannot help one to escape from the circle. One can never explain the sign with certainty, unless one has first been taken captive and vanquished by the Word of God. If that has not taken place, if faith is not present, the sign will have nothing to reveal, but will remain a conundrum which one explains this way, and another that way. A sign proves to be a sign only to those who beforehand, and without it, have believed solely because of the Word. To this extent, therefore, the answer which Christ gave the dignified gentlemen at the side of the temple who asked Him for His credentials was a true answer, replying to the fool in terms of his folly.

On the other hand, however, Christ also answered not the fool according to his folly (and that, too, is advised in the Proverbs). In other words, Christ presents a new folly by way of an answer to the other. In this He is quite serious. The answer which He gives contains a profound, a hidden meaning, a sublime and sacred seriousness, a sovereign and messianic sensitiveness, an awareness of His own worth; and it contains, besides, a judgment, a distinction between good and evil, between faith and unbelief.

That becomes apparent to us the moment we listen carefully to Christ’s reply. For when He says, “Feel free to break down the temple, and I shall build it up in three days,” He is giving expression to a riddle, to what in the Hebrew tongue is called the maschil. Such a riddle, or maschil, accordingly, is an intentional concealment of the truth. A concealment, yes, and to what end? Simply to keep something away from the auditor? No, but, on the contrary, to make him want a further explanation. The maschil is not a temptation designed to drive a person from the truth to the lie; but it is a testing, a proving designed to give him an opportunity to say what he wants. Does he want to be content with a concealed truth, or does he want to ask for the full revelation? The maschil does not dull the point of truth, but does indeed cover it. Especially in the instruction of Jesus does the maschil make a remarkable impression. It is a riddle in His prophetic instruction in which He presents a problem in such a way that all those to whom He speaks about it must be hurt by it, inasmuch as they will never escape from it in their own strength. After the maschil one can say which of those who heard Jesus desired further assistance, and which of them shut themselves up within the limits of their own pride.

All of these considerations hold true of the riddle which Christ spoke in reference to the breaking down and building up again of the temple. Who, indeed, would be able to say exactly what that statement meant? The enigmatic element was certainly conspicuous enough in this maschil of Jesus. His speech was full of obscurities.

For instance: Christ knew very well that no one would undertake to break the temple down. In fact, if anyone should have undertaken this work at His behest, He would thereby have been taking responsibility for something which He on other occasions definitely opposed. Very often, we know, Jesus assured those who heard Him that He did not desire the destruction of the temple. Moreover, such a “sign,” if some one, for instance, had accepted the challenge to break down the temple, would no longer be a genuine sign. The question which was being touted here between Christ and the Jews was whether or not Jesus had the right to take any initiative inside of this stone temple. His right to do that was highly disputable to the Jewish guardians of the temple. Now imagine that they had broken the temple down simply in an effort to see whether Jesus could restore it before the next Sabbath day. Then they would have indicated that they had so much respect for His words that they needed no “sign” to convince them. The sign, then, would no longer have constituted evidence, which Jesus, as an alleged craftsman of unusual qualifications and extraordinary ability, had been asked to present. Instead of “seeing,” of “testing,” they would have been trusting. Then they would have had to take the responsibility entirely upon their own shoulders, even though they had begun by emphatically placing it upon the shoulders of Jesus.

Well, you see that no matter how they may twist about and contort themselves, people cannot escape from this answer. This is so completely true that we also would have been unable to escape from it, if we had been present at the occasion. Even if we had absorbed the whole Bible, even if we had absorbed the whole truth of the Scriptures, we would have learned nothing about the hidden meaning of this maschil, if Jesus had not told each of us in particular what He meant by His reply. However, He told His disciples what He meant, and by means of the Scriptures gave us the right interpretation of His riddle. It is to that we owe the knowledge of what Christ meant by His answer and of how He could fulfill it in Himself. We are told that the temple of which He spoke is His own body. Just as the Jewish temple was a house in which God dwelt, just so Christ’s human nature is filled with the presence of God. The stone temple is stationary; it is the immobile property of God; it is the dwelling place, the domain of the great King. But Christ is the wandering temple. In Him God begins to move, comes to the world, makes His approach to the people and the powers here below. Therefore Christ may bear the name: the temple of the Lord. He knew this by virtue of His messianic consciousness; and from that He derived, as the greater than the stone temple, the right to proclaim the laws of the lesser temple. From that He derived the right to proclaim and apply, also by means of the purging, those laws of the lesser temple which grieved the Jewish authorities so sorely. Now it is this greater temple which the Jews are to break down (as they proceed to crucify their Saviour). But He will Himself, as the wandering dwelling place of God, restore that temple again, making it more glorious than it ever was before. He will make it translucent with the majesty which is in the highest heavens. This He will do by means of His resurrection from the dead.

So much for the hidden significance of this maschil pronounced by Christ. We return now to the point of our departure. And if we give our thoughts a natural and a free reign, we too will ask ourselves in astonishment: How in the world can this maschil be regarded as a sublime answer? How can we seriously maintain that by means of this maschil Christ answered the fools among the Jews not according to their folly, but according to His messianic wisdom? Is it true that the messianic majesty and dignity express themselves fully in this riddle? Surely, the Messiah is called, not to the great concealment, but to the manifest revelation; He is sent not to be secretive, but to be a discoverer of reality.

In reply to this, we would answer that the highest revelation also has the right to be the profoundest concealment. The most powerful love has the right to express the most powerful wrath. He who gives most can also take most. He who always hastens when he comes to me, has the right to detain me as long as he pleases. And such is the right of the maschil — of the maschil of my Lord Christ.

For a maschil, a riddle, without Christ is nothing more than the pain of the Preacher, that late writer of the Old Testament.[1] It is a fatal suffering, a brutal interference with my roving through the thoroughfares of the carnival of vanity. Of course, the maschil in the mouth of Christ Himself also causes acute pain, but it is a pain which the physician inflicts upon us not to put us to death but to heal us. It is an ingenious excitement of the sense of hunger in order that we may at the right time ask for bread.

We must not fail to take careful notice of the maschil as one of the ways used by Christ to reveal Himself. It does not commend our Christian thinking that we, in speaking of the means of revelation which God employs, write extensive articles about the dream, about the deep sleep, about the vision, and about the theophony, as being so many means of revelation of God in the Old Testament, and then leave no room in our thoughts at all for the maschil of Christ. We say that this does not commend our thinking. If we follow that course, the maschil will remain a riddle. That holds true not only for its content, but also for the fact of its existence. However, if we leave the maschil uninvestigated, it condemns us; for it is designed precisely to excite us to investigation. Why, it asks us, why does Christ speak in “parables;” why does He use riddles instead of forthright speech — riddles which involve people in attempts at explanation without ever providing the possibility of a solution? Is Christ not the highest prophet? After all, He is the one person in the whole world who in the most absolute sense of the term is called to use a language which makes His thoughts and the thoughts of God clear to us. Why does He speak in parables that cannot be understood; why does He use riddles which give no one a key to their explanation?

[1] See the preceding chapters in which the book of Ecclesiastes was discussed in connection with the vicious circle, and in connection with the insufficiency of nature and of historical phenomena to explain themselves.

Christ alone is able to answer these questions. Moreover, He has answered them. Once when His disciples challenged Him for the intentional concealment of His thoughts in the form of parables, He told them that He did this in the sense of Isaiah: to reveal the thoughts of each man’s heart. He used the parable, the riddle, in order to make manifest a hardening of the heart where that was already latent, and to effect conversion wherever a human heart was susceptible and willing to listen to the pure words of God. Consequently there is a double task here. On the one hand, there is the calling “to make the heart of this people fat.” Note that it is a question of this people. In other words, the question concerns a fleshly people, a people which already has a heart which is “fat,” a people which already is unbelieving. On the other hand, there is also another people, and that people is very willing to take Christ at His word. This people allows the layer of fat — to retain the Biblical figure of speech — to be melted away, gives itself up to Christ without reservation, and then, in proportion to the measure of its faith, sees in the Christ not a concealer of thoughts but a revealer of them.

He must Himself provide the key for the explanation of all His parables to this people. The children of this spiritual seed look at the details of His instruction in the light of the main issue. They look at the periphery from the viewpoint of the center of truth. The unknown drives them to the known and to that which they love. If they have discovered a particular statement which weighs heavily upon them because they cannot account for it, they take it to the Word, to Christ Himself, and pray: “Do Thou explain this further.” And can you believe that He will fail to hear their prayer? Indeed, He hears them, and answers them. The embarrassed children who come to the Master of riddles for a solution have their reward. He gives them an even clearer revelation, one which disclosed the riddles that went before; He gives them a revelation which puts the key of wisdom, fashioned by God Himself, into their trembling hands, so that the doors of God’s house and of the palace of the Highest Wisdom are opened by means of it. By means of His difficult riddles He has given them an arduous task, but He also gives them their wages withal.

But what about that first people? What about the unbelieving people? Alas, although it has ever so luminous a light, it prefers the darkness. It is the enemy of light. The unregenerated personality chooses against Christ and against His truth and in that way disowns everything which it did understand in His instruction.

These people are also affected by the maschil. In the last analysis, everyone in the world gets what he wants. We know that the much tormented Old Testament preacher wanted to reach out above the circle of human science and of human investigation to the absolute, indubitable truth. Now if this hunger, which the Preacher knew, is not satisfied by the Christ, we can say that Christ is vain. That is one side of the truth about Jesus Christ. But this truth has another side. When the people who listen to Him would rather hunger with the Preacher than be satisfied with the bread of Christ, their choice for hunger instead of bread and for the vicious circle instead of the straight line of revealed truth is a gruesome sin which carries condemnation within itself, which calls God’s judgment down upon it.

In this way, then, Christ bears his maschil into the world. He is the great proposer of riddles. He is that now also and it is as such a presenter of riddles that He makes His appearance as the great sifter, and as the divine judgment. For the maschil is also an instrument of judgment.

As often as Christ speaks in parables, He compels men to present themselves as they are. The maschil is essentially a sifter; it reveals what is in man. The reaction to the maschil can be one of two possibilities. To everyone who hears it, it is, until further explanation ensues, a riddle. That the two have in common. But this is the difference. One person will hunger for the truth; together with the Preacher of the Old Testament he will honestly long for the light. In the depths of his solitary life he will look to the divine Word which answers all his questions and puts his soul at rest. Now this person will say to himself: I have in my hands a lock which I cannot open; it is a secret lock. But I know one thing: Christ has the key. I shall go to Him at once and ask Him what He wishes of me; I shall ask Him what preaching He has hidden in the maschil for me. Such is the course of a disciple who comes, asking, “Tell me the meaning of the parable.”

But there are others who take the opposite course in their thinking and secret pondering. They also experience that they cannot satisfactorily explain Jesus’ word. And secretly they are glad of that, for they do not really want to face Him honestly. At least not as He is in His person and doctrine. And these use the fact that He speaks in parables as an argument for stopping the attempt at finding their solution. They turn the maschil against the Christ who gave it, for they regard it as a precious privilege to say: “He spoke so obscurely that I am compelled to advise myself.” They think they have made a very delightful discovery when they say: “He gave me a riddle; He let me walk about in a maze from which there was no escape. Hence it is no fault of my own that I have stayed inside my vicious circle.” They are so glad that the riddle gives them a kind of excuse that they forget His willingness and ability to put into their hands the thread by which they can escape from their vicious thought-cycle. They have a lock; it is a secret lock, and as far as He is concerned, He has not given them the key. Consequently they take the liberty to putter with the strange lock after their own fashion in order that in that way they may cling to their own wisdom and their own mistaken science.

Thereupon—just notice it—you will find that a new prayer is being composed. It is the prayer of the ignorant. No, I am not mentioning Annas by name, nor Multatuli, for how could I dare not to name myself? This only I know—that every maschil spoken by Jesus elicits prayers from people: the prayers of publicans and the grim prayers of the “ignorant” who are terribly happy about being able to blame God for having darkened His sun and who just then break their leg upon the rock of offence.

Surely, if these people were honest with themselves in relation to Christ they would want to ask Him what He meant, and would want to ask Him for a further explanation. Even the person who eagerly wants to condemn Jesus as the great proclaimer of vanities in the world must do that. But if one is unwilling to let Christ be the explainer of His own proverbs, he uses the riddle which God puts to him as an argument for staying in the night of darkness. All so-called “prayers of the ignorant” complain about the maschil, but secretly rejoice in it; they jot it down in their memorandum book, supposing that it will come in handy in the last judgment. Let God wait; they have their reply.

We can say then that it is God’s zeal for the crisis, for the sifting, which hurls the maschil into the world. It reveals the heart. After this, friendship and enmity will have to give a further account of themselves.

What is the conclusion of the whole matter? Who are you, son of man, who are you, you who compose the prayers of the ignorant? How dare you take the maschil into the condemnation of Christ? Who are you, daring as you do, to deny the prophecy of Christ because of the maschil? May that maschil teach you to forget to tremble, and to shudder? No, it is just when the maschil is pronounced by Christ Himself that it is a thing to inspire trembling, a mystery in which revelation is not hidden, as though it never wanted to be made manifest. Instead, it is a mystery in which revelation is proclaiming aloud that it has been very well known. The maschil does not deny the manifest character of Jesus’ instruction, but assumes precisely that, and it forces you back into the aisle out of which you have departed so quickly. It was the aisle in which the clear prophet spoke a word to your soul as the Good Shepherd. Surely, if Christ spoke in parables only, He would not be the bread of heaven. Then the hungering soul of the Preacher would not have found satisfaction with Him. But the fact is that He presents His maschil only in the place where He has first made His word and deed clearly manifest, and where He always stands ready to answer everyone who asks an honest question about it. Because that is the fact, this maschil is an awful thing. Christ takes you out of the full light of the midday sun, places you in a dark room, and asks: Now you have seen that there is light; which do you want, light or darkness? By means of the maschil Christ provokes the sense of hunger, and a conscious sense of uncertainty. Just that—a conscious sense of uncertainty. Therefore we say that the maschil, yes, even the maschil, is a last instrument of grace, just as a rude awakening of a man who lies in danger of freezing because he is about to go to sleep in the cold also is grace. If this man loses consciousness, he will fall asleep—forever. The maschil is light. Everything which reveals, and everything which reveals inner truths, is light. The one will return from the maschil complacently to the labor of his own soul, in order to pay out money for that which is not bread, and to devote effort to that which cannot satisfy. The other will be just so much more desirous for the true bread which God extends to them. He eats the roll. Has it the label “maschil”? No matter, he takes it and eats. It may be bitter, or sweet, or both together. No matter, God will teach him. . . .

Therefore we can say that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge lie concealed in the maschil. These lure us, and invite. In His maschil Christ makes us sense that all of His plainly spoken answers contain so many wonderful truths in their mysterious depths that He has only to turn His prophet’s cloak inside out and we will see that this cloak is lined with the stuff of riddles. On the garment which as a prophet He wears among us, the names of God and of God’s virtues are embroidered in human characters; even the foolish cannot go astray. But the inside of His sublime cloak is embroidered with figures of cherubim, or is it of demons? In any case they are figures which I cannot understand and which lure me either to leave Him or otherwise to trust Him entirely, and to seize Him by His garments, the very thing by which He would be seized. Christ’s prophetic instruction (to which He appealed first in the presence of Annas, in the beginning of His trial) is very manifest; it makes the hidden things obvious. But Christ’s maschil which He now hears brought into the trial against Him again makes the obvious hidden.

Accordingly the person who has heard Christ speaking in riddles, is in a position to make only one practical application. He must bring the riddle to Christ Himself, he must bring the letter in which the conundrum is written to Jesus, asking: Do Thou break the seals, read me the words, explain to me the hidden sense, for blessed is he who is not offended by a riddle-speaking Jesus.

The maschil keeps me from making God’s word the word of man. It keeps me from saying of the sun of righteousness: I have found the formula of its light. The maschil reminds me in the most painful if most effective manner that I may not separate the Word from its sublime Speaker. That is the great admonishment contained in the maschil of Jesus.

And it was this admonishment which also lay contained in, and was brought to the foreground in the maschil which Jesus spoke when He purged the temple. If one separates the enigmatic word which He spoke at that time from the speaker, and if one refuses to relate Jesus’ external action and audibly spoken word to His inner essence and to His continuous revelation at all times and places, one can make of Jesus precisely what one pleases. Then He can become a destroyer of the temple or a builder of the temple, a rebel or a reformer, a destroyer or a fulfiller, a magician or a prophet, an ironical proposer of riddles or a physician, one who presents divine answers or a relative of the Egyptian and Greek oracles—who also spoke in riddles in an effort to conceal the fact that they had nothing to reveal. Then Jesus can become the great prophet of Israel, one who tempts God by a display of stupid, haughty boldness, which is a blasphemy of the tenor of the holy temple, or one who trembles before God and fears Him, who honors God’s temple as being God’s house, because God dwells in it Himself.

Unless the historical manifestation is not explained in terms of God’s eternal concept of Christ, then Jesus and His maschil is included in the same classification as circumscribes other world powers and world peoples; then He is passively taken into the vicious circle of which the Preacher complained, together with us all. But Jesus is the Christ and it is as the Christ, that is as He is in His office, in His messianic office, that He pronounces His maschil. The maschil of Jesus irks people intensely precisely because it makes everything subservient to Christ. All who hunger for God out of the depths cry aloud to the maschil of Jesus for the answer of Christ. But the person who knows not this hungering for God, rubs his hands as he deals with the devil, and as the devil teaches him the statement he is requested to repeat to God later on: If I am lost it is Thy fault; Thou dost speak in riddles, at least the prophet whom Thou gavest me does. The italicized phrase was used before. Adam used it. And some of Adam’s children learn it by heart even though Adam himself quickly revoked it.

But Thou, my Saviour . . . Thou, who art the second Adam . . . now Thou art caught in Thine own snares; Thou art being entangled in Thine own skeins. Incomparable necessity: the Son of man is caught in His own crisis. At the beginning of His public ministry He casts the maschil into the life of His people. Now, having arrived at the end of this ministry, He is reaping—is He not the Surety?—His own bitter fruit.

If Christ had not introduced the maschil among the self-satisfied guardians of the temple, His sentence would not have been pronounced against Him so quickly. Then the Sanhedrin, which had struggled so long in vain in order to find some kind of charge against Him, would have found nothing. But now these members of the Sanhedrin discover the maschil which Christ Himself originally laid down.

No, we do not mean this in a sense which would make Christ responsible for their distortion of His word. The atrocity of this distortion remains the responsibility of the false witnesses. When they distort Christ’s words, “Break down the temple,” into the other statement, “I shall break down the temple,” they are guilty of falsification which is entirely the sin of the false witnesses.

But for the rest, we maintain that Christ Himself has done this. It is apparent that Christ’s riddle was remembered for a long time in Israel. He has been teaching for three years; and not a single point of the whole store of His discourses is brought to the fore, save this riddle, spoken at the very beginning. In this way, by pronouncing the maschil, Christ at the very beginning of His official ministration, Himself brought the end nearer.

By means of that maschil Christ began to sift. Sifting always implies that sinners are being irked. A Christ who wants to sift, looses His own murderers against Him. Christ sifted. He intensified the hunger of the hungering souls, and then gathered them under the shadow of His wings, to comfort their trembling hearts with certainties. Hearing, these heard, and seeing, they saw, and observing, they did indeed discover. But at the same time, and by the same means, Christ also hardened the others, inasmuch as they were hardened already. He made hard the heart of fat, and hearing, these did not hear, seeing, they did not see, and observing, they did not discover.

This, too, was the will of Jesus. Therefore the fact that the maschil now turns against Him may be said to be His own work. The crisis spoken of in Rev_20:11 was loosed against Him by His own riddle and all His days are but a single day of passive and of active obedience to His God.

Therefore the beginning of the session of the Sanhedrin, as told in the gospel, is a beautifully artistic conclusion to the end of the preliminary session before Annas. You can see that for yourself. In the presence of Annas, Christ concluded by laying bare the vicious circle in the argumentation of the world, the circle, that is, which would explain life in terms of life, and the historical manifestation, the external side, of Jesus, without reference to Christ. The same thing happens now in the presence of the Sanhedrin. The riddle which Jesus proposed has not been solved by anyone present here. Nevertheless, they force the enigmatic out of the enigma and proceed to “explain” the unknown in terms of the way they wish to understand Him. They proceed to explain Jesus’ riddles with the aid of commentaries which the flesh has written. They do not understand Jesus; but in spite of that they hurl Him into the maelstrom, into the vacillations of life, able as these are to give birth to rebels and to reformers, to those who would destroy as well as to those who build the temple. In short, they proceed—they are forced to it!—to look upon Jesus as though He were but a subordinate part of the world. They explain and interpret Him in terms of the world itself—as though they understood that. The overbearing character, the brutality of the blow to the cheek administered by the servant of Annas, returns daily, in the Sanhedrin first, and later in the conflict of the spirits. Every instance of applause with which the Sanhedrin greeted the false witnesses, every excited pulse among these old gentlemen who turned the maschil against Jesus is but another blow against Jesus, an attack on the heart of the Chief Prophet, a mockery of the Bearer of the sovereign authority, an overlooking of the messianic issue, even though that issue made itself obvious in the maschil to a painful extent.

Accordingly, the episode which introduces the maschil of Christ into the debate occupies its own unique position in the account of Christ’s passion. Annas in his preliminary session and Caiaphas’ Sanhedrin and its official hearing are perfect complements to each other. When Jesus had to give His account to Annas, they began to assume that His discourse was not clear but enigmatic. They overlooked the obviousness of His instruction in an attempt to blame Him for speaking obscurely. Here, in the presence of Caiaphas, they turned the tables around. To the extent that Christ actually spoke in riddles, they treated those riddles as though everyone understood perfectly what was meant, as though even the simplest could easily appreciate their meaning. Now they tell Christ: You are not preaching under the full light of the sun, but in a dark room. Tomorrow—no, even today—they tell Him: The roof of your dark chamber leaks; we understood and appreciated everything you said. On one and the same day the mystery which is in Christ is confirmed and denied, according to the whims of the flesh. Therefore the one who is always responsible is Jesus Christ.

In this way, then, the maschil of Jesus becomes the predominant element in the trial. The high priest not only demands an answer from Jesus in reference to the maschil at once (Mat_26:61; Mar_14:60), but at the cross of Golgotha the theme of the maschil returns for consideration (Mat_27:40; Mar_15:29). In fact, even after Christ’s death and resurrection the maschil was turned against Jesus’ disciples, for Stephen too seems to have been sentenced because the Sanhedrin, too old to learn,[1] had no objections to using the maschil of Christ against him also (Act_6:11-14).

[1] And this happened, mark you, after the prophecy stated in Verse 64 had been fulfilled (see Chapter 7).

Now let us bow before the sovereign authority of Christ. He has loosed the storms over His own head, but He also places us in the whirlwind of that world-process of sifting between good and evil, between the obedient and the disobedient. Therefore we enter into the same judgment with Him. The riddle He spoke lies on the table; it is embroidered on His garments; it is involved in doctrines. Hence our heart, too, is made manifest. Some day it will become apparent whether we are willing to ask Him for the answer to His own riddles or whether we condemn Jesus in the light of our self-vaunted wisdom. Not to appreciate Christ and nevertheless to act as though we knew Him—that is the peculiar evil of the Sanhedrin. So the servant, so the judge; so the preliminary hearing, so the official session.

But who is not like the Sanhedrin according to the flesh? Alas, our heart also would rather hunger in the company of the Preacher, than be satisfied with the bread of Christ. By nature we, too, choose the vicious circle, “explain” time in terms of time and Jesus’ external deeds in the temple in terms of the externalities of Jesus and of the temple. Now this our sin also is unmasked in each and every maschil of Christ which is too great and wonderful for us. In the last analysis, every riddle from which we have forcibly turned ourselves aside, every doubt with which we did not flee to Christ’s authority, is just so much applause for the false witnesses of the Sanhedrin; it is to be on the wrong side of the condemnation released by the maschil.

We must fear that at this time there are many of these doubters. They mumble the prayer of the ignorant, and write it on the fan with which they cool themselves in the overheated room which is burning with the fire of judgment. With this beautifully embroidered fan they flatter themselves even in the presence of the chair of their judge. But their doubt is not a real doubt and the Judge knows it. It is but the effect of their unbelief. They overlook Jesus’ revelation and do not know that the dignity of His own revelation has hurled the maschil towards them to do His work in them.

In this matter we can only choose for or against. We can but believe or reject. If we acknowledge that Christ by His maschil governed and intensified His trial, we will catch a glimpse of His suffering, He has unloosed the crisis, and now He Himself becomes involved in it. He has made the filthy more filthy still, and the unrighteous more unrighteous, and now all that filth is flung into His face and all that unrighteousness beats against His soul. Oh terrible necessity! Here is a Christ who can say nothing, who must be mute over against His God. A Christ who is buried under the chaff which He has Himself separated from the wheat.

We catch a glimpse of His majesty also. One who enters upon His suffering in this way, one who has already fixed the terms of His sentence at the beginning of His public appearance, that is, after the purging of the temple, may be beaten down a thousand times, but if so He will rise again ten thousand times. Break down this temple, and He will arise at once. Yes, just now the filth which Christ has loosened still beats against His face, against His gentle face, His cloak, His soul. But so great a majesty is contained in this passion, that faith is already assured that He, when the crisis which breaks through at this time has been entirely completed (Rev_22:11), will sit upon the seat of judgment, lifted up, so high and so safe that all the filth and all the unrighteousness of the world cannot soil Him throughout eternity. This will be the day of judgment. That day was never so simple as it is now, as it is in the plain logic of the events of the present.

Finally, we get a glimpse of the Suretyship of Christ. Behold, He is bearing our guilt today. We were the ones who loved nature, and wanted to redeem the time in terms of the time. We, each one of us individually, are the ones who have rejected the “why” of revelation and of its manifest character. We are the ones who cry our false “whys” aloud before God simply in an attempt to escape from his “therefores.” Of the pincushion of His maschil we make a pillow; we pull all the pins out of it. And for this great guilt Christ bears the penalty. He who once pronounced the maschil not because He lacked certainty but precisely because it wanted its reward from men now hears all the members of the Sanhedrin. He also hears you and me as we boldly proclaim that we knew the truth long ago, that we know enough about Him, that we have “placed” Him. Thus we avow that man can conquer the problem of God incarnate. For this false glorying in the therefore of our pride Christ later must pay a price so high as to induce Him to conclude His profoundest utterance from the cross with a “Why, why, why hast Thou forsaken me.”

Here is the fully assured person who can propose His maschil on the top of the mountain of highest wisdom, when He Himself has sunk beneath the foot of His own mountain of truth. The Speaker of the maschil later becomes His own sacrifice on the cross. God puts Him to death with His own maschil. Meanwhile men jeer at Him: Ha, breaker of the temple, when will the building start? Thereupon Jesus sobbed: God, Why? He sobbed; His own maschil had cut off His breath. And this is called Suretyship. The Surety who first called out His therefore now sobs out His why.

But God be praised. In His why also the Surety did not turn from God to Himself. He wanted to solve His own riddles only at the gate of God’s palace, with His ear close to God’s infinite heart. Thus Christ suffered, leaving an example for us. He left an example of how to respond genuinely to the maschil. Take all your riddles to Him who proposes them. The “why?” must be immediately referred to “My God.”

Speak for yourself now. Does the maschil hurt anyone—except Jesus? No, indeed, the pain of the maschil is not a pain of death unto death for him who believes. On the contrary it is to be aroused to love and to life. For everyone who has found his Prophet as Surety, the maschil is the great appetizer for the daily recurring banquet of Christ’s prophecy, which leads the meek in their way, and satisfies the hungry with bread, and never satiates. Whoever has once eaten out of His hands will always return to His table, even though He spices His foods with the galls of the maschil. Even though? . . . No, but because. . . .