Posts from — September 2007

This Sunday I will be preaching from John 11:45-57. In this passage, the Jewish leaders meet to decide how to respond to Jesus after he raised Lazarus from the dead.

In the middle of this story the high priest of Israel, Caiaphas, speaks up. In John 11:50 he says:

You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.

John the gospel writer interprets this statement in verses 51-52 when he writes:

He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.

This text is unsettling due to John’s comment in verse 51, “He did not say this on his own, but… he prophesied.” There are two things that make the passage unsettling.

First, Caiaphas is clearly an unbeliever. As the leader of the gang conspiring to take Jesus’ life, he has certainly rejected the claims Jesus made about himself. Jesus has already labeled those who reject him as likewise rejecting God the Father. See John 8:54-55 for one clear example. So, as Christians, we cannot say that Caiaphas spoke because he knew God but didn’t know Christ. According to Jesus, Caiaphas knew neither Jesus nor God the Father. Yet, according to John, Caiaphas “prophesied.” How do we account for this?

The second reason why this passage is unsettling comes from John’s interpretation of Caiaphas’ “prophecy.” When you compare verses 48 and 50, it is clear that when Caiaphas says that Jesus should die “for the people” so that the “whole nation” won’t “perish,” it seems clear that Caiaphas is talking about a political substitution. His intention is to say, “We must kill Jesus so that the Romans don’t come and kill us.” But John takes his statement and, without changing it at all, finds a different meaning in his words. John interprets Caiaphas’ statement in a spiritual way as we see in verses 51 and 52:

…he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.

John interprets Caiaphas’ prophecy as predicting a spiritual result from Jesus’ death—one that provides salvation to Jews and, oh yes, Gentiles, too. But Caiaphas’ original intent does not seem to contain any indication of a spiritual result and it certainly does not seem to foretell anything about the Gentiles. So John’s commentary seems to violate what I believe about interpretation based on the original human author’s intent.

How do we deal with these two unsettling problems?

First, on the issue of Caiaphas’ prophesying, the answer lies in John’s statement “as high priest that year he prophesied….” (v. 51). It is clear to me that John restated (compare to verse 49) the fact that Caiaphas was high priest in order to explain how he could give revelation from God without knowing God personally. Caiphas did so based on role as high priest. In the OT, one of the duties of the high priest was to be a revealer of God’s will to the people. The high priest revealed God’s will to the people by consulting the Urim (see Numbers 27:21) and by instructing the Israelites on how to handle the spoils of war (Numbers 31:13, 21-24). Priests in general revealed God to the people by making pronouncements about leprosy and mildew (Leviticus 13) and by deciding legal questions (Deuteronomy 17:8-11). There is also precedent in the Old Testament for God using unbelievers to deliver his messages, on occasion (compare Numbers 22-24 to 2 Peter 2:15-16). So, it is not a problem that God spoke through Caiaphas, even though Caiaphas did not know God. God was merely using Caiaphas in his capacity as high priest.

The second problem (Caiaphas’ intent) is solved by understanding the difference between a statement and its implication. What Caiaphas said was that Jesus would die on behalf of the nation. He would die to spare the nation from punishment. That statement was prophetic and true. Jesus did die and his death did prevent a military confrontation that would have happened eventually between the Jews and the Romans because of Jesus’ popularity. But John’s interpretive statement in verses 51 and 52 sees a greater implication. Although Caiphas was speaking and prophesying about the political benefit of killing Jesus, John points out, almost ironically, that his statement also predicted a spiritual salvation through Jesus’ death—the death of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for human sin. Although Caiphas did not have this in mind, one can look back and see that he indirectly and unintentionally stated the true spiritual purpose of Jesus death: that Jesus would die in the place of all of God’s people, serving as our substitute, our sacrifice for sins.

Years ago I was a member of a church where the pastor had some unusual pulpit techniques. One of them was to legislate from the pulpit. While he was preaching, an idea would occur to him and he would, on the spot, mandate that it would be so from then on. This left people on the church’s staff scrambling to keep up with his latest edict and wondering when the next pronouncement from on high would be handed down.

Another habit he had was preaching through his prayers. This usually happened in his closing prayer at the end of the sermon. While he was praying, he would often recap his own message and make applications that he had not made in the message itself. Sometimes the things he said seemed so personal that it seemed to me he was speaking about a particular person, though never by name and never with enough information to identify the person. But instead of truly talking to God about that person, he was sort of talking to that person—preaching to him or her—while he was talking to God in prayer.

It was a strange experience, one that always made me uncomfortable.

As I grew older and became a preacher myself, I decided that these habits were bad ideas and that I would try to avoid them when I became a pastor.

I still think that way, and I do try to avoid them. However, this week as I was preaching through John 11, the prayer of Jesus in verse 41 got me thinking some more about this subject. John 11:41-42 says:

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

In verse 42, Jesus basically states (to God, no less!) that he is preaching in his prayers. While he talks to God, he is saying what he says “for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Because Jesus did this, it would therefore seem to justify the practice of preaching to people while speaking to God.

But, not so fast. Because in this situation, Jesus is not singling anyone out or publicly divulging personal information that he had received in private about someone. Rather, what Jesus is doing is crafting his prayer with the listeners in mind. As D. A. Carson writes in his commentary on John:

“It is not foreign to the spirit of the passage to remark that public prayers, though like private prayers addressed to God, must be crafted with the public in mind as well.” (D. A. Carson,The Gospel According to John, p. 418.)

Thus, there is a difference between the way we talk to God in public and the way that we talk to him in private.

In our public prayers to God, we are having a conversation with God. No question. But we are having it as a group with the person praying aloud serving as the spokesman. As the spokesman, I should never speak to God about any one person in our group in a way that would embarrass that person in front of the group. What Jesus did was speak to the Father about the group as a whole then explain to everyone—God the Father and the group who listened in on his prayer—why he had spoken the way that he had.

Maybe an appropriate application would be something like this: “Father, we have a financial need here at our church. I’m asking you to meet that need, but I’m saying it out loud before our entire church so that everyone will know that you answer prayer when this need is met.”

Certainly, we must pray for the people in our church by name before our God. But the place to do that is in privacy or in a confidential group prayer, such as a church’s elder meeting. When we pray publicly, we should speak to God about things that apply to the whole group, not merely to ourselves or any particular person in the group. That’s what Jesus did and it is one way, perhaps, to glorify God in our public prayers.