Matthew 26:47-56
47 While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” 49 And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. 51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” 55 At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. 56 But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled. [i]
What is the purpose of a Sunday morning sermon? The purpose is to declare the excellencies of Jesus Christ. The language is borrowed from the Apostle Peter. In 1 Peter 2:9, fully restored and Spirit-inspired Peter writes to the church, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Throughout the Gospel of Matthew we have seen Jesus as a heroic figure. However, in the previous chapter, as the tragedy of Golgotha came into better focus in Gethsemane, we saw Jesus as both the hero and the victim, or more accurately phrased, the hero by becoming the victim. In this greatest drama ever staged, we see a hero unlike any hero and yet so likable. He is so fascinating, captivating, and even alluring. He is someone you may find easy to marvel at in each sermon.
I invite you to join us in marveling at Christ. That’s what Matthew always wants us to do. In this text he highlights the light of Jesus Christ by contrasting him with the darkness of both old and new Israel. By “old Israel” we mean the religious rulers (“the chief priests and the elders of the people” mentioned in verse 47 and “the high priest” referenced via his servant in verse 51) and the crowd, those “with swords and clubs” (v. 47) who come to arrest Jesus. By “new Israel” I mean the church, embryonic in the Twelve, and thus including “all the disciples” mentioned in verse 56 as well as Peter and Judas singled out in verses 51 and 48, 49. There are six characters in this drama—(1) the chief priest and elders, (2) the crowd, (3) Judas, (4) Peter, (5) all the disciples, and (6) Jesus— and only one looks like “the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5; cf. Matthew 5:14). Other than Jesus, a great darkness covers the characters. Set against the black failure of old Israel (the Jews) and new Israel (the church), the white light of true Israel (Jesus) shines.
OLD AND NEW ISRAEL FAIL
Before we get to that light, let’s first look at the darkness of old and new Israel. As was just noted, the character of Christ is set apart by contrasting him with the other characters. The first contrast is that of the Jews. Representative of the whole people is the “great crowd” sent “from the chief priests and the elders of the people.” The crowd comes out at night to arrest Jesus. Behind it all, however, is the religious establishment, the highest-ranking member being the high priest.
As noted earlier, the high priest’s servant is there. He is the chap who has some cosmetic surgery done to him in verse 51. He is there because his boss sent him. We learn this boss’s name in verse 57—Caiaphas. Jesus will soon stand on trial before him. After our Lord will talk about “the Son of Man [being] seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64), Caiaphas will tear his robe, cry out “blasphemy,” and call for a specific verdict, which he gets— “They answered, ‘He deserves death’” (vv. 65, 66).
Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). That is the dark reality we see in our text and the next and the next and the next. It is the crowd, with the prodding of their leaders, that will cry out “Let him be crucified!” (27:22, 23). And here it is the crowd with their swords and clubs— expecting a fight from the temple table turner —who are there to do the will of the cowardly clergy.
One wonders what happened to the crowd. The people had been as pro-Jesus as we are pro-life. What turned their vote in the opposite direction? Last time I looked in Matthew “the crowd” was “astonished at his teaching” (22:33) and spreading “their cloaks on the road” when Jesus rode into town (21:8). Now they are armed “with swords and clubs,” treating him like he is an insurrectionist or terrorist. It makes no sense to Jesus: “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching [unarmed in broad daylight and seated for days], and you did not seize me” (v. 55). It should make no sense to us. Sin so often is senseless.
Old Israel rejects their Messiah. But so does new Israel— the twelve apostles. Verse 56 ends the scene with this dark drapery pulled across the stage: “Then all the disciples left him and fled.” At the beginning of the Gospel they ‘left’ (aphienai) their nets to follow Jesus (4:20); now near the end they ‘leave’ (aphienai, the same verb) to find safety. Jesus is forsaken by his fleeing followers. Like the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement, Jesus will have to go to his destiny alone. The solitude of Jesus in Gethsemane somehow gets more solitary.
But before all the sheep scatter, Matthew’s camera lens closes in on two significant sheep—a lost one (Peter) and a black one (Judas). We’ll leave Judas for last, for in this case the last shall be last. First look with me at Peter. We say “Peter” based on John’s version of the story. Perhaps Matthew might be up to something important by not telling us the name of the man who “drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear” (v. 51), but it is not realistic for those who have four Gospels before them to pretend that we don’t know that Peter was the swordsman and Malchus was the slave.
Peter
John’s record— “Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus)” (John 18:10)— makes that difficult to do. Luke adds that Jesus healed the man’s ear (Luke 22:51). We’ll leave the ear on the ground as Matthew does. No need to borrow all our information from other Gospels.
So Peter was the swordsman. Okay then, first things first: what was Peter doing with a sword in the first place? It is unexpected and unexplained. Perhaps it was for self-defense. Perhaps it was normal (cf. Luke 22:36–38). Maybe the rough-and-tumble fishermen of Galilee were always packing heat. Who knows? We also don’t know why— viewing the odds— Peter would have raised his sword in the first place. Did he really expect to win the battle? Perhaps he was simply keeping his word, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” (26:35). Or perhaps he thought Jesus would be forced— like Jesus was when Peter began into sink the water— to lend a supernatural hand.
Now before we lower Jesus’ hammer on Peter’s sword, let’s at least note that Peter was one brave soldier. We are not told that Andrew or Thomas or Bartholomew drew their weapons, or that Philip or Matthew or Thaddaeus tried to shield Jesus. What were they all doing? Shaking in their boots? Lacing up their running shoes? I like to imagine the sons of thunder (James and John) saying, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” (Luke 22:49) ten seconds before they are hiding behind the biggest olive tree. In Matthew’s Gospel, Peter alone was courageous. He was always the most courageous. He was the only one to get out of the boat to walk on water. He was the only one to boldly confess Jesus as the Christ. And he was the only one to enter into the courtyard of Caiaphas’s house. That took courage! The Caiaphas’s courtyard scene especially took courage, for don’t you think Malchus might be there? He works there. And don’t you think Malchus might like a chance to go toe-to-toe with Peter without Jesus around to stop the fight?
Peter’s courage aside, Jesus isn’t so pleased with courageous Cephas. Our Lord’s last pre-Easter teaching in Matthew is reserved for Peter, and it is not a pat on the back but a sword to the heart (Revelation 2:12, 16). It’s a sharp rebuke. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (vv. 52, 53)
Matthew vaguely describes the swordsman as “one of those who were with Jesus” (v. 51), but Jesus is saying that the one who is really with me is not for this. Jesus’ sword has two edges. First, Peter either underestimates or seeks to misappropriate Jesus’ power, for our Lord says to him, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (v. 53). Does Jesus believe in angels? Oh yes. Does Jesus believe in his own guardian angel? Oh no. Rather, he believes in his own guardian angels! In the first century the Roman army had about twenty-five legions. A legion was comprised of about 6,000 soldiers. Jesus claimed that he had immediate access (“at once”) to “more than twelve legions of angels” (v. 53). That is an enormous angelic army!
And when you think “angels” don’t think of the cute Precious Moments version. Rather think about the angel who was sent to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Numbers 20:16), and the angel who helped “blot . . . out . . . the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” (Exodus 23:23), and the angel who “struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians” (2 Kings 19:35), and the angel who protected Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:28), and the angel who saved Daniel by shutting “the lions’ mouths” (Daniel 6:22), and the angel who “seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him” (Revelation 20:1–3). Those are just six angels in Jesus’ arsenal. Think what 70,000–72,000 angels like that might do to a mob of mere mortals! Oh, Jesus has the power. He makes that quite clear. Who needs Peter’s sword when you have the angels from the Lord. Who needs defense from twelve apostles on earth when one has twelve legions of angels in heaven?
First, Peter underestimates Jesus’ power, or at the very least he misunderstands the timing of that power. Second, Peter still misunderstands the mission and thus the means of the mission, for our Lord said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (v. 52). If you want to know what Jesus thinks about Christians bombing abortion clinics or crusading against the Muslims, wonder no more. Perhaps there is even something symbolic about the servant’s ear being cut off, for where Christians have used violence to promote (or protect?) Christianity, those regions of the world are the least receptive to the gospel. Having no ears, they cannot hear!
Jesus does not care if the servant of the high priest in Jerusalem uses a sword to do his master’s will. But the servants of the high priest of heaven will not use such means. It is not that Jesus is merely advocating again his own law of nonresistance— “do not resist the one who is evil” (5:39). That is an under-reading of the text. And it is not that Jesus is advocating pacifism. That is an over-reading of the text. Jesus is pro-government— “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (22:21)—and one of the things that is Caesar’s is the wielding of the sword for the promotion of peace and justice, for the punishment of wrongdoing, and for the prevention of riots, lootings, and anarchy. Read Romans 13:1–7 (cf. 1 Peter 2:13–17). Note also here in Matthew that Jesus doesn’t say, “What’s with the sword? Throw that weapon away! Christians aren’t part of the NRA!” Instead he tells him to “put your sword back into its place” (v. 52). There is a place for the sword. That place is self-defense. That place is just war. That place is in the hands of a legitimate and properly functioning government with its legitimate and properly functioning armed forces and police force.
We must distinguish between what Augustine termed the city of God and the city of man. The city of God is God’s kingdom, the church. The city of man is the world with its institutions. Christians are citizens of both kingdoms. They function in the world, and as citizens of the world they can bear arms. Christians can be soldiers. What is forbidden is the attempt to advance Christianity by forcing other people to be Christians.[ii]
What are the Christian’s weapons? Paul answered, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretention that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4–5). Our battle is not a battle for political power, but of ideas. It is a battle that, as Paul knew, in time changes the world. Paul thought in Christian ways, and he wanted others to think in such ways too.[iii]
Jesus’ mission is at the center of his rebuke. His mission is the cross. “Peter, stop resisting the cross of Christ. Put down your sword.” Perhaps Peter is not personally named by Matthew because the evangelist wants all disciples of Jesus—then and now and forever—to heed Jesus’ warning. If the message is the cross, the means ought never to be the sword. “Sword” and “swords” is used six times in our text, but Jesus desires that his church use it zero times. The sword is never to be used in propagating the gospel. Never. A violent church is a dead church. A cutting-off-the-ears church is a stabbed-in-the-heart church.
Judas
Finally we come to Judas. Judas, you see and you already know, is one black sheep. But he is a cool cat, too. He somehow got a hearing with the top dogs of the day and then actually got them to give him some cash for one kiss. Now, it’s the kiss itself that makes Judas’s pitch-black heart somehow blacker. Look with me again at verses 47–50 and tremble before this darkness:
47 While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” 49 And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. [iv]
Notice that Judas is called “one of the twelve” in verse 47 and yet “the betrayer” in verse 48. Those two titles are there to heighten the irony and display the diabolic nature of his crime. We are to say with our arms raised in shock and protest, “One of the Twelve betrayed him?”
Next notice what Judas says and does to Jesus. He says, “Greetings, Rabbi!” (v. 49). Why not point to Jesus from a safe distance and whisper to the guard next to him, “Yeah, that’s the guy”? But to come face-to-face with Jesus and then say to him, “Greetings, Rabbi!” which can also be translated, “Hello there, Rabbi!” or worse “Rejoice, Rabbi” or even “Shalom, Rabbi” while two seconds before you have said to the crowd, “The one I kiss is the man; grab him!” (v. 48), is just plain wicked. The “rabbi” bit is bad enough. Jesus is not his teacher anymore. Whatever Judas learned from Jesus—about money, honesty, etc.—he has unlearned.
If the false greeting is not enough, what Judas does to Jesus is doubly wicked. Judas twists a greeting of friendship into a death sign. He gives Jesus a kiss. Was it a kiss on the forehead, like a mother would give a sick child? Was it a kiss on the cheek like men in many parts of the world then and today give as a sign of comradeship, peace, well-being, even safety? Or was it a kiss on the lips, also a traditional sign of friendship, but certainly a more intimate one?
In Giotto’s famous fresco of the scene, Judas kisses Jesus on the lips with his arms around Jesus’ shoulders. It’s a very intimate pose. In that painting, circling Jesus and Judas a violent battle is brewing. The artist depicts all this motion and commotion. Meanwhile, at the center there is this still life. Giotto has somehow painted a pause in the action for us to see Judas’s affectionate evil, his unholy kiss of death. Perhaps in the dark Judas somehow needed to signal to the armed crowd the marked man, but a kiss? This is the darkest darkness!
But then there is Jesus. What does Jesus say to all this? It is the shortest speech he will give: “Friend, do what you came to do” (v. 50). We have seen this word “friend” before in our study of Matthew. And we noted that it is a word used ironically. The example I gave then applies now: if Don Vito Corleone used this word to address you, it would be the last word you heard before Luca Brasi wrapped the piano wire around your neck.
Jesus still loves this “one of the twelve” he handpicked. Jesus must and does love his enemy. Does he wish that he like the father of the prodigal son might embrace Judas with the kiss of forgiveness, reconciliation, love? Yes. But Judas’s kiss lingers on our Lord’s lips reminding him of all the betrayals and infidelities he has come to give his life for, even our betrayals and infidelities.
Total depravity is what is depicted here. I have said before that the Gospels, as a genre, don’t define or explain a doctrine; they show it to us. For example, in Matthew’s Gospel faith looks like the Roman centurion coming to Jesus, believing that Jesus can cure his servant from a distance and with a word. What then does the doctrine of total depravity look like? Or less Calvinistic but no less Pauline, what does Paul’s indictment— “‘None is righteous, no, not one’ . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10, 23) —look like? It looks like our text. Whether we call it “total depravity” or “total undependability,” what is clearly illustrated in our text is sheep after sheep going astray while the Lamb of God is led away to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:6, 7). God is about to place the “iniquity of us all . . . on him” (Isaiah 53:6b). All have gone astray. All our sin was laid on him. Thank you, Jesus!
From the trial scenes to the crucifixion itself, don’t miss that everybody (but Jesus) sins and falls short of the glory of God—Jews, Gentiles, and even inner-circle disciples. There are the “big and little disciples (Peter and Judas), big and little Israel (Sanhedrin and people), and big and little Rome (Pilate and the soldiers),” and at the cross itself again Gentiles and Jews (the disciples still hiding) stroll by to shake their heads at Jesus, the colossal failure of a Christ. Ah, but then as it is now against this awful backdrop of infidelity, Jesus’ fidelity looms high and lonely, and that is the point: amid all human failure, there is one who is totally dependable.
TRUE ISRAEL
The portrait Matthew has painted for us is that of darkness and light. We have looked into the darkness—the picture of the failure of old Israel (the Jews) and new Israel (the church). Next we look into the light—the picture of the fulfillment of true Israel (Jesus).
Christ’s death was by his own choice. And he chose to die because he knew it was the purpose of God. Notice that Judas approached Jesus while Jesus was speaking. It is almost as if the power of Christ’s word draws Judas in. You see something of the power of Jesus’ as a prophet. Prophets do not merely predict things, the power of their word brings those things about.
The power of Jesus’ word is on display throughout our text. Other than a few words from Judas—only two to Jesus (v. 49)— the rest of the time it is Jesus who doles out the commands and corrections— Jesus to Judas, “Friend, do what you came to do” (v. 50); Jesus to Peter, “Put your sword back into its place” (v. 52); and Jesus to the crowd, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me?” (v. 55a). If you just look at Jesus’ short speeches here and ask the question, who’s in charge? the answer is obvious. Jesus is in charge.
Though he submitted himself to the shameless act of the false kiss, he had the power to stop it then and there. He did not resist arrest. In verse 50, he lets the sick in soul lay their hands on him in order to heal them in a far different way. He willingly goes into the hands of sinners to open wide his hands for the salvation of sinners. He had the power to fight. But he stopped the angels’ surge just as he stopped Peter’s sword because he used all his power and authority to give up his power and authority freely and willingly.
Pual sums up for us:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [v]
[i] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 26:47–56.
[ii] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 577.
[iii]Id., 578.
[iv] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 26:47–50.
[v] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:5–11.
