Matthew 26:57-68
57 Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered. 58 And Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end. 59 Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, 60 but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward 61 and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’” 62 And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” 63 But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 64 Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. 66 What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.” 67 Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, 68 saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?” [1]
Most people are fascinated with trials, particularly trials of famous or infamous people or trials that affect the flow of history. In 1998, millions followed the impeachment trial of President Clinton. While the trial unfolded, people from every walk of life dropped what they were doing to follow the developments on television, and the media seemed to cover almost nothing else.
The same thing happened after the break-in at the democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., in 1972. The chief defendant never came to trial—President Richard Nixon resigned his office, effective August 9, 1974, over two years later—but many of his staff did, and scores were imprisoned. At the peak of the investigations, when the Ervin Committee began televised hearings in the Senate Caucus Room in 1973, businessmen brought television sets to their offices, televisions in bars were tuned to cover the day-by-day deliberations, and the Public Broadcasting System, which reran the days’ hearings for the evening audience, enjoyed the greatest response to any programming in its history.
If we think farther back in time, we may recall the trials of Socrates before the leaders of Athens, Charles I before the English Parliament, Mary Stuart in England, Aaron Burr in America, and the Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg. You don’t even have to look deep into history to see the people still are intrigued by the human drama of a courtroom. Just turn on your local news at night to get the latest update of the latest local murder trials.
Criminal trials have captivated millions. Trials are forms of controlled warfare between clashing worldviews. Yet no trial in history has so challenged the human race or so charged our emotions as the trial of Jesus of Nazareth by the Jewish and Roman authorities in Palestine about AD 30. [2] We will try to deal seriously and personally with Christ’s claims in this passage. We will notice the “war” that Christ causes within each of us. But first, we will walk through the war of two worldviews that clash in this trial before the Jewish religious leadership.
Jesus’ trial is ironic. The word ironic means something that happens in the opposite way to what is expected, and this literary device is often used in literature and drama to cause wry amusement, because of these unexpected twists. In Jesus’ trial— which begins in verse 59 with the Council gathering in order to find a way to put Jesus to death and ends with their verdict in verse 66, “He deserves death”— there is nothing remotely amusing about this miscarriage of justice. That doesn’t mean, however, that the whole scene isn’t infused with irony.[3]
Christ the Deliverer is bound. The Judge was shamed. The Prince of Glory scorned. The Holy One condemned for sin. The Son of God held up as a blasphemer. The Resurrection and the Life sentenced to die. This scene is weighed down with irony. So it is easy for us to structure our understanding of this text by looking at four great ironies.
LAW BREAKERS AND THE LAW-KEEPER
Before we explore the first irony, let’s first look at whom Jesus is up against. In verse 57 we are introduced to “Caiaphas the high priest,” as well as “the scribes and the elders.” Then verse 59 mentions “the chief priests and the whole Council.” This “Council” was called the Sanhedrin. You can think of the Sanhedrin as the Jewish “supreme court” over Judea. It was comprised of seventy-one members who were priests, scribes, and elders. The high priest presided over the group. Matthew says that “the whole council” (v. 59) was gathered. He either means all seventy-one, or more likely the quorum needed for a capital punishment trial, which was twenty-three (m. Sanh. 7:1). The gathering itself may have merely been an initial hearing or unofficial interrogation, with the official trial being held in the temple in the morning (27:1).[4]
When you hear that the Council was comprised of the high priest, chief priests, scribes, and elders, you might think, “Oh, this is a very devout religious group Jesus is up against.” Sure, they were all religious, but for many of them, think “religious” in the political sense. The nearest example we find is the clergy of post-Reformation England, where some priests and bishops in the English Church buddied up to the powers that be in order to get powerful posts. Other than the scribes (the Bible experts who were serious about the study of Scripture), the elders were lay leaders who were mainly rich landowners, and the priests, including the high priest were often from aristocratic families. Josephus, for example, claims that Caiaphas bought the high priesthood from Herod.[5] In other words, he came from money and used that money to buy power.[6]
However Matthew doesn’t give us background checks on each of the seventy-one, instead, he only focuses on their corporate falsehood amid the appearance of legality.
59 Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, 60 but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward 61 and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’” 62 And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” 63 But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 64 Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
There are two ironies here. The first irony is: the Sanhedrin breaks God’s Law while Jesus keeps it. Based on a later Jewish document called the Mishnah (Sanh.), we have information on the Sanhedrin’s rules for trials (not committed to writing until decades after this trial). Those rules stipulate that all criminal cases must be tried during the daytime and completed during the daytime. Criminal cases were not to be transacted during the Passover season at all. Only if the verdict was “not guilty” could a case be finished on the day it was begun. Otherwise, a night must elapse for pronouncing the verdict, so that merciful feelings might have time to arise. Further, no decision of the Sanhedrin was valid unless it met in its own meeting place, the Hall of Stone in the Temple precincts. All evidence must be guaranteed by two witnesses separately examined and having no contact with each other. False witness was punishable by death. In any trial the process began by setting forth before the court all the evidence of innocence before the evidence of guilt was introduced.
It is difficult to know whether or not these rules were in place during the time of Jesus. If so, it certainly adds to the irony: in their eagerness to get rid of Jesus, the Sanhedrin broke just about all of their own rules.
However, Matthew’s overall focus is on how the Jewish religious leaders “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (23:23) and how they failed to uphold the ninth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16). Matthew contrasts the false testimony of the witnesses and the false findings of the court with Jesus’ refusal to take an oath and his true confession.
We will come to Christ’s confession in a moment. Let me first explain what I mean by Jesus’ refusal to take an oath. We are familiar in our system of law of taking an oath before we take the stand. We place our hand on the Bible and answer the question, “Do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” by saying, “I do.” Ironically, Caiaphas, who paraded false witnesses and true witnesses who don’t know what they are talking about before his judicial bench until he heard what he wanted to hear (or at least enough evidence to present a valid case to Rome), asks the only truth-teller in the room— Jesus— to swear by an oath. He pleads with Jesus, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (v. 63b). “I adjure you by the living God” is the oath part. The irony is this: Jesus needs no oath to tell the truth. Oaths are only for liars or potential liars (cf. 5:33–37; 23:16–22). Jesus is the perfectly obedient Son of the living God! He was the only obedient Israelite ever. Of all people, Judas has it right when he confesses in 27:4, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” Jesus’ blood is more innocent than Judas and Caiaphas could have imagined. That brings us to the second irony.
FALSE WITNESS, TRUE TESTIMONY
The second irony is: the false witnesses who accuse Jesus of claiming that he will destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days provide a true testimony about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Put differently, their accusation, and the Sanhedrin’s acceptance of it as a crime, makes Jesus’ temple prediction possible. If Jesus isn’t sentenced to death, his body as “temple” cannot be destroyed and in three days rebuilt via resurrection!
Until the very last words Jesus says in this trial about the Son of Man—which are quite clear to the Council—it is as though Jesus and those against Jesus are speaking two different languages. it was as though the two witnesses who came forward to accuse Jesus of saying, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days” (v. 61) were speaking a different language than Jesus. Perhaps these two witnesses saw Jesus overturn the tables in the temple (21:12, 13) and heard him say, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). They took that to mean that Jesus was seeking to somehow knock down the stones and pillars of Herod’s Temple. Jesus, on the other hand, “was speaking about the temple of his body” (John 2:21). They were talking two different languages.
To Rome the Sanhedrin’s charge of blasphemy held no weight, but a charge of desecrating a holy place would have been viewed as a capital offense. Moreover, any action smelling of sedition was enough for Rome’s judicial tail to wag. To Pontus Pilate Jesus’ crime would be the political threat of claiming to be a king when under Roman jurisdiction in which only Caesar is Lord. Thus, this temple testimony against him was grounds enough to kill him. So can we say that Jesus was killed for a misunderstood metaphor? I suppose we could say it that way. But of course we know it was more than a metaphor when Rome itself destroyed the temple in AD 70 and when Jesus likewise allowed the Romans to destroy his temple, his body. And we know it is more than a metaphor when that truest tabernacle of God rose again on the third day!
PREPARING THE LAMB
The third irony is: the Sanhedrin mocks Jesus’ claim to be the Christ—King David’s King, if we can put it that way, while their violent actions begin to fulfill in Jesus Isaiah’s prophecies about the Suffering Servant.
In other words, throughout this whole religious/legal charade, the priests are actually performing an important Passover duty. They are preparing the Lamb of God for sacrifice. They are fulfilling the prophecies of scripture that they have consciously chosen to ignore.
Let’s return to Jesus’ silence and his confession. In verse 63a, after Jesus has been accused of seeking to destroy the old temple and rebuild a new one, we read, “But Jesus remained silent.” Why? Perhaps he was silent because he didn’t want to consent to their misunderstanding of his claim about the temple or, related to that, because he had contempt for the hostile proceedings. Perhaps he was silent because in many situations silence is a wise man’s best defense. Perhaps he was silent because as a righteous man he is accountable only to God, not to his enemies.” Perhaps he was silent because at this time in his ministry there was no need to defend himself; just as he didn’t defend himself physically in Gethsemane, he did not defend himself here legally. Perhaps he was silent because he again was counting the cost, for if he says “No” he walks away a free man, but if he says “Yes” he signs his own death warrant.
Most importantly, this silence is an allusion to Isaiah 53:7: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” That allusion to Isaiah certainly fits Jesus’ statement in 26:56 about fulfilling the prophets, and what has just occurred at Jesus’ arrest— the sheep have scattered as the Lamb of God is led to the slaughter, slaughter, and the physical sufferings Jesus endures, beginning in 26:67 when he is spit upon and ending in 27:50 when he suffocates on the cross.
Whatever the purpose of Jesus’ sovereign silence, it forces Caiaphas to break the silence: “And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God’” (v. 63b). In chapter 16 Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” (16:15) and Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:16). Now Jesus must answer his own question put to him by the high priest. He answers in the affirmative: “You have said so” (v. 64). That’s an odd and guarded way to phrase it. Why not answer the question directly, “Yes, I am the Messiah”? What’s with the “as you have said” or “that is your way of putting it”? Jesus answers this way because his view of the Messiah and the high priest’s view are not quite identical.
The two titles in Caiaphas’s question— “the Christ” and “the Son of God”— in Caiaphas’s mind are synonymous. They both refer to Israel’s coming King, the Messiah. In Jesus’ mind, however, the title “the Son of God” is messianic but not merely messianic. For example, in Gethsemane four times Jesus, as a son, referenced God by saying, “My Father” (26:39, 42, 44b, 53). Earlier in 11:27 Jesus spoke also of this unique relationship as the Son of God: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Furthermore, with Jesus’ “Son of Man” language in verse 64 he moves as close as one can move to equating himself with God. So Jesus is not less than the Messiah, but he is more than the Messiah. He is the eternal, real Son of God in the metaphysical, ultimate, and full sense.
Jesus and Caiaphas also have different views of Messiah’s mission. Caiaphas, likely embracing the popular concept of the day, thought of the Messiah as a nationalistic military liberator: Christ = Victorious War Hero. And perhaps giving Jesus a beating, and Jesus taking it without a fight, merely confirmed his suspicions that Jesus couldn’t possibly be the Messiah. The Christ would fight back and win. Jesus’ view of the Messiah, needless to say, was different. For now his Christ equation was Christ = Suffering Servant.
Here is where the violent mockery captured in the final two verses of this passage ironically fits with Jesus’ view, which fits with Isaiah’s view. Our scene closes with this horrific image:
Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?” (vv. 67, 68)
They mocked him as the Messiah. They made fun of his prophetic powers. They physically abused him (Isaiah 50:6). This trial is out of order! But in God’s plan all is in order. The promises to David and the prophecies of Isaiah rise together as the Suffering Servant is crowned with spit and slaps and strikes, as “the iniquity of us all” starts to be “laid on him” (Isaiah 53:6b). This is a very great glory that the Lord of the universe should endure such things for us. Indeed. This is one of history’s greatest ironies turned into history’s greatest truth and need. This most solemn face-off between Israel’s high priest and the world’s High Priest is won by Jesus. But it is won by Jesus seemingly losing face.
PASSING JUDGMENT ON THE JUDGE
The fourth irony is: the members of the Sanhedrin pass judgment on the one who will some day pass judgment on them. What did Jesus say that would evoke such a response—the tearing of robes and the prompt deliberation of the death penalty? He claimed to be the Son of Man. This is the first time Jesus used that title of himself openly to outsiders (non-disciples), and to Caiaphas it is an extravagantly wild statement. Now remember, that title is not about Jesus’ humanity. Rather it is about his divinity and more specifically about his divine power to judge.
What an amazing scene! There are two high priests in the room. There are two men who thus sit in judgment as judges. In verse 64, we have one of Christ’s fullest revelations of his identity and authority. First, he replies “You have said so.” Next, Jesus uses his favorite authoritative phrase, “But I tell you….” He uses that phrase repeatedly in the sermon on the mount to contrast Old Israel’s interpretations of the law to his interpretation as the lawgiver. Here we find that statement as his final words to the highest authority in Judaism. Don’t miss its importance!
Finally, we have the claim itself: “from now on y’all will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64). This is an image of complete authority. Standing before the Sanhedrin bound as a prisoner, about to be slapped and spit upon, about to be crucified, claims that he will be seated on the divine throne of glory that will somehow move from heaven to earth and render them guilty! He is claiming undisputed Messiah ship and to be the sovereign judge of the world. He claims that his weakness will be turned into strength, his humiliation to exaltation, his shame to glory, and his subjection to power, that the judged would become judged, and that the conquered would conquer.
What the Sanhedrin declares to be blasphemy, Jesus declares to be true. Is the Christ and the Son of God who, in accordance with 2 Samuel 7:13, builds the temple. He is the King of Psalm 110:1 who sits at God’s right hand. He is the suffering servant of Isaiah 50:6 whose face is spat upon. He is the Son of Man of Daniel 7:13 who will come on the clouds of heaven. That is who Jesus is. Could he make his identity any clearer to these judges?
Either the Sanhedrin was right that Jesus deserved death, or the church got it right that Jesus deserves all adoration and allegiance. These leaders were not substantially different from millions of careless people in our day. Christ is proclaimed as God’s unique Son, but millions reject that claim and turn their backs on the defense. There is a defense. It is presented regularly in countless Christian churches, on radio and television, in books, magazines, and other forms of communication. But they will not hear it. They will not go to church. They will not read Christian books. What shall we say of such people? Are they honest? Are they open to the truth? Are they seeking it? No more than Caiaphas.
Yet the important thing is not what they are doing; it is what you are doing. Have you considered Christ’s claims? Have you pondered his defense? If not, I challenge you to do so now. In the last analysis, it is not Jesus who is on trial. That is the past. It is over. You are the one who is on trial, and the question before you is, “What will you do with Jesus?”[7]
May you proclaim with Paul:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven….[8]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 26:57–68.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 581–582.
[3] O’Donnell, Douglas Sean. Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word) (pp. 815-816). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
[4] Id.
[5] Josephus, Antiquities 18.2.2, 4.3,
[6] O’Donnell, 817.
[7] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 587–588.
[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:15–23.
