(Audio)
If we leave him alone, all will believe in him,
and the Romans will come
and take away both our land and our nation.
Jesus tells us that he did not come to bring peace but a sword (see Matthew 10:34). The chief priests and the Pharisees had to decide how to respond to him. They considered how radically inconvenient Jesus would be to them. If he was allowed free reign it was unlikely that their comfortable lifestyle would be able to continue.
But one of them, Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year, said to them,
“You know nothing,
nor do you consider that it is better for you
that one man should die instead of the people,
so that the whole nation may not perish.”
Caiaphas thought he was saying that it was better that Jesus die than the Romans destroyed the people. But he actually said something much deeper. Jesus was to take upon himself all rejection and division, particular the rejection of God by man, and the division that caused, and put it to death on the cross.
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility (see Ephesians 2:14-16).
There was no easier way to this reconciliation and this unity, no shorter path to the far side of division. God gave us an invitation and we kept choosing to spurn or ignore it. We kept creating the division we professed to despise. To simply pretend the problem wasn't there wouldn't solve it. It was only when Jesus took this division upon himself that it could be transformed. It didn't destroy him, because he was God, and his union with the Father and the Son was stronger than any division. Their love was powerful enough to restore a fallen world and to bring about the union of God and humanity and between people and their neighbors.
My servant David shall be prince over them,
and there shall be one shepherd for them all;
they shall live by my statutes and carefully observe my decrees.
This unity we desire cannot arise from selfishness. It sounds obvious to say, but in practice we tend to prefer to think that enlightened self-interest could be the basis for this hope, at least in the civil order. But there is only one principle that can truly bring everyone together, only one which is common to all, by virtue of who he is. He is the end and purpose of all of us, and only ordered to that end can we begin to thrive. He promised that his sanctuary would be close to us so that we could order our worship correctly toward him. This is the time in which we now live. Let us rejoice as he heals our division and makes us one.
My dwelling shall be with them;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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