Matthew 26:57-68

Matthew 26:57-68 Jesus is subjected to interrogation, false testimony, and abuse

Where do the people who arrested Jesus take him?  Who and what group is he brought to?

Caiaphas, the high priest, was appointed by the Roman authorities, so he was both the highest-ranking civil official and the head of the Temple.  The council was the Sanhedrin, the Jewish political authority in Jerusalem.  The Romans allowed the council to exercise judicial authority and make judgement in cases that were not capital cases – i.e., where the sentence could not be the death penalty (New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, Matthew 26:59 fn., p. 1787).

Matthew calls the high priest’s place a “house,” but given that it could be a meeting place for the council, with guards and witnesses and so forth, we might picture the scene better if we thought of it as a mansion or compound.

It turns out the Peter didn’t totally desert Jesus.  Where did he go (verse 58)?

The courtyard of a Jewish house.

Who is Peter standing around with?  Would it have taken courage for Peter to have gone there?

What did the chief priests and council (the ruling elders) seek?

Why do you think they sought false testimony?

What charge was leveled against Jesus in verse 61 that the chief priests thought was conclusive evidence against him?

Had Jesus actually said this?

The high priest demands that Jesus answer the charge, but in verse 63, Jesus remains silent.  Why do you think Jesus remains silent at this point?

Throughout the centuries artists have contemplated how to portray Jesus during this show trial before Caiaphas.  How do you think he should be portrayed?  Is he stoic? defiant? cowed? confident? humble? steely?  How do you envision Jesus here?

The high priest then demands that Jesus answer under oath whether he is the Messiah, the Son of God (verse 63), and Jesus finally speaks up.  Why do you think he decides to respond to this question?  What would it have implied if he had remained silent to this question?

There are times when we might get in trouble for speaking the truth but we can remain silent without causing problems, and there are times when silence would be wrong.  Maybe the risk is not that you will lose your life, but there might be consequences.  What are some examples of times when you should speak the truth even though you may suffer for it?

How do you know when you should speak out and when you should be silent?

In verse 64, Jesus says, “You have said so,” the same, seemingly enigmatic phrase he used with Judas in Matthew 26:25.  When Judas asked, “Am I the one?”, if Jesus had responded with a “Yes” he would have had to quality the answer by adding, “If you persist in your plan; but you could change your mind.”  Here, he had to say something more than just a simple “Yes” to avoid implying that he agreed with their mistaken ideas about the messiah.  Have you experienced times when a simple “yes” or “no” is not sufficient in answer to a question?

Jesus is not ducking Caiaphas’s question.  After saying, “You have said so,” he follows it with a statement (verse 64) that is so clear that there will be no doubt in Caiaphas’s mind that Jesus should be executed.  What does Jesus say about the Son of Man (i.e., himself), and what does it mean?  What is he telling them?

In verse 64, Jesus is partially quoting from Daniel’s apocalyptic vision in Daniel 7:13, in which a son of man comes with the clouds of heaven and is given dominion and kingship by God.  But it also evokes Psalm 110:1, a verse Jesus used with the Pharisees in Matthew 22:44: “The LORD said to my lord, / ‘Sit at my right hand / until I make your enemies your footstool’” (NRSV).  Both references make it very clear that he is stating that he is, indeed, the Messiah and the Son of God.

Why is this statement so troubling to the members of the council?

Why do you think Jesus decided at this point to speak so clearly and boldly?

The high priest convinces the council to agree with him that Jesus has committed blasphemy and should be executed.  The death sentence is based on Leviticus 24:16, which says that anyone “who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall be put to death” (NRSV).  The Sanhedrin does not have the authority to execute anyone (the Romans had taken that power away from them), so they will have to hand him over to the Romans to try to achieve that goal.

Once they have reached their conclusion – the conclusion they had already reached before the “trial” began – how do they treat Jesus (verses 67-68)?

The Sanhedrin had 71 members, and a quorum of 23 was needed to conduct business.  There is some uncertainly as to whether this was a trial or a preliminary investigation more like our grand juries, but either way, they violated their own rules of procedure.  Criminal cases were required to be tried in the daytime, were not supposed to happen during Passover, and could not lead to a guilty verdict unless the case was held over for at least one day beyond the beginning of the proceeding.  The Sanhedrin was required to meet for trials in its own meeting place, which was separate from the high priest’s house, and evidence could not be accepted unless it was provided separately by two different witnesses (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pp. 389-391).

Did the Sanhedrin follow proper procedures for properly determining guilt or innocence?  How should they have conducted their investigation differently if they truly wanted the truth?

Why do you think they did not follow their rules for a trial?

They did not follow the rules because they had already decided Jesus’s guilt before they began and wanted to secure the outcome they had already decided was the right one.

As you look back over the events from the arrest in the garden through this sham trial, who is in control?  How does Jesus show that he is the one in control even as he submits himself to abuse?

What does this tell you about how to think about difficult times in your own life?

Once they had declared that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy, the members of the council subjected him to abuse.  Why do you think they did this?

Even people who are guilty of serious crimes retain their God-given human dignity, but they abused him.  Are there ways that people in our society violate the human dignity of others by how they treat people who have been identified as guilty of some offense, whether in a court of law or the court of public opinion?

How can we avoid, or even take a stand against, participating in such injustices and support efforts to treat with human dignity even people who have been accused of wrongdoing?

Are there ways that we are at risk of joining in a bandwagon that declares people guilty of some criminal or social offense without giving them a fair hearing of the evidence?

Are there ways that we are tempted or encouraged to  join in the abuse of people who do things we don’t like, perhaps on social media?

How can we make sure that our treatment of other people honors their God-given dignity, even if we think they have done wrong?

Take a step back and consider this:

Throughout history, Christians have placed an emphasis on the duty of governments and courts to act justly in their legal proceeding, and this concern has continued in our day.  For example, the Catholic Church’s official compilation of social doctrine says:

The activity of officers charged with establishing criminal responsibility, which is always personal in character, must strive to be a meticulous search for truth, and must be conducted in full respect for the dignity and rights of the human person; this means guaranteeing the rights of the guilty as well as those of the innocent.  The juridical principal by which punishment cannot be inflicted if a crime has not first been proven must be born in mind. (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, paragraph 404, p. 174; italics in the original).

Evangelical Christians have also been a voice for justice for the accused.  For example, pastor T. D. Jakes is quoted in an article in Christianity Today, where he spoke out on behalf of a death row inmate who professed his innocence.  Jakes said, “If Jesus acquitted the guilty, then surely he would advocate for the innocent” (Randall).

The proceedings used against Jesus bear a similarity to biased trials in every age that convict innocent people to achieve political or religious ends.  Knowing that this happened to our Lord and Savior has led many Christians to fight the unchecked exercise of judicial power and to be advocates for the rights of the accused. 

Jesus was falsely declared guilty and executed though innocent.  The Old Testament stresses in many places the importance of standing for the truth in judicial proceedings.  Are we doing enough to speak up for and ensure the rights of the accused in our own society?

As of 2023, the National Registry of Exonerations had identified 575 cases of people in the United States being wrongly convicted since 1989 and later exonerated based on DNA tests, including 35 people who were on death row (Shelby).  The Innocence Project has worked successfully to present DNA evidence leading to the exoneration of more than 200 people who were wrongly convicted.  On average, these victims of judicial error and injustice served more than 17 years in prison before they were freed.  The Innocence Project reports that 101 additional crimes were committed by the original attackers who had continued to roam free while innocent people were sent to prison in their place, and that 58% of the wrongful convictions were imposed on Black people, a percentage that is greatly disproportionate to their share of the population (Innocence Project).

What might Christians do to honor their innocent Lord by being a voice for the protection of innocent people in our judicial systems?