Religion had to decide what it was going to do about Jesus. The Jewish religious trial was the first major phase of Jesus’ trial. Jesus stood first in front of Annas (the high priest), then Caiaphas (the Roman-appointed high priest), and finally the Sanhedrin (the ruling counsel of seventy, made up of Pharisees and Sadducees).
The religious leadership used the Temple and the Mosaic sacrificial system to enrich and empower themselves instead of pointing people to “The Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.” The religious gatekeepers kept people from God instead of pointing people to Him. Man-made religion looks at the Jesus of the Bible as competition that must be squashed.
And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together. (Mark 14:55-56)
“The way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) is a stumbling block to every false way (I Pet. 2:8). It is an act of futility when you try to find fault with Jesus. Enemies of the truth loose! Truth always wins, “For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth” (II Corinthians 13:8). Outrage at Christ’s claims only proves one’s guilt. The religious leadership was on trial, and they were condemned.
But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death. (Mark 14:61-64)
False witnesses couldn’t agree, but witnesses for Christ could.
Witnesses of Christ’s Day Could Say the Following:
Parents could say, “Jesus gave me my child back!” (the widow from Nain’s son, Jairus’ daughter, the man with a lunatic son, the Samaritan woman’s demon-possessed daughter)
The sick could say, “Jesus touched me and now I’m whole!” (Peter’s mother in-law, the centurion’s servant, the man with a withered hand, the woman with an issue of blood, the man by the pool of Bethesda…)
The lepers could say, “I was disfigured, desensitized, and shut off from my family and temple worship, but Jesus touched me and now I am clean!”
The lame could say, “I didn’t have the ability to walk with Jesus if I wanted, but now I am made whole.”
The blind could say, “My eyes have been opened — I was blind but now I see.”
Those raised to life could say, “I was dead but Jesus gave me new life!”
The saved can say, “I was a prodigal away from the Father, I was sick and was made whole, I was the leper shut out but now I’m clean, I was the lame but now I am whole — I can walk with God, I was blind but now I see, and I was dead in trespasses and in sins but now I walk in the newness of life!”
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001)