John 12:44–50 (ESV) – Jesus Came to Save the World
And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
“There’s no way He just said that. Please tell me that He didn’t just say that.”
I’m guessing at least one or two of the twelve probably had that thought as Jesus said the words above. Since the incident at the temple with the tables, I am sure they were trying to fly under the radar – and this was certainly not going to help. He had made uncomfortable statements before – but none in front of THESE people with this amount of tension hanging in the air. There was no denying it now, too many people had heard Him say what He did. There were most definitely going to be consequences this time.
Famous British author and lay theologian C.S. Lewis speaks about a well known course of thought about Jesus’ deity claims in his book ‘Mere Christianity’ – saying this;
“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 the 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. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (Mere Christianity, 55-56)”
While Lewis’ (and others before him) claims are most definitely sound, they likely wouldn’t have helped calm the disciples down. Even a WHIFF of blasphemy was grounds for stoning; and these statements wreaked of it. Claiming to be God or to be His equal was not something Jews of those days took kindly to, Jesus had done both, and in perhaps the most volatile political climate of their generation. Both Pilate and Caiaphas had reasons to want Jesus gone, and His most recent statements had given them more than enough to do something, to all of them.
I think it would have been more than understandable if in those moments, Peter, John or any of them would have started to comprise an exit strategy. Sure, THEY believed He was the Son of God, but THEY weren’t the ones who mattered. Those who did would soon be deciding His fate, and the fate of all those around Him. Jesus’ words had drawn a line in the sand, and now everyone was going to have to pick a side. Much in the same way, following Him does today. To claim Christianity is to call into question one’s own sanity in the eyes of many. There are plenty of “please tell me that’s not what He said” moments throughout the pages of Scripture. It wasn’t easy to follow Jesus then; it still isn’t now – and honestly, it was never intended to be.
