Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world. (John 11:49-52)Sometimes stupid people say good things. Here Caiaphas said something that was true and didn’t really realize it.
Caiaphas was the high priest of the Jews during the time when Jesus was walking around preaching. He hated Jesus because he knew that if Jesus was allowed to continue to preach and teach, people would like him and accept him as Messiah, the chosen of God. And if they did, he would lose his job as leader.
He decided that Jesus had to die so that they could shut him up. The funny thing about what he said was that even though he meant to shut Jesus up, he was really speaking the truth. It was better than one man die than all of the rest of humanity.
Jesus came to die. God sent him to die. And the reason was simple. We are sinners and since we have done things that are wrong, we deserve to be punished. And the ultimate punishment for doing wrong is death. But God did not want us to die. He made us to hang around with him, to walk with him, talk with him.
But there sits the death problem. How is he going to reconcile the problem that we have done too much wrong to be good any more. Somewhere down the line, we quit being an innocent child and became a sinful adult and deserve punishment.
So Jesus came to be a stand in for us. He never did anything wrong but died anyway. And he broke the bond of death by coming back to life. What all that means is that he gave us the ability to not have to die. He died for us. He took the punishment for us.
We are sorry people, that is the truth. All of us. Everybody has sinned, even those great looking people in ties and suits and dresses at church that look down on everybody else. But Jesus took the punishment so we don’t have to. And he did it because he loves us and does not want us to suffer.
So what do we do? We accept him as our Savior and let him pay the price for us. We do not have to die, because he died.
It really is that simple. We can stand before God without anything wrong in our lives because we let him take it from us. There is no way we can be good enough, but he can make us good enough no matter how bad we have been.
No matter what your life has been like, no matter what you are in here for, he can make you free and clean.
And you too can stand before God as his child. It is that simple.
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