STRIKING and touching is the saying, in one of the formulas of the church: “He was bound, that we might be loosed.”
He was the Redeemer from of old.
Anointed a few hours before by a woman at Bethany; but from eternity anointed of the Father.
Abel’s comforter, when he died in the blood shed by Cain. Enoch’s inspirer, when without dying he went to God. Noah’s security, when he drifted on the waters of the flood. Abraham’s Avenger, Isaac’s surety, Jacob’s wrestler, David’s deliverer, Solomon’s source of wisdom, driving all the prophets, in whom “the spirit of Christ testified and beforehand signified the sufferings that should come upon Jesus” (1 Pet. 1, 2). For all who feared God, the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world; not first after Golgotha, but from Paradise on to the hour, when the Child was laid in the Manger.
The Baptist, His herald and forerunner, and yet He alone the Reconciler of Zacharias and Elizabeth of whom John was born. The Baptist saying: “After me cometh He that is mightier than I”, and yet Jesus presently Himself testifying: “Before Abraham was, I am, and he saw my day and was glad” (John 8:58).
And so real (be it as yet not actual) was that Mediatorial activity before the Word became flesh, that that Mediator Himself seven centuries before Bethlehem by the mouth of Isaiah, the son of Amos, testified: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good “tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn” (61:1, 2).
Take from this these mighty words: “To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to them that are bound,” and when on the Gospel page you read that the armed band entered into the garden where Jesus had agonized with tears, and that after a moment’s hesitation, they laid hands on Jesus (Matt. 26:50), is it not what we confess in our formula: He, our Jesus, was bound that we who were bound, might be unbound by Him?
TO have the body touched, touched against our will, touched with violence, hurts and is an insult to our human honor. Even the young vagabond in the street knows this, when defiantly he challenges the other street-arab, who wants to fight him, with the words: “Touch me, if you dare”. And be it so, that among the rougher class of people a hand to hand fight is not greatly shunned, yet among them, this being touched is at once the sign to resist. He who feels himself touched, strikes back, defends himself. And among the more finely strung, in whom the sense of human honor is more keenly alive, the simple touch with the tip of the glove in the face, counts as a mortal offence.
Our soul pervades our whole body, and he who lays hand upon our body, touches our self, our person; and from the deepest ground of our reins our valiant feeling rises up to resist the offence that lies in such an undesired touch.
Our whole being rebels more strongly still against this offence, when a higher power lays unwarranted hold on us, when it is not a mere matter of touch, but when it aims to seize our person, to take possession of us, and by robbing us of our liberty to attack the freedom of our human life.
But above all else this feeling of another’s hand upon us affects us, when he who does it is a public officer, and resistance is unlawful; when it is one in authority appointed of God, who takes us in arrest; and thus to the offensive touch, and the feared loss of liberty, as a third indignity adds the disgrace of impeachment, of accusation, of crime, which attacks the honor of our character.
Then not only does the blood flush the face because of the unwanted touch, and fear of imprisonment creeps upon us, but far more does the shame cut through the soul, of being openly led away through the streets as an evil-doer, as a criminal.
And all this crowded itself upon Jesus in that one moment, or if you will in this one saying of the Evangelist: “And they came and laid hands on Jesus.”
They laid hands on Jesus.
What is there not implied in these words?
Time and again they had wanted to arrest Jesus, and the people had wanted to stone Him. But every time it had been, as though an unseen power protected Him. He passed unharmed through the midst of them, and the disappointed officers came back, and told how they had not been able to arrest Him.
Now also the armed band had become alarmed. Hence the great force, that had been sent to arrest Jesus. It was “a great multitude with swords and staves”. There were no pistols and revolvers yet. Else they would have had them, well loaded, in the girdle. It was, says John, “a band of men and officers from the chief priests and pharisees”. Certainly more than one hundred men.
Yet they would not have dared, had not Judas’ treachery safeguarded them against the unexpected. Judas would first, as soon as they appeared, touch Jesus with the lips of falseness, and then they would lay hands on Jesus.
And even so they still trembled. When Peter, who did not understand Jesus, with the sword struck Malchus, one of the agents of the Sanhedrin, no one struck back. They did nothing. They stood confused and amazed. And only when Jesus said: “Take me in arrest”, they dared. A superstitious fright!
They laid hands on Jesus.
What do not these words imply?
Undoubtedly, Jesus stood there as man, but yet how different our attitude would have been. For what is the feeling of human honor in us, compared with what it must have been in Jesus? When you observe among us already such a difference of degree between the sense of honor of the day-laborer and the sense of honor of the richly cultured man, with what uncommon, to us unknown, power must that feeling, that sense of human honor have spoken in Jesus, whose human purity and superiority so far excel all our personal sense?
Deprivation of freedom, the sense of being no longer a free man, and to be subject to violence, and in arrest to be led away, is a dreadful sensation to us, the mere thought of which makes the blood run cold. But think, how much more intense and striking this sensation must have been to Jesus, who, free-born as not one of us, must have felt the right to personal freedom vibrate through His whole being?
The shame of being arrested as an evildoer and openly to be led through the streets, so that your Government, which is the minister of God, by the violence it commits against you, publicly accuses you of wrong, can cut even you grievously through the soul. What must it have been to Jesus, thus to have been arrested and led away, to Him with Whom all shame was fraught with a bitterness such as we can only faintly guess.
O, it is true, He has also “despised this shame”, and His more than angel-innocence dropped balm into this wound. He knew this, too, in advance, and in Gethsemane this too had already been fought out. But only now came the reality of it all, and in that reality lies the smart which deepens the impression of it to the utmost.
And do not take your stand between that band and Jesus, as though they alone were guilty, and you would have abhorred that arrest. These men who had to degrade themselves to do this work of shame, were no more sinful by nature than you. In those Roman soldiers the whole heathen world,—in those agents of the Sanhedrin all Israel—was represented. Represented the ordered power of Rome and Israel together; and thus in a literal sense it must be said, that the whole world here committed a crime on Jesus. Not because they were intent upon doing evil, but because, darkened by sin, they did not discover the Christ of God in Jesus, and were bent to maintain their false world-order, over against the order of the Kindgom of heaven.
It was the sin of us all, by which they were systematically driven and pressed, and which, embodied in the ordered power, could not rest, until it had laid hands on Jesus, held Him in arrest, and was able to put Him to death.
Of course, as believer you abhor that band.
Now that your eye has been opened, and in Jesus you have discovered the Son of God, you appreciate the ruffianship of the hands that were laid on Jesus.
But this comes, because Jesus has first unbound you.
And that you might be unbound, Jesus must let Himself be bound. He himself must will, that hands be laid upon His holy person.
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