When the Apostle Paul wrote to the saints at Corinth about the introduction of the Lord’s Supper, he said, “For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which He was delivered up, took bread, and having given thanks broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you” (1 Cor. 11:23-24). The Lord was first delivered up to the leaders of Israel by Judas, then delivered up by Israel’s leaders to Pilate, and Pilate delivered Jesus up to the will of the mob who cried for Him to be crucified. Finally, when the Lord Jesus was upon the cross, God “spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32).
Delivered Up By Judas
It was at night that Judas delivered up, or betrayed, as is translated by the Authorised Version, the Lord Jesus, so that the Apostle, in 1 Corinthians 11 is thinking specially of this betrayal when recalling the introduction of the Lord’s Supper, for he tells us it was “in the night” of the betrayal that Jesus took the bread into His hands and inaugurated the memorial to Himself. How very deeply the Lord felt the treachery of one of His disciples, even although He knew from the beginning that he would do this dreadful thing.
On that night, when the awful prospect of the cross, where He would be made sin and bear our sins, was before Him, the thoughts and feelings of the heart of Judas also pressed upon His spirit. Yet there was no resentment with the Lord, no accusation, no word to suggest the baseness of one who would betray a Master who had shown him nought but kindness. On the contrary, He gave Judas the sop that was normally a mark of special favour, but which was also now a sign that he was the one who would betray Him.
It was all over with Judas when Satan entered into him; it was impossible to stop him on his headlong course to destruction; but the feelings of the heart of Jesus are revealed to us when He said to the betrayer, “That thou doest, do quickly.” Not one of the disciples at that time, understood why Jesus said this (John 13:28), but we can see that it was the awful pressure that lay upon the spirit of Jesus that desired that what lay before Him should no longer be delayed.
There has never been a fouler deed in the history of mankind, never such a base response to the highest privilege and the greatest possible kindness ministered by One who was divine. The human heart was exposed in the depths of its wickedness and base ingratitude to God in Judas, in all its shame and degradation.
If Judas Iscariot was guilty of delivering up Jesus, the chief priests were also guilty of conspiring with him, even as it is written, “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver” (Matt. 26:14-15). How very solemn this was: the religious leaders of God’s people striking a bargain with a traitor, and that for the apprehension of the Son of God.
With Judas, the motive was plain, his heart was held by the lust for money, and even the amount he received had been long since written on the prophetic page (Zech. 11:12). Even Pilate knew the motive of the leaders of Israel: it was envy (Matt. 27:18); and the Lord had but lately spoken the parable that exposed their hearts, when He spoke of the wicked husbandmen who said of God’s Son, “This is the heir; come let us kill Him, and let us seize on His inheritance” (Matt. 21:38).
Having secured by such base means the Son of God, who allowed Himself to be taken, how dreadful is their treatment of Him. What an exposure of the heart of the religious man! And how brightly shines the moral glory of Jesus against the dark background of religious guilt and shame. If the first man reveals himself in the enormity of his wickedness in this hour, the perfections of the Second Man are brought into relief for our admiration and adoration. The mockery, abuse and dishonour, poured upon the guiltless head of the Son of God, but measure the depths of shame belonging to religious flesh under the influence of Satan, for this was man’s hour, and the power of darkness.
To seek to condemn Jesus by bringing forward false witnesses was the admission of His innocence and of their own guilt. Forced to ask Him of Himself, Jesus answers, having heard the voice of adjuration. It is wonderful that He should acknowledge them in their official position in spite of what they had shown themselves to be, and this by telling them who He was. He was indeed “the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63), and He added, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven! Such was their blindness, under the influence of the god of this world, that they could not perceive who was before them, but considered His words to be blasphemy.
It was the most solemn moment in Israel’s history that its religious leaders should condemn to death the very Son of God; and most wonderful that He should stand before them and allow them to pronounce such a sentence, and to suffer their spitting on Him, their buffeting and smiting, and the mockery of their words.
This was the night in which Jesus was “delivered up.” He had been in Gethsemane, anticipating all that lay before Him; He had been betrayed by one who had received only what was good from His blessed hand; and He was condemned and dishonoured by the leaders of Israel.
Delivered Up By The Chief Priests
After condemning Jesus as guilty of death, and having subjected Him to such awful shame and spitting, “When the morning was come…and when they had bound Him, they led Him away, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor” (Matt. 27:1-2). Here was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 53:7, “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.”
We cannot but marvel at the attitude of the holy Son of God in these painful circumstances. Any innocent man would have rebelled against the grave injustice, and the ribald treatment from leading religious men: how then must the Son of God have felt? He had power to destroy them all in a moment; His words could have shrivelled them at once; but instead, so sorely wounded in His spirit, so grieved in His heart, feeling infinitely the very least of what was done to Him, and yet remaining silent, He allowed His creatures to express their hatred and self-will against Him.
There was no excuse for Pilate any more than for the leaders of Israel, all were guilty of condemning the innocent One. Pilate knew what he was doing, for three times over he declared Jesus to be guiltless, yet had the effrontery to wash his hands before the mob, and say, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person” (Matt. 27:24). How could he be innocent of His blood when he scourged Jesus, and gave Him over to the will of those who cried for His blood?
Pilate preferred the favour of Caesar, and of the Jews, to the Son of God. It was his duty as governor to administer justice, and he shows us what the world’s justice is when he condemns Jesus with the words “this just person,” on his lips.
“He delivered Jesus to their will”
It is to the eternal dishonour of Pilate that he delivered up Jesus to the will of the multitude, urged on by the leaders of Israel (Luke 23:25); and it was “when he had scourged Him,” he delivered Jesus to be crucified (Mark 15:15).
All the mockery and abuse from the soldiers was the responsibility of Pilate. There is no word of the thieves being subject to ridicule; but for the Son of God there was the thorny crown, the reed and the mockery as the soldiers bowed before Him, with the spitting and the smiting. What will the feelings of these wicked men be when they see Jesus in His glory? Instead of the purple robe He will be invested with garments of heavenly glory, crowns of majesty upon His brow, and their knees bowed, but not in mockery, before Him whom the angels and all created beings own as Lord of all.
Poor man had his hour, exposing himself in Judas, in the leaders of Israel, in the careless multitude, in Pilate and his soldiers, not to speak of Herod and his warlike men. The religious men are just as wicked as the kings who seek to manifest their power before men, showing how blind they are while imagining themselves to be men of vision and intelligence. All were filled with their own thoughts, without a thought of God, their actions but displaying the dreadful state of the human heart in its enmity to God and His Son.
“Delivered for our offences”
How blessed it is to turn away from man and all his wickedness, and to learn that the death of our Lord Jesus Christ was not only the result of man’s evil, but of the counsels of God, for He was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” when men took Him with wicked hands to crucify and slay (Acts 2:23). God knew what men would do with His Son, and took the occasion of man’s wickedness to work out His plans for the blessing of mankind. When Pilate delivered up Jesus to be crucified, God delivered Him for our offences (Rom. 4:25).
What man did to the Son of God can bring nothing but divine judgment upon him, what God did brings infinite and eternal blessing to those who rest by faith on the great work accomplished by the Lord Jesus when He was delivered for our offences. In the hours of darkness the Lord Jesus bore the sins of His own. He became the substitute of those who believe in Him, and is even now “the propitiation for our sins,” for all the efficacy of the great work of the cross abides in Him where He is in the presence of God.
Delivered up for us all
As delivered up for “us all,” (Rom. 8:32) that is for all who trust Him, we see in Jesus the greatness of the love of God. God, in His infinite love, spared from His side the darling of His bosom to come into this world to make Him known. Then, when upon the cross He “spared not His own Son.” No human heart can enter into the thoughts and feelings of the heart of God when He delivered up His own Son for us. What Abraham did in taking his only Isaac to offer him up was but a feeble shadow of the reality, but it gives us a very feeble idea of what God did in sparing not His only Son, when He made Him to be sin for us, Him who knew no sin, that we might be God’s righteousness in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).
If then, God gave His Son to die for us, what will He not give to us? Such love will give us all that love can give, and the Holy Spirit tells us what love will give. We are to share “all things” with the One that God gave to die for us. Nothing less than this can satisfy the heart of God; and how it will satisfy the heart of Him who was willing to give Himself to make us His companions in the day of His glory. Already, we are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; soon, at the coming of the Lord, we shall share all that He has as the Heir of “all things” (Rom. 8:17, 32).
R. 22.12.66.