John 11:45-48 - What are we accomplishing?

11:45,46

Many of the Jews believed. Here John seems to be using the term Jews to refer to Jews in general, rather than just the religious and civil leaders. They saw what Jesus did and believed in Him. Also, there is no hint here that the faith is not genuine.

However, not all believed. Some went to the Pharisees to tell them what Jesus had done. Now why did they do this? Perhaps it was out of belief and they wanted the Pharisees to know that Jesus was genuine. However, it seems more likely that they wanted to keep in with the Pharisees.

11:47,48

The Pharisees and the council, the Sanhedrin, gathered to discuss the matter. They were faced with a great problem. Jesus had done something truly amazing, and the people had seen it. Verse 48 expresses the fear they had. They were concerned about their own position, and they were concerned about the reaction of the Romans. The Romans were the occupying power, and the main concern of the Romans was that there was no trouble. If there was trouble then the Roman empire would come down with a heavy blow.

Now is there any evidence that Jesus would have started a political revolution.The short answer is no. Look at His interactions with Pilate, and indeed Pilate could find nothing wrong with Jesus. So the Jewish leaders were rationalising their concern for their own position. It was their own position that they saw threatened, for here was a truly godly man, and a man with genuine divine power. They lacked both of these. But they couldn’t come out and say that they were acting out of a selfish desire to protect themselves, so they had to find some argument that they were really doing this for the good of the nation.

We need to beware that we can also do the same, finding some excuse for a sinful or ungodly course of action.