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We have a law, and according to our law He must die because made himself the Son of God. § 43. Historical significance of the healing of the blind man of Jericho and the resurrection of Lazarus The later period of the ministry of Christ Jesus - His last stay in Jerusalem - was the result of His entire life, all of His previous relationships with the Jews and disciples. All the features of these relations now appear before us in the highest relief and certainty; Now He works the most solemn miracles, but these miracles, by their very solemn miraculousness, bring the hatred of His enemies to extreme tension; now He reveals His messianic dignity to the Jewish people with complete clarity and decisiveness, but He reveals Himself as a judge of the Jews and they, rejected by Him, crucify Him as the Son of God; Now, in quite direct speech, He reveals to His disciples the secret of the external humiliation and internal glory of the sons of the kingdom of God and appears to them, in His death, in the extreme humiliation of external God-forsakenness, and they, like sheep, are scattered when the shepherd is defeated, but this scattering of them was the burial of the last remnants of the Jewish leaven and they, together with the resurrection of Christ, rise in the power of His spiritual kingdom. The last journey of the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem, as soon as He entered the Trans-Jordan region, becomes solemn and crowds of people again gather around Him, as was the case at the first time of His ministry. This solemnity was created by the embassy of seventy disciples who visited the places through which the Lord then passed, and by His miracles - the healing of the blind man of Jericho and the resurrection of Lazarus, and its full manifestation was the solemn messianic entry of Christ into Jerusalem. These miracles were intended to prepare the messianic entry of the Lord Jesus into the holy city. The nature of these miracles has already been said above: in this respect, they were adjacent to the previous series of miracles. They were performed, like other miracles since the rejection of Christ by the Jews, in the radiance of His personal glory. At the same time, they differed from previous miracles with the same character in their solemnity. Whereas previously the slowness in performing miracles, which showed His face in the eyes of the people, could appear to the apostles as His humiliation, now the same slowness, combined with solemnity, creates for Him an aura of greatness that captivated the whole people. In this regard, the small number of miracles of the Lord Jesus during this time attracts special attention: now the miracles testified not to the abundance of the gifts of the kingdom of God, but to the significance of Jesus for the revealed kingdom of God. During this time, according to the Gospel of John, only the resurrection of Lazarus was accomplished, and according to the first three gospels, the healing of the blind man of Jericho 127. In each presentation of the Gospel story we will find more or less lengthy discussions on the question of why the synoptic gospels are silent about the resurrection of Lazarus, which, according to the Gospel of John, was of such great importance in the life of Jesus Christ; but, it seems, no one noticed that according to the Synoptic Gospels, the healing of the blind man of Jericho has the same meaning that, according to the fourth Gospel, belongs to the resurrection of Lazarus. The Gospels do not have the task of listing all the miracles of the Lord; They limit themselves to indicating some miracles from each period of His life; in the narratives of miracles, they are content to mark out those stages of Gospel history that are indicated by various miracles. Therefore, the evangelical weather forecasters, telling about one of the miracles that prepared the solemn entry into Jerusalem, namely the healing of the Jericho blind man, had no need to talk about another similar miracle, the resurrection of Lazarus, just as John, telling about the resurrection of Lazarus, had no need to write about the first miracle. – The historical sequence of these two miracles is usually presented in such a way that the resurrection of Lazarus is considered to precede, and the miracle of healing the blind man comes after the Lord’s stay in Ephraim (John 11:54), but it seems more consistent with the essence of the matter to attribute both miracles to the same time, to the same movement from Perea through Jericho to Bethany, so that while passing through Jericho the blind man was healed, and then in Bethany Lazarus was resurrected, and the subsequent stay of Christ in Ephraim could only be very short-lived. The solemn miracles of the healing of the blind man of Jericho and the resurrection of Lazarus were preparations for the triumphal entry of the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem, and their full significance was revealed in the consequences of this event. However, in their own consequences, these miracles preceded the meaning of the messianic entry into Jerusalem, as revealed by the Evangelist John in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Many of the Jews who saw what Jesus did believed in Him with the Jewish faith, and some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and Pharisees gathered a council and from that day decided to kill Him. This was the historical significance of the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus. In this regard, this last of the miracles of Christ Jesus performed in the eyes of the people constituted the highest level in their action on the Jewish people, their completion, which revealed their historical significance in its entirety. The Jews themselves saw it as the completion of all His miracles (John 11:47). “Christ performed many miracles, but none of them hardened the Jews to such an extent as the miracle over Lazarus.” It is significant that, in contrast to previous miracles that embittered the Jewish people, in the resurrection of Lazarus before the Jews the miracle appeared in complete solemnity, without weakening it by the accompanying circumstances, which was previously primarily the violation of the Sabbath. Now these hardening circumstances were not needed, since the bitterness of the Jews against the Lord Jesus was already strong. They hated Him (Luke 19:14). Now the miracle itself, by its very solemnity, raised the anger of His enemies to extreme tension. § 44. Visit of Zacchaeus and anointing of the feet of Jesus by Mary Witnesses to these miracles were the Jews, the people and the disciples of the Lord. The Jews were already enemies of Jesus. The numerous people surrounding Him at this time appear completely with the character of a crowd, which, having enthusiastically escorted Christ to Jerusalem, after a short time became an obedient instrument of His enemies. The effect of miracles on her was fleeting. Only the ostentatious side of miracles was addressed to the Jews and to her. But the Lord treated His disciples differently. In them, the solemnity of miracles and the Messianic entry into the holy city should not undermine the effect of the conversations of the Lord Jesus, with which He prepared them to participate in the spiritual glory of the kingdom of God. Therefore, it was necessary for them to weaken the impression of solemn miracles. This was achieved by the visit of Zacchaeus and the symbolic anointing of Jesus' feet by Mary. The Evangelist Luke reports about the first. When, after healing a blind man before Jericho, the Lord Jesus passed through the city, a certain Zacchaeus, the chief of the tax collectors, wanting to see Jesus surrounded by a crowd, but being short in stature, ran ahead and climbed a fig tree, past which He had to pass. He called Zacchaeus and entered his house. The publican received the Lord with joy and with his readiness to distribute half of his property to the poor and quadruple to reward everyone offended by him, he won salvation for his home. But the people grumbled because the Lord Jesus came to a sinful man. In response to this murmur, He said: “The Son of Man has come to seek and save what was lost.” Although this narrative does not indicate the relationship of the event to the disciples, it must be assumed that it actually had significance for them. True, everyone grumbled, but among the people themselves, this grumbling did not lower their enthusiastic mood, and there was no need to lower it until the time of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the popular grumbling showed the disciples that the Lord Jesus did not want to found His kingdom on the goodwill of the people. His words: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” are reminiscent of the previous instructions to His disciples. In the same way, the parable He told then about the minas, which were given to ten of his servants by a certain high-born man who had gone to a distant place in order to obtain for himself a kingdom over his fellow citizens who hated him, was addressed primarily to the disciples, although at that time everyone thought that the kingdom of God would soon open: it is true that it speaks of the punishment by the returning king of his fellow citizens who did not want him to reign over them, but its moral teaching relates directly to the slave students who received mines and gave the king upon his return an account of their use 128. In any case, the significance of the event in question must be understood by analogy with the event at the evening in Bethany, which followed shortly after the resurrection of Lazarus. After the resurrection of Lazarus, the Lord Jesus withdrew to Ephraim. He withdrew from Jerusalem so that the sentence of His death, decreed in Jerusalem, would be carried out by the Jews no earlier than Easter, with a full gathering of people, which the high priests and scribes did not want (Matthew 26:4-5; Mark 14:1-2; Luke 22:1-2). However, He did not stay in Ephraim for long: when He left, Easter was already approaching, and six days before Easter He came again to Bethany (John 11:55; 12:1). Here they prepared a supper for Him, at which Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining. Mary, taking a pound of pure, precious ointment of spikenard, poured it on the head and feet of Jesus, and wiped the feet with her hair, and the house was filled with a fragrance. Seeing this, the disciples were indignant and said: “Why such a waste? For this ointment could be sold for a high price and given to the poor.” But Jesus answered them that they always have the poor with them, and this expenditure on Him has an exceptional symbolic meaning. “Having poured this ointment on My body, He said of the woman who anointed Him, she prepared Me for burial” (Matthew 26:12). In this narrative, first of all, attention should be paid to the relationship of the pouring of peace on Jesus to the event of the resurrection of Lazarus. This attitude is well revealed by St. Efrem Sirin. The Lord Jesus, he writes, “raised Lazarus, and Himself died in his place. After all, after he called him out of the tomb and (then) when he reclined with him at the table, He Himself was buried under the image of the ointment that Mary poured on His head” 129. We know that subsequent events justified this meaning of the raising of Lazarus, symbolically indicated by the anointing of Jesus. For whom was this symbolic instruction, explained by the Lord Jesus Himself, needed? Of course, for the apostles, to whom His speech was addressed. It is noteworthy that the consequences of the resurrection of Lazarus were not only foreshadowed by Christ Jesus to the apostles in a symbolic explanation of the case of Mary, but were also prepared by Him. According to the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the dark decision of Judas Iscariot to betray his Teacher was connected with the event at the evening in Bethany. Evangelist John reports that it was Judas Simon Iscariot who expressed the disciples’ grumbling about the waste of Mary, who spoke about the poor not because he cared about them, but because he was a thief. And the Lord’s explanation of Mary’s act in the sense of a foretelling of His death had such a strong effect on this disciple that he then went to the high priests to betray his Teacher to them. They offered him thirty pieces of silver for this; and from that time on he sought an opportunity to betray his Master. § 45. The ceremonial entry into Jerusalem and the drying up of the fig tree The decision of the enemies of Jesus to put Him to death, prompted by His miracles, especially the last miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, and predecided by them immediately after this miracle, fully matured after the solemn messianic entry into the holy city, prepared by the last miracles, so that their full significance was revealed in the consequences of this event. The next day after the Bethany supper, as Evangelist John reports, the disciples, at the command of the Lord, brought Him a young donkey, which they covered with their clothes, and the Lord Jesus sat on it and headed to Jerusalem. He was surrounded by a huge crowd of people who had gathered for the holiday. Here were many of the Jews who, having learned that Jesus was in Bethany, came here to see Him, and also Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. There were so many Jews who believed in Jesus as a result of this miracle and came to Bethany for Lazarus that the high priests decided to kill Lazarus too. Accompanied by His disciples and the Jews and people who were in Bethany, the Lord Jesus went to Jerusalem. Also, the multitude of people who had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast, hearing that Jesus was coming here, came out to meet Him. And those who accompanied and met Christ spread their clothes along the road, while others held palm branches in their hands and all loudly glorified God. This procession of the Lord Jesus was His messianic revelation, according to the clear words of the prophet: “Fear not, daughter of Zion! Behold, your king comes sitting on a colt” (Zechariah 9:9). This form of messianic revelation was chosen precisely in fulfillment of this famous prophecy. However, the disciples did not understand this at first; but when the people glorified Jesus, then they remembered the prophecy. The people, who turned out to be more sensitive to the external glory of Christ, rather remembered the prophecy and greeted Him as the predicted king. The whole multitude of the people exclaimed: “Hosanna! blessed is the king of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord.” This was not “just a burst of provincial joy, the innocent delight of poor Galileans,” it was a clear triumph of the fulfilled messianic expectations of the Jewish people. This was a repetition, intentionally allowed and even to some extent caused by the Lord Himself, of that delight of the Galileans when they wanted to accidentally take Him and make Him king - only now this delight was repeated on a wider scale, embracing the entire Jewish people: When He entered Jerusalem, the whole city began to move, and greeted the prophet from Nazareth with intense attention. Even the Greeks who came to worship on the holiday wanted to see Jesus, which the apostles Andrew and Philip reported to Him. In the history of this triumph of the messianic faith of the people, special attention is drawn to the fact that it was caused by the last miracle of the Lord Jesus. The Evangelist John quite clearly notes that the people who were with Him before testified that He called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead, and that is why the people met Him, because they heard that He performed this miracle (John 12:17-18). But this miracle was the highest revelation of the miraculous power of Christ and a reminder for the people of all His previous miracles, so numerous in the first time of His ministry. In this regard, the remark of the Evangelist Luke is valuable for us that the entire multitude of the Lord’s disciples, when He approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, began to praise God loudly with joy for all the miracles that they saw (Luke 19:37). What was the historical significance of this most solemn glorification of Christ for His miracles? This celebration was the eve of the last outbreak of Jewish hatred of the Lord Jesus, the last moment in His judgment over the Jewish people, the eve of His death. That is why the Lord, when he solemnly approached the holy city, looked at it, wept for it, and said: “Oh, if only on this day you knew what serves for your peace! But this is now hidden from your eyes; For the days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you with trenches, and surround you, and press you in on every side, and destroy you, and kill your children within you, and will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visit.” We know that this prophecy of Christ was fulfilled in a terrible reality that the imagination can hardly keep up with. Jerusalem was razed to the ground and the Jewish people were exterminated because they did not accept the spiritual kingdom of God. When, upon entering Jerusalem, even the Greeks approached the Lord, He told the apostles that the hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified in death. And His soul was indignant at this approaching hour, for which He had come. Then thunder sounded in the ears of the people, which others mistook for the voice of an angel, and Jesus said to the people: “This voice was not for Me, but for the people. Now is the judgment of this world.” The significance of the entry into Jerusalem was symbolically represented by the Lord in the withering of the fig tree that followed the entry, as was the visit of Zacchaeus for the healing of the blind man, and the anointing of Mary for the raising of Lazarus. On the evening of the day on which the solemn entry into Jerusalem took place, Christ Jesus left the city and spent the night with the twelve in Bethany. In the morning, returning to the city, He became hungry. And, seeing a fig tree covered with leaves along the road, he approached it to see if he could find anything on it, and, finding nothing on it except some leaves, for it was not yet time to gather figs, he said to it: “Let there be no fruit from you henceforth forever.” And the fig tree withered. – The symbolic meaning of this event is explained by most interpreters of Holy Scripture in the sense of the rejection of the Jewish people. According to Euthymius Zigaben 130, “a fig tree, decorated only with leaves, is a Jewish synagogue, which does not have the fruits of truth, but is covered, like leaves, with invented rituals - or otherwise, worship under the law in the canopy and bodily images, and Jewish traditions.” But this general explanation of the event does not answer the question for whom it served as a symbol. Not for the Jewish people, for whom the event remained unknown. Neither was it for the disciples, who paid their attention only to the speed with which the fig tree, according to the word of the Lord, withered. Therefore, in response to them, Christ Jesus pointed out only in general the power of faith. It remains to be assumed that the event had a symbolic foreshadowing for the Lord Jesus Himself. The matter can be represented in such a way that He wanted to know the will of the Heavenly Father regarding whether the hour of His death had fully come, the hour of the rejection of the Jews, whether the Jewish people, with the exception of the disciples from among them, remained completely barren 131, so that there would not be a single person in them who was now capable of faith, for the sake of which it would be necessary to extend the activity of Christ among the Jews. In this case, the hunger that He felt in the morning was for Him, as it were, an impulse from above to approach the fig tree, which He saw from afar, to look for fruit on it, and His words to the fig tree, which did not have a single fruit, were as if a question to the Heavenly Father: “if the fig tree withers, then the hour has come for the rejection of the Jews.” However, this question could not arise from complete uncertainty; on the contrary, there is confidence in the words of the Lord Jesus. Along with the question, the answer is given. His question was, together with the sentence of the Heavenly Father, pronounced through His lips. In any case, it is remarkable that in fact the final rejection of the Jews, expressed primarily in the Lord’s parable about the vinedressers and in His accusatory speech against the scribes and Pharisees, followed the withering of the fig tree. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the fig tree withered immediately after Christ’s words to it and, in connection with this, parables and an accusatory speech were pronounced on the same day; According to the Gospel of Mark, the withering of the fig tree was noticed by the apostles the next day after Christ’s words to her, when they again, after another night spent also outside Jerusalem, returned past the fig tree to the city, and, in connection with this, the parable and speech were also pronounced on that day. The Gospels do not give a mechanical chronology, but they convey the meaning of events and their connections accordingly. According to the meaning of the Gospel story, the entry of the Lord into Jerusalem with the miracles preceding it was in its course the moment when the triumph of Christ in itself brought the hatred of the enemies to extreme tension. The meaning of this event is that the full messianic revelation of Christ to the Jews caused them to condemn Him to death. This view has evangelical evidence for it. According to the Gospel of John, the high priests and Pharisees, having heard about the miracle of the Lord’s resurrection of Lazarus, gathered a council and said: “What should we do? This man does many miracles. If we leave Him like this, then everyone will believe in Him” (John 11:47–48). When the Lord Jesus was solemnly greeted by the people in Jerusalem, the Pharisees said to each other: “Do you see that you are not getting anything done? the whole world follows Him” (John 12:19). From here, by the way, it is clear what connection there was between the resurrection of Lazarus and the entry into Jerusalem: the resurrection of Lazarus in the triumph of entry gave what the Jews feared, i.e., that the whole people followed Christ. The people themselves were now no longer the subject of Christ’s concerns 132: just as after the healing of the blind man of Jericho, their indignation at Jesus’ visit to Zacchaeus mattered only to the disciples, so their rejoicing at Christ’s entry into Jerusalem mattered to the Jews. The only reason it cannot be said that the people at that time was only an instrument of the Lord Jesus’ action on the disciples and Jews is that right after Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, he merged with the Jews: for the people, participation in the triumph of Christ, as for the Pharisees, high priests and scribes, observation of His triumph, was a transition to the final outbreak of hatred towards the spiritual kingdom of God. The Gospels also convey the state of mind that the Jews experienced as they watched the messianic triumph of Christ. They, according to John, reasoned like this: “if everyone believes in Him, then the Romans will come and take possession of both our place and people” (John 11:48). They feared, if they accepted the spiritual kingdom of Christ, what would actually happen to them as a result of their rejection of Christ. Another evangelist, Mark, writes that the scribes and high priests sought to destroy Christ, for they were afraid of Him, because all the people were amazed at His teaching (Mark 11:18), followed Him - they were afraid of losing their power over the people. According to the same evangelist (Mark 15:10), as well as Matthew (Matthew 17:18), the high priests betrayed Christ Jesus out of envy. § 46. Last speeches of Christ to the Jews (parables, conversations with the Herodians, Sadducees and scribes, accusatory speech) Throughout the entire gospel history, the deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ are accompanied by His speeches, which not only clarify the meaning of His actions and the events of His life, reveal their consequences, but also prepare these consequences, give events a certain direction, not only reveal, but also give meaning to His actions. The same speeches of the Lord to the Jews followed His entry into Jerusalem. The Evangelist John about the content of these speeches of the Lord makes only a brief remark that He gave the Jews to understand by what kind of death He would die, and thereby took away from them their last hope for the external kingdom, just as earlier, after feeding five thousand people, He in the Capernaum conversation denied the Jews such food for the future; the Jews, both then and now, despite so many miracles performed by Christ, did not believe in Him (John 12:32-37). But the first three evangelists convey in more detail the content of the conversations of the Lord Jesus with the Jews during His last stay in Jerusalem, on the first day or in the first two days after the solemn entry into Jerusalem. The conversations were started by His enemies. Even during His journey into the borders of Judea, they surrounded Him with hostility on the trans-Jordanian side and tried to catch Him in a word. So they, tempting, asked Him whether it was permissible for a man to divorce his wife for any reason. During the entrance to Jerusalem, they approach Him and demand that He forbid the disciples to accompany Him with exclamations. The next day, when He came to the church and taught, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him and said: “By what authority are You doing this? And who gave you such power? He answered this question with the same question: where did John’s baptism come from - from heaven, or from men? The question put the Jews in difficulty, since they did not believe John, but everyone revered him as a prophet. If they had given the answer that the baptism of John was from heaven, then they themselves would have condemned themselves for unbelief, and if they had answered that it was from men, they would have armed the people against themselves. They refused to answer. But then the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to them the meaning of the answer that they had to give. He told them a parable about two sons, the first of whom at first refused his father’s invitation to work in the vineyard, and then went repentant, and the second agreed, but did not go. Explaining the parable, the Lord likened the first son, who fulfilled the will of his father, to publicans and harlots, and to the second to the Jews - high priests, elders of the people and scribes, and said to them: “publicans and harlots go ahead of you into the kingdom of God.” Then He told them another parable about winegrowers to whom a vineyard was leased and who killed the owner’s slaves, some of whom were sent to them for the fruits and sent them away with dishonor, and killed others, and even killed the owner’s son, after leading him out of the vineyard, in order to take possession of his inheritance. “What, asked Christ, will the owner of the vineyard do? He will put the vinedressers to death, and give the vineyard to other vinedressers, who will give him the fruit in their own time.” Then He applied the parable to the Jews and said to them: “So the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and it will be given to a people who bear the fruits of it.” 133 The Lord told the third parable to the Jews about the wedding feast that the king gave for his son. Those invited did not want to come to the feast and turned out to be unworthy; and the feast was filled with those gathered on the roads and admitted to the feast in wedding attire. Hearing all these parables of His, the high priests and Pharisees understood that He was talking about them, and would have seized Him if they had not been afraid of the people. It was obvious to them that the one who gloriously entered Jerusalem as the Messiah was for them a terrible judge, casting them out of the kingdom of God as those who had not fulfilled the will of God, had not brought forth the proper fruits and were unworthy of the wedding feast. This content of the parables was supplemented by the Lord's conversation on the questions that were proposed to Him by the Herodians, Sadducees and Pharisees. The Herodians, adherents of the Herodian dynasty and therefore in Galilee supporters of Herod Antipas, and in Judea dissatisfied with the Roman power, due to the elimination of the Herodian dynasty by the Romans, together with the disciples of the Pharisees, for whom this power was hateful and who hoped to free themselves from it with the help of the Messiah, asked Him whether it was permissible to give tribute to Caesar or not. The Pharisees, who sent their disciples and the Herodians, hoped that in His answer He should speak out either as a supporter or as an opponent of Roman power. But the Lord answered them that they needed to give back the coins with his image that they had received from him to Caesar, and to God – God’s. The true Messiah can be neither a supporter nor an opponent of Roman power; the spiritual kingdom lies outside the area in which questions about external power arise; in the spiritual kingdom of God there is no place for the national aspirations of the Jews. Then the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the dead and the existence of the spiritual world (angels) and lived only by material interests, raised the question of the resurrection. In response, the Lord Jesus explained the spiritual nature of the state after the resurrection and thus clearly rejected the sensual hopes of the Jews. Then, to the question of one scribe from the Pharisees, what is the greatest commandment in the law, He answered that it is the commandment of love for God and neighbor - that commandment that not to fulfill means not to fulfill the law, but to fulfill means to fulfill the whole law. Thus, the Lord rejected the legalistic arrogance and self-righteousness of the Jews. Three characteristic types of Jewish aspirations were rejected by the Judge-Messiah. After this, Christ Jesus Himself addressed the assembled Pharisees with the question: “What do you think about Christ? whose son is he? They answered him: David. If the Messiah is only the son of David, then He is exclusively the Jewish Messiah. This is what the Jews thought, and this formed the basis of all their aspirations, the fulfillment of which they expected from their Messiah. But the Lord Jesus made them understand that the Messiah, as the king of the spiritual kingdom of God, is above the boundaries of nationality and is the Lord of David himself. The Spiritual Messiah is the Christ of all humanity. Thus, what constituted the vital nerve of the Jews collapsed. A researcher of gospel history involuntarily admires this completeness of the questions that were illuminated in the conversation of the Lord Jesus with the Jews. All aspects of Judaism were examined and this was the self-revelation of Christ Jesus in relation to all the aspirations of the Jews. But what is even more admirable is the connection with which this conversation is connected with the parables that preceded it and the accusatory speech that followed it. The parables were an indictment against the Jews in accordance with how they themselves wanted to interrogate Him: “By what authority are You doing this?” A conversation with the Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees and lawyers is a judicial presentation of evidence, indicating the grounds for the accusation. Finally, accusatory speech is a condemnation, a sentence. In this speech, with terrible severity, the internal abomination of the Pharisees' hypocrisy, legalism, self-righteousness, their petty love of glory, insane blindness, neglect of the most important things in the law and internal impurity with external embellishment, their bloodthirsty hatred of the righteous was laid bare before the people and disciples. “Let all the righteous blood shed on earth come upon you,” the Lord said to the Jews. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” The final word of this speech of the Lord was truly terrible. He said: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! how many times have I wanted to gather your children together, as a bird gathers its chicks under its wings, and you did not want to. Behold, your house is left to you empty.” This was the last word of the Messiah's judgment on the Jews. If we now take a look at the events of the last entry of the Lord Christ into Jerusalem, starting with the healing of the blind man of Jericho and the resurrection of Lazarus and ending with His formidable speeches against the Jews, then they will all appear to us in strict sequence and inextricable connection, in which there was no place for chance, but everything was determined by continuous planning and united by one idea. Like the entire course of Gospel history, so in particular this section of it shows us a significant coincidence in the life of Christ Jesus of the eternal divine content with the temporary form of revelation, so that the essential self-revelation of Christ to the world in teaching and deeds was at the same time the hardening of the Jews, and the direction of the Gospel history towards the glorification of the Heavenly Father was at the same time the direction towards the death of Christ, in which He revealed the Father’s love for the world. The solemn self-revelation of Christ to Jerusalem was His preparation for death. And He walked freely and with full consciousness to death, which is why His path was so strictly consistent. § 47. Eschatological conversation of Christ with his disciples The speeches of the Lord Jesus during His last stay in Jerusalem were addressed by Him - some, just stated, to the Jews, and others to the disciples. While the first joined to the previous miracles and the triumph of His self-revelation and were His last act, which called the Jews to kill Him, the speeches to the disciples were already entirely related to His death and revealed to them its meaning. In this sense, the last speeches of the Lord to the disciples are of an exceptional character among all His other speeches and of primary importance for understanding the gospel history. All the previous speeches of Christ Jesus either contain an essential revelation of the mind of the divine life, what it is in its universality, what it is as an ideal of every time and place, as a requirement from all people, and in this case they are important for understanding the gospel history in their general content, in their basic character, in their essential relation to the life of the world, or they represent a temporary and conditional form of the historical relations of Christ, and in this case they are important for the gospel history in their historical connections and consequences. An example of the first type of speeches can be called the Sermon on the Mount, and an example of the second type - parables 134. Neither one nor the other should be presented in an explanation of the gospel story in terms of its content. In relation to the first of them, it is enough to characterize the teachings of Christ according to its basic and unchangeable meaning for the world, and in relation to the second, their historical significance should be indicated. In contrast to those and others, the Lord’s last speeches to the disciples, together with some of His previous conversations with the disciples, but mainly before them, represent the revelation of the very meaning of the life of Christ in its relation to all His disciples, His self-denial, His self-abasement, His death - and therefore these speeches are important for understanding the gospel history by their very content. This is precisely - according to the first three gospels, the eschatological conversation of Christ, the so-called little apocalypse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; see also Luke 17:20-37), and according to the Gospel of John, His farewell conversation with his disciples, are equally difficult to understand and differently explained. Of these, the farewell conversation is richer in content and therefore more attracts the attention of the researcher of gospel history, but the circumstance that the eschatological conversation of the Lord has the same meaning in the first three gospels that belongs to His farewell conversation in the Gospel of John deserves special note. This circumstance makes it possible to explain these conversations through their comparison and thus greatly helps to understand their meaning. Bearing this circumstance in mind, one should not understand the conversations of the Synoptic Gospels exclusively in an apocalyptic sense, and in this case one can avoid that apparent difficulty, so inflated by negative criticism, that it seems to present the end of the world to the modern apostles; but the sorrow of the farewell conversation should not be limited to the few hours of the Lord’s separation from the disciples from His death to the resurrection and its joy should not be attributed only to the visible appearances of the Lord after the resurrection. Neither the first conversation can be called exclusively apocalyptic, nor the second only farewell; but in both, the meaning of the humiliation and death of Christ is equally revealed, those relationships between Him and His disciples are clarified, which became possible and necessary for them as a result of and after His death. When the Lord Jesus, after a menacing speech to the Jews, walked away from the church, His disciples drew His attention to the buildings of the church, to their wealth and splendor. To this Jesus said to them, “Do you see all this? Truly I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another here; everything will be destroyed." Then, when He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, from where the Jerusalem that He had just rejected was visible, where the echo of His formidable speech could still be heard, the disciples approached Him in private and asked: “Tell me, when will this be and what is the sign when all this is to happen - what is the sign of Your coming and the end of the age”? In response to this question, the Lord Jesus delivered His speech to the disciples, which he began with the words: “Beware lest anyone deceive you” and ended with the instruction: “Watch at all times.” We will not present the entire content of this speech and indicate all its private thoughts and their sequence, which would require another place, but we will indicate its main motive and main thoughts. What awaits the disciples of Christ is not the visible, glorious and prosperous establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, but terrible times await them: there will be wars, people will rise against people and kingdoms against kingdoms; there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in places. The first unusually sorrowful phenomenon in which these times will be revealed will be the destruction of Jerusalem by the pagans, which will give these times the name: “the times of the pagans” and will serve as the beginning of many similar phenomena. Under such conditions, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached by the disciples of Christ throughout the entire universe as a testimony to all nations - this will be the case until the end of the century. All nations will hate the witnesses of the gospel for the name of the Lord Jesus, hand them over to be tortured and kill them. For the sons of the kingdom, this will be a time of temptation - they will betray each other, they will hate each other, and because of the increase of lawlessness in the world, the love of many will grow cold. Then there will be great tribulation for them, but he who endures to the end will be saved. Then there will be the coming of the Son of Man - His dwelling in the hearts of believers (Lk. 27:20‒21), otherwise: His presence is where two or three will be gathered in His name). It will not be a conspicuous, visible coming, in a certain place and at a certain time, with great signs and wonders. Thus many false Christs and false prophets will appear to deceive the faithful. They will say: behold, here is Christ, or: there. But they shouldn't be trusted. Likewise, no one knows about that day and hour, the cream of the Heavenly Father. The coming of the Son of Man will embrace all time until the end of the age and will not be limited to any place, will not be accompanied by external results, a visible trace. Just as lightning comes from the east and at the same time is visible even to the west, but leaves no traces of itself, so will the coming of the Son of Man. True, it will have its own signs for each person, just as summer is foreshadowed by the leaves of a fig tree; but these will be internal signs. From the outside, people's lives will not change at all. They will, as in the days before the flood, eat, drink, marry and be given in marriage. Therefore, the disciples of Christ must watch at all times, like slaves who do not know the time of their master’s return. In the lamps of their spiritual life, the oil of good deeds, stored in abundance in the vessels, must constantly burn: then they will be like the five intelligent virgins who at midnight were ready to meet the groom and entered with him to the wedding feast, and not those five foolish virgins whose lamps went out at the right time. The talents of spiritual life bestowed upon them must be in constant use and continually bring benefit, whether someone is given five talents, or two, or one. Thus they will be good and faithful servants and enter into the joy of their master; otherwise they will be cast out into outer darkness. But even the external and tangible presence of the Lord Jesus will not be deprived of His disciples at all times until the end of the century: they can feed Him, water Him, receive Him, clothe Him and visit Him. He will continuously be before them in the form of His lesser brothers, hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick, prisoners. Whatever is done to one of these brothers of Christ will be done to Him. The attitude of Christ's disciples towards His lesser brothers will form the basis of the final judgment against them. § 48. Last Supper: the sacrament of bread and wine and washing of feet This speech of the Lord on the Mount of Olives was spoken by Him on Tuesday; He probably spent the night and the next day in Bethany, although we have no information about this day of His life. On Thursday there was an Easter supper, at which He delivered a farewell speech to the disciples. The supper was, according to His instructions, prepared by Peter and John in Jerusalem, in the room of one owner, where He came with twelve in the evening. At this evening, the Lord gave the disciples broken bread and a cup of wine, and their feet were washed. On the part of Christ, the sacrament of bread and cup was a preliminary symbol of His mortal suffering, a symbolic establishment of the new covenant of God with people through the shedding of His blood, through His death. Taking the bread and giving thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, saying: “Take, eat; This is My body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” He also took the cup, gave thanks and, giving it to them, said: “Drink from it, all of you; This is my blood of the (new) testament, which is shed for many.” The relation of this sacrament to the death of Christ is obvious: the broken bread is an image of suffering; wine is shed blood. But what deserves special attention is not that this symbol was performed by the Lord, but that it was performed for the disciples. This symbolic anticipation of death was the dying testament of Christ to the disciples and not only the dying testament, but also the testament of His death itself. They were all invited to eat the broken bread and drink from the cup: this participation in the sacrament was on their part a symbolic experience of the Lord’s death, their agreement to accept His will, to accept His death as the new covenant of the Heavenly Father with people, as an image of their own activity. This sacrament was the symbolic burial in the death of Christ of everything old, the abolition of the religion of rites and images, external theocracy and bodily purity, visible prosperity and the national kingdom, it was the establishment of a religion of complete self-denial in the name of God, invisible divine life, service to God in the spirit of real love: by participating in the sacrament, the disciples solemnly renounced Jewish messianic aspirations and took upon themselves the yoke of the new covenant. The entire gospel story is one continuous divine verb, a solemn revelation of the divine meaning of earthly life, it is all the unremitting singing of heavenly angels proclaiming the glory of God in heaven and on earth, it is all the appearance of the angels of God ascending and descending to the Son of man, in its melody there is not a single weak sound, in its appearances not a single pale shadow. And yet the researcher, accustomed to its high tone, to its bright colors, is involuntarily amazed by the grandeur of the Last Supper, the solemnity of the sacrament of body and blood. This was on the eve of the death of Christ, predestined for Him by the Heavenly Father. He walked towards this hour with full consciousness, with a bright gaze. He will shed His blood for the spiritual life of the world, for the salvation of people. But His death will be saving for people in the only case if His disciples accept it as the death of the Son of God, as the beginning of a new spiritual life for humanity, as a new covenant with the Heavenly Father, as an image for themselves. They are needed for the work of Christ, He chose them for the work of God; He taught them for a long time, lived with them, endured their infirmities, made them witnesses of His glory and participants in His misfortunes, in order to make of them His friends, children of the Heavenly Father. He gathered them for this last supper to reveal to them the secret of His death, to call them to be participants in His mortal suffering. And they ate the bread and drank from the cup: they accepted the new covenant, the covenant of the death of Christ. At the end of the supper (δείπνου γινομένου John 13:2), Jesus, knowing that He came from God and was going to God, got up from the supper, took off his clothes and, taking a towel, girded himself; then he poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. – First of all, it is worthy of note that the narration of this event is conveyed only by the Evangelist John 135, while the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup is narrated only by the weather forecasters. This circumstance makes it possible to equate the meaning of washing the feet with the sacrament of the bread and the cup. The washing of the disciples' feet was not a single lesson of humility on the part of Christ, given on some occasion, for example. on the occasion of the disciples' dispute about primacy, which the Evangelist John would not have kept silent about, but it was His dying testament to the disciples with a character of universal significance, it was the way of life given to the disciples, the example left by the Lord for all His followers, in the highest sense of the word. In this case, the matter was added to the teaching not for clarity, but the very act of washing the feet of the Teacher to the disciples, His humiliation, had the meaning of actually convincing them in what image their future life should take shape, what they should expect for themselves. “A servant is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than him who sent him”: disciples should expect for themselves no more than what is given in the example of the Teacher. But the essence of the event is not in the teaching and persuasion of the disciples, but in the obligation that was imposed on them by the Teacher and the Lord and which they accepted. Therefore, the disciples had to be participants in this event, taking upon themselves the obligation, accepting the will. Only in this single sense can we understand the words of Christ in response to Peter, the most mysterious in the entire narrative and otherwise inexplicable. When the Lord Jesus, washing the disciples’ feet, approached Peter, he said: “Lord! Should you wash my feet? You will never wash my feet." In response, the Lord Jesus said to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” This participation of the disciples in the slave service of Christ, similarly to which their participation in the sacrament of bread and wine must be understood, was not participation in symbolic cleansing, which they no longer needed (John 13:9-10), but was precisely the acceptance of slave service from Christ, which was the obligation of the disciples to serve each other in the same way. And so understood, the symbol of washing the feet had what an indestructible psychological basis for the disciples! To allow their beloved Teacher and Lord to wash their feet, this for the disciples meant, in fact, of the deepest feeling, to accept the indelibly slavish image of the Teacher as the image of their own life. This slave face of Christ, with all the power of an excited conscience, must pursue the soul of a Christian everywhere and incessantly, giving it strength for feats of the greatest humiliation. The sacrament of bread and wine, performed to announce the death of the Lord, if it is performed with this understanding, cannot pass without a trace for a person, whether it is received worthily or unworthily, but it can and should be for a person either to eternal life, if it is received worthily, or to condemnation and death, if it is received unworthily (1 Cor. 11:26-30). This is how it was with the disciples at the first performance of this sacrament by the Lord Christ Himself: it separated the clean from the unclean, being equally important in its consequences - for the pure “to life” and for the unclean “to condemnation.” That is why the Lord accompanied the offer of bread and cup to the disciples with sad words: “Behold, the hand of him who betrayed Me is with Me at the table.” In the same way, the washing of the disciples’ feet by the Lord was supposed to shake their souls to the depths, reveal their innermost thoughts and cause them to make an irrevocable decision to be with Christ or against Him. And the Lord accompanied this action with the words to the disciples: “He who has been washed only needs to wash his feet, because he is all clean; and you are clean, but not all,” because He knew His betrayer. Not for the first time at this point in Gospel history, a researcher has the opportunity to testify to the amazing coincidence in its events of the significant revelation of divine spiritual life with the temporary, historical consequences of its discovery. What was for the disciples of the Lord Jesus a revelation of the very essence of spiritual life, preparation for the spiritual assimilation of Christ's death, the same thing for one of them, Judas Iscariot, was a decisive urge to betray His Teacher to death: with one of the pieces of crushed bread, which for all the apostles signified the suffering of the Lord, as an image of their own dishonor and suffering - with one of these pieces, which fell to the lot of Judas, into him Satan entered; the washing of his feet by the Teacher was the last straw that overflowed the cup of his bitterness. How was such a fall of Judas possible? This is one of the questions that attracts the attention of researchers of evangelical history. How could one of the twelve, who saw the glory of his Teacher, who experienced adversity and hardship with Him, one of those who left everything for His sake and through the mouth of Peter confessed Him at Caesarea Philippi as Christ, the Son of God, how could one of His closest disciples become His traitor? To explain this fact, learned theologians resort to various theories: some attach exceptional importance to the love of money, which the evangelist notes in Judas (John 12:6); others consider him a complete unbeliever for the entire time of his communication with Christ (John 6:64); others assimilate to him the desire to induce the teacher, by betraying Him into the hands of enemies, to the speedy opening of the external messianic kingdom; some suggest in it a very special moral process of disappointment in the work of the Lord Jesus. In all these cases, the betrayal of Judas would be a strange episode in the gospel history, which would not correspond to its strict planning, due to which the Lord Jesus foresaw the betrayal of Judas long in advance (John 6:70.71). On the other hand, even assuming that the very election of Judas to the number of the twelve was determined by the will of the Heavenly Father, we, however, could not at all imagine his being with Christ; if Jesus' foreknowledge of Judas' betrayal was based on the exceptional strength of his love of money, or on his complete unbelief. Therefore, one must think that the motives that determined the betrayal of Judas were the same ones that determined the relationship of all Jews in general to Jesus Christ. In this case, we can properly appreciate the fact that Judas was the only one of the twelve disciples of Christ who did not come from Galilee, like everyone else, but from Judea. If Judas was a Jew from the Jews and this constituted the main feature of his character, then his love of money was nothing more or less than an intense expression of the national character of the Jews, which became especially disgusting for the evangelist due to the consequences to which it led, but completely, with the exception of the individual degree, made Judas akin to his people; Likewise, the unbelief of Judas was not an original special unbelief, but gradually degenerated from that Jewish faith in miracles, to which Jesus Himself did not at first entrust Himself. Judas, in his relationship with Jesus, walked in step with the entire Jewish people: he believed, along with all the Jews, in the miracles of Christ, experienced an extraordinary rise of common Jewish messianic aspirations, excited by His works, and the transition of unfulfilled aspirations into unbelief and hatred of Christ. The only basis for this hatred is the spirituality of the heavenly kingdom of Christ, in which there was no place for the national and material messianic expectations of the Jews. The Gospels preserve an indication of the steps by which Judas's initial outward faith turned into unbelief and hatred of Jesus. The Capernaum conversation about the bread of life, from the time of which many of Christ’s disciples departed from Him, first pushed Judas into the power of the devil. From that time on, the consciousness was born in him and gradually matured that Jesus of Nazareth fully possessed the power to make the messianic expectations of the Jews actual, but had no desire to do this by preaching a universal spiritual kingdom. Judas's faith in the miracles of Christ, from which his national aspirations were strengthened, became disbelief in the spiritual kingdom of Jesus and degenerated into hatred of the humiliated Messiah. His position among the rest of the Jews was special because, being one of the Jews, he was at the same time one of the closest disciples of Christ, so that the truth of the deepest humiliation of the Lord Jesus was revealed to him more fully than to the rest of the Jews: this was the special tragedy of his position. This was precisely a Jew in the position of the closest disciple of Christ - in that closeness to the sun of spiritual life, in which it warmed the believers and burned the heart of the unbeliever. His hatred of the Lord was the hatred of one of the Jews close to Jesus. His experience went further than the experience of all other Jews. The last stages of this experience are the waste of dear peace in the symbolic anointing of Jesus by Mary to die, the establishment by the Lord Jesus of a new covenant of death and His humiliation to the servile washing of the feet of the disciples. But with all the strength of hatred for the spiritual heavenly kingdom that we can only imagine in the heart of Judas, the consciousness that Jesus is the real Messiah could not fade away in him. With his terrible villainy of the tradition of the Son of Man, he went against the irresistible voice of his conscience and therefore his repentance and suicide are least of all unexpected. And in this respect, he remained one of the Jews, with their continuous division in conscience in relation to Christ. The symbolic actions at the last last supper, the breaking of bread and the washing of feet, which, being for the apostles a preparation for the assimilation of the spiritual fruits of Christ's death, were for Judas a decisive incentive to betray Christ, these symbolic actions of the Lord were accompanied by His clear words, which gave them a certain meaning for Judas and the disciples. When the Lord Jesus told His disciples that one of them would betray Him, they became sad and began to ask Him, each of them: Is it not I, Lord? John, at a sign from Peter, fell to the chest of Jesus, as he reclined next to Him, and asked Him: Lord, who is this? The Lord answered: the one to whom I have dipped a piece of bread and will give it: Also Judas said to Him: Isn’t it me, rabbi? The Lord answered him: “You said,” and, having dipped the piece, he gave it to him. After this piece Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him, “Whatever you are doing, do it quickly.” After this, Judas left the consecrated upper room into the darkness of the night to fulfill his dark plan. § 50. Farewell conversation and high priestly prayer It is so obvious that by His actions and words the Lord Jesus prompted Judas to go about his business, and in this it was revealed that He was walking towards death with complete freedom. This freedom expressed the love of the Son for His Heavenly Father - that love that was a revelation of the Father’s love for the world. The voluntary humiliation and death of the Lord Jesus was the glorification of the Son of man, that is, the glorification of God in Him. We know that this glory of the Son of man, accomplished in all the humiliation of His earthly life and mainly accomplished in His voluntary death, this glory of the Son of man had before it His spiritual glory (Ἰησοῦς - πνεῖμα John 7:39), as the last goal of His ministry, since His spiritual glory, that is, Him as a spirit, can be received by all people, and behind itself, the glory of the Son of Man had His external glory from the Spirit, manifested primarily in His miracles. The spiritual glory of the Lord Jesus is His glory in God, otherwise the glory of God in the Son, since through His spiritual glory God dwells in all people, so that every person can become a son of God. While the Lord Jesus had glory from God, the glory of working miracles, He did not yet have glory in God. In order to give the true eternal divine life, which He had in Himself from birth, to all people, He had to be glorified spiritually, glorified in God, and for this He needed external glory from God, personally bestowed upon Him, to be replaced by suffering and the humiliation of death. For this reason, external glory was given to Him by God, as a symbol of the coming spiritual glory, so that renunciation of it would make His humiliation real and free. While the Lord Jesus had glory from God, the glory of working miracles, while He was not yet abandoned by God (Matthew 27:46 par.), until He was glorified as the Son of man, He did not have spiritual glory, was not a spirit (John 7:39). Now, when His death had already been decided by the Jewish leaders and Judas had already gone to deliver Him into their hands, He was on the eve of His glorification in God. When Judas left the supper, Jesus said to the disciples: “Today the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God was glorified in Him, then God will glorify Him in Himself, and will soon glorify Him.” Thus began His farewell conversation with his disciples 136. Its main subject is His spiritual glory. In it He speaks to His disciples about His coming glory, not in the image of walking on the clouds of heaven and sitting at the right hand of power, He speaks to them about their participation in His glory, not in the image of sitting on twelve thrones, but speaks in direct speech. The glory of Christ is inseparably bound up with His sufferings, and their glory is bound up with their sufferings. His suffering is the path that they too will have to follow. And He now wanted to reveal this path to them, to show them the meaning of His humiliation, to prepare them for His suffering - such was the content of His farewell conversation. Apparently he won’t be with them long anymore. In vain they will seek Him at a certain place and wait for Him at a certain time. As they are now, they cannot follow Him. So before, to the Jews, pointing with symbolic actions to His spirituality, the Lord said: “Where I go, you cannot come.” But the Lord does not say to His disciples that they cannot follow Him at all, but only says that they now cannot follow Him. Afterwards they too will follow Him, and this is the way they can follow Him - self-sacrificing love following His example. But since He will fully demonstrate His love for them only in death, before His death they cannot follow Him. Peter said to Him: “Lord! Why can’t I follow You now? Even now I am ready to lay down my soul for You.” Jesus answered Him: “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied Me three times this night.” Only His death will give them the strength to follow Him: and they must first experience His death in renunciation of Him. Let not their heart be troubled; let them only believe in God through Him and believe in Him in God’s way. He goes to suffer in order to prepare a place for them in the heavenly abodes, in order to give them strength for the spiritual life of the Heavenly Father. He goes to the Father in order to then take them to Himself. And what the spiritual life of the Heavenly Father consists of and what kind of gut leads to it, they know this, because they know Him, and He is the true path to the life of the Father; but they themselves will live His spiritual life only if He ascends to the Father through suffering. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I go to My Father.” The fruit of spiritual life in believers is higher than the works of Christ - His miracles. This will be the glorification of the Father in the Son. The Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of truth will dwell in them and will be their eternal, inalienable intercessor before the Father: the world cannot accept Him, since He is invisible, and the world can only accept what is visible; they know Him, since even now He remains with them, but He will be in them. This does not mean that with the indwelling of the Spirit in them, the Lord Jesus Himself will be separated from them. He Himself will appear to them, but He will not appear as He could appear to the world, apparently; no, but whoever loves Him, He will appear to him, He will dwell in him together with His Heavenly Father, since He is in the Father. And as He is in the Father, so they will be in Him, and He in them. He will appear to them differently than He now departs from them: now He is with them only in external communication, now He is an external intercessor for them, and then there will be the intercession of the Spirit (cf. 1 John 2:1), then there will be spiritual communication, so that what He now tells them, they will remember and understand differently. That is why He commands them not to be troubled in heart: His Father is greater than Him and they should rejoice in the fact that He goes to the Father, just as He Himself goes to the Father with love and readiness. So, “get up, let’s get out of here.” They should not think that after His departure they will live and bear fruit without communicating with Him. No, just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it is in the vine, so neither can they unless they are in Him; on the contrary, in fellowship with Him they will bear much fruit. He is the true vine, planted by Heavenly Father to bear fruit. And in order to bear fruit, the grain dies (John 12:24): He is the true vine because He lays down His soul to suffer and die, for which His Father was glorified. But the branches of the vine, not only the withered ones (i.e. the Jews) are thrown into the fire, but also those bearing fruit are cleansed so that they bear more fruit. So are the disciples: they have already been cleansed through the word that they heard from the Lord; but they must be cleansed by the very deed, by following Him, in order to bear much fruit. This is why His Father was glorified, this is why He goes to suffer, so that they bear another fruit, and so they will be His disciples, followers. Therefore, they must abide in His love: just as the Father loved Him, so He loved them, so He commands them to abide in His love. He tells them about this, reveals to them the secret of the divine-human life in order to give them His joy, which will open their hearts to perceive His love, manifested in His death, and give them the strength to overcome the temptation of His death and their subsequent suffering. He reveals to them a great and joyful secret: He commands them His self-sacrificing love, which He will show in His death for friends - and here they are His friends, if they fulfill His commandment, they will be participants in His work, His co-servants for the glorification of the Father. He calls them His friends, to whom He reveals this secret, bestows this joy of His. For this service He chose them. But they can fulfill their great calling only in suffering, in patience, in hatred from the world, just as the world hates Him Himself. A slave is not greater than his master. And they will endure precisely the same hatred with which the world hates Him, the Son of God, for His teaching and deeds - it hates in vain. By the reality of their spiritual life, coming from the Heavenly Father, they will testify to His work, to His life, so persecution awaits them. And He tells them in advance so that they will not be tempted when the time comes. But, although their suffering will follow His departure to the Father, it is still better for them that He goes to the Father, because only in this case will they enter into communion of spirit with Him and, as participants in His work, will testify to the sinfulness of the vain hatred of the unbelieving world towards Him, to the truth of His own divine life and to the reality of the condemnation of the prince of this world accomplished in Him. All this will become clear to them when they actually receive the Spirit. He again repeats to them that this perception of the Spirit by them will not be their separation from Him, but it will be spiritual communion with Him. Then, after His departure to the Father and as a result of this, His communication with them will not be limited by the conditions of time and place: (just as lightning comes from the east and is visible even to the west, so) then - now He is not visibly with them, but now they feel Him in their hearts and find in the very suffering the joy of spiritual life. Then, although He will not intercede for them before the Father, as an outwardly separate intercessor from them, the Father Himself will love them, give them everything they ask for, and everything about the Father will become clear to them due to the conviction of the reality of the divine life of their Teacher. They answered him that even now everything in His speeches is clear to them, since He speaks to them in direct speech, and now they believe that He came from God. The Lord Jesus said to them, as before to Peter: “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, and has already come, that you will scatter, each in his own direction, and leave Me alone; but I am not alone, for the Father is with Me. I have spoken these things to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but take heart: I have overcome the world.” After these words, the Lord Jesus lifted His eyes to heaven and said the so-called high priestly prayer. In it, He, as having dedicated Himself to the Father for the people, prayed to the Heavenly Father for the fulfillment of what He had previously instructed His disciples - for the fulfillment of spiritual divine life in them, for their spiritual union with the Father through Him, the Son of God. He asked the Father to glorify His Son with spiritual glory, to grant people His eternal life, for which they were prepared by His teaching, works and death and by their faith in His divine life. He asked the Father for those who believed in Him, whom he left in the world, leaving the world to the Father, so that the Holy Father would love them in unity, that is, in communion of His eternal spiritual life, just as the Son is in communion with the Father, having His divine life in Himself. While He Himself was in the world, He preserved them in the name of the Father and preserved them, so that none of them perished except the Son of perdition, but now, leaving the world to the Father, He prays to the Father about this (in the hearing of the disciples), so that they would have His joy in themselves, which will give them the strength to endure suffering and persecution - He prays to the Father for this, because, remaining in the world, but being not of the world, like Him, they will endure the hatred of the world - He does not pray for that the Father should take them out of the world, but keep them from evil; He prays not only for this, but also that they, no longer of the world, would be sanctified for the world, in reality of spiritual life (ἐν τῇ ἀληθειᾳ John 17:17 cf. John 4:23), corresponding to the word of the Father, which has already been communicated to them (ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθειᾳ John 17:14), - so that they would not only be separate from the world, as not his own, but God’s own, but so that for the world into which they were sent by their Lord, as He Himself was sent into the world by the Father, they would be witnesses of His divine life. For such sanctification of them in the reality of spiritual life, He Himself sanctifies (dedicates) Himself for them in death. Then He asked the Father not only about His disciples, whom He left in the world, but also about those who believed in Him through their word, so that they would all be in the unity of the divine spiritual life and that they would be witnesses to the world about the Father’s love for them in the Son. For this very purpose, He prays to the Father to show them (i.e., communicate to them) His spiritual glory, bestowed upon Him by the Father out of eternal love for the Son, so that this love of the Father for the Son would be in them - so that He would show them the spiritual glory of the Son, as if in a just (πατὴρ δίκαιε v. John 17:25) reward for their knowledge Father in the Son. § 51. The battle of Gethsemane and the capture of Jesus by enemies Either during the farewell conversation, with the words: “Get up, let us go from here,” or at the end of the high priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus left the Jerusalem upper room with His disciples and went to the Mount of Olives, to the garden called Gethsemane. He often gathered there with His disciples, and Judas the traitor knew this place. Having arrived at the place, the Lord said to His disciples: “Sit here while I go and pray there.” And taking Peter and both sons of Zebedee with him, he began to grieve, be horrified and yearn. And he said to them: “My soul is grieved unto death; abide here and watch with Me.” And, going away a little, as if to throw a stone, he fell to the ground and, being in struggle (γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ), diligently prayed that, if possible, this hour would pass from Him; and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. He said to the Heavenly Father: “My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You want. If this cup cannot pass from Me, lest I drink it, Thy will be done.” Twice He interrupted His prayer and came to the disciples, but found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy with sadness. When He came to them again at the end of the prayer, He said to them: “You are still sleeping and resting; behold, the hour has come, and the Son of man is being delivered into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us go: behold, he who betrayed Me has drawn near.” It was indeed Judas who walked at the head of a multitude of people with swords and stakes, with lanterns and lamps, from the high priests and elders. Approaching Jesus and kissing Him with a hypocritical greeting, he thereby gave a conventional sign to the people and Jesus was taken. This is the event known as the Battle of Gethsemane. What was this struggle of the Lord Jesus and what is its historical significance? It referred to death; the soul of the Lord Jesus grieved mortally, grieved with the horror of death. The physiology of His death took place on the cross, with physical torture preceding the crucifixion; but the event of His death, as His free act of obedience to the Father, began immediately after the farewell conversation 137. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus experienced the horror of death in His will, which He subordinated to the will of the Heavenly Father. What was the horror of death for Him? Why didn’t He go to death with the calmness with which the sages of this world greet it? Unlike the wise men of this world, for Him the horror of death consisted in the experience of a completely exceptional relationship with the Heavenly Father. He was the Son of God; God's self-consciousness completely filled His soul and was the only determining principle in His life. Already in one psychological aspect of His relationship with the Father, in the energy of His God-filial self-consciousness, He lived precisely as the Son of God. Therefore, His death was for Him in this respect a completely different phenomenon than the death of the people of this world: it was the death of the Son of God. In addition to the sorrow of a cowardly attachment to life and fear of conscience for an unknown future, which did not exist for Him, just as they do not exist for some wise men and righteous people, except for the physiological side of death, which is the same for all people, for Him death was a special spiritual phenomenon - complete external abandonment from God the Father, which He testified to on the cross (Matthew 27:46 par.). We cannot, with our thoughts relaxed from sin, fully penetrate this mystery, imagine His state of mind; but from what we know about His self-awareness, and because He experienced mortal horror in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can understand that external abandonment of God was just as terrible for Him and He could not help but be horrified by it, just as deprivation of air is terrible for our body and how it cannot help but shudder when suffocated. But the meaning of this mortal horror of abandonment by God, experienced by the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, is more accessible to our minds. This dying spiritual agony, this experience of being abandoned by God by the Son of God, was the state when the human soul of the Son of God, outwardly abandoned by God, was left to itself and became, by virtue of internal sonship with God, a creative principle in human life, the beginning of a new spiritual life in humanity. In order to bear fruit, the grain of wheat dies. The Lord Jesus is the seed of our spiritual life. The dying of grain, as the beginning of a new life, was experienced by Him in the Gethsemane struggle. That is why such death agony cannot exist not only among the wise men of the world, but also among the followers of Christ, who are the branches of the vine, but not the grain. § 52. The dispersion of the disciples and the denial of Peter The disciples of the Lord Jesus were witnesses of His struggle in Gethsemane, and it was precisely those disciples who beheld His glory on the mount of transfiguration. They now saw that His glory, which they longed for, was behind, and not in front; they learned to see the will of the Heavenly Father in His coming death; they witnessed the mortal horror of their Lord and Teacher - and together with Him from that moment they began to experience His death. They symbolically experienced it at the Last Supper, and in fact they began to experience it now. How was this experience expressed by the disciples of the death of their Lord? In Gethsemane sorrow, in an attempt at external self-defense, in dispersion and renunciation of Him. “My soul is grieved unto death; “stay here, pray and watch with Me,” the Lord said to His disciples. And they saw and heard how He prayed and suffered; and His horror plunged them into deep sadness, so that they could not fight sleep. Here is a feature noted in the Gospel, which alone is sufficient as evidence of the veracity of the Gospel story: deep sadness plunged them into sleep. This weak dream was the beginning of their shame in which they experienced the death of Christ. The Lord Jesus, with complete freedom, especially clearly noted by the Evangelist John, went out to meet Judas and surrendered into the hands of His enemies, who came against Him with weapons, as if against a robber. But His disciples showed cowardice. “Lord,” they said, “shouldn’t we strike with the sword”? And the ardent Peter, having a sword, drew it and cut off the right ear of the high priest's servant Malchus (with a clumsy hand). But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its sheath; Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me? Then the Jewish servants and the soldiers who were with them took Jesus and bound Him, and the disciples, leaving Him, all fled. One young man, wrapped in a veil over his naked body, followed Him; The soldiers grabbed him, but he, leaving the veil, ran away from them naked. Only Peter and the other disciple, John, followed Him from afar. Those who took Jesus took Him first to Annas, the former high priest and father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. Annas asked Jesus about His disciples and His teaching and sent him bound to the high priest Caiaphas. It must be assumed that Annas and Caiaphas lived in rooms separated by one courtyard, through which Jesus was led to Annas and from Annas to Caiaphas, and this was precisely the courtyard of the high priest. John, who was known to the high priest and known to the high priestly servants, entered this courtyard after Jesus; John followed him, speaking to the doorkeeper, and brought in Peter, who stood among the servants warming themselves near the fire. And it was before these servants that Peter denied his Lord. He was exposed by his Galilean accent; some servants, among whom was a relative of Malchus, who was wounded by him, saw him in the Garden of Gethsemane. At first he was recognized as a disciple of Jesus of Galilee by a maidservant, a doorkeeper, and he denied before everyone, saying: “I don’t know what you are saying.” After some time they asked him again if he was a disciple of Jesus, and he said, “No.” When they told him the same thing for the third time, he began to swear and swear that he did not know this man. And suddenly the rooster crowed. One observation can be made here that is not without exegetical interest. All the evangelists closely connect in their narratives the denial of Peter with the trial of Jesus by the high priest, although the narratives of the evangelists differ from each other in that according to the Gospel of John, Christ was first taken to Annas and then to Caiaphas, and he apparently describes the interrogation of Annas, only mentioning the trial of Caiaphas, while Matthew describes only the trial of the high priest Caiaphas, with Mark describing the trial of Caiaphas. the high priest according to Matthew, but Luke only mentions him. What is especially noteworthy for us is the description of the trial of the high priest according to the Gospel of John. The high priest asked Jesus about His disciples and about His teaching. Jesus answered him: “I have spoken openly to the world; I always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where Jews always gather, and I did not say anything secretly. Why are you asking Me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; behold, they know what I have spoken.” Then one of the ministers struck Jesus on the cheek, as if for a rude answer to the high priest. The question is: to whom was the Lord Jesus pointing in the words: “Behold, they know what I have said?” Whom did He call as witnesses of His teaching before the high priest? He could not point, as is usually thought, to the Jews and their ministers present in court, for what kind of witnesses were these to His teaching, although He taught before them? And the matter should be presented like this. In all likelihood, the room in which the interrogation of the high priest was carried out was open from the side of the courtyard, so that from this room one could see what was happening in the courtyard, and from the courtyard the ministers, among whom Peter was, could see the proceedings of the trial. In response to the high priest’s question about His disciples and witnesses to His teaching, the Lord pointed to John and Peter who were in the courtyard, who had already denied once before the doorkeeper. Following this answer of the Lord Jesus, the evangelist continues, without interruption, with a description of the legal proceedings before Annas sent Jesus to Caiaphas; but his description of Peter’s second denial is closely related to Christ’s response. “Then they said to Peter, “Aren’t you also one of His disciples?” He denied and said: no.” So, let's imagine what happened. The Lord Jesus stood before the high priest as a defendant, in full view of Peter, and called upon him to testify for Him before the judges. “Peter,” these were the words of Christ for His disciple, “Peter!” You know My teaching, go and testify for Me.” And Peter denied Him... In Matthew and Mark, who agrees with him, Peter’s denial is put in connection with the interrogation of the Lord Jesus by Caiaphas, to which Annas sent Jesus bound, but it is not related to the content of the interrogation, but to what followed it. Having condemned Jesus, the judges and ministers “spit in His face and buffeted Him” and mocked Him. Evangelist Luke, from his interrogation with the high priest, reports only about this torture, with which he obviously connects Peter’s denial. Probably it was Peter’s third denial that was in connection with his interrogation by Caiaphas. Be that as it may, Peter and the Lord saw each other. When Peter denied for the third time, the Lord - either from the courtroom of Caiaphas, or when he was given over to the servants for reproach - turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the Lord’s prediction, and went out and wept bitterly. These details reveal the depth of shame into which Peter’s denial of the Lord plunged him and which was the last step in the disciples’ experience of the death of their teacher... They experienced His death through the shame of despondency, external self-defense, flight and denial of Him... What significance did this circumstance have in their lives, in their apostolic ministry? The Gospel story presents us with the apostles with the sharp features of Jewish leaven. With undoubted moral purity, deep religiosity and intense messianic expectations, which gave them the strength to leave everything and follow Christ, they appear before us with the character of arrogant righteousness, in the darkness of intensely personal external messianic aspirations and legal calculations for the protection of the Heavenly Father. Therefore, while they deeply listened to the words and works of the Lord Jesus, they did not understand the spirit of His teaching and His life, they were all waiting for the outward revelation of His glory and outward participation in His reign. On the contrary, the history of the apostolic church shows us the disciples of the Lord reborn: they are imbued with the conviction of the corruption of all human glory (1 Pet. 1:24), inspired by joyful love for the Lord, rejected by men, but chosen by God, beloved for those who have not seen Him by faith alone (1 Pet. 1:8; 2:4), they comprehend bliss in suffering for the truth following the example of Christ ( 1 Pet.2:19–25;3:14;4:12) and in the patience of Christ’s suffering they see spiritual glory (1 Pet.4:12–13); for them, true and real eternal life, bequeathed by the Lord, is in self-sacrificing love (1 John). They rejoiced, suffering dishonor for the name of the Lord (Acts 5:41): in this alone their new spiritual image was revealed with complete clarity. They no longer lived a personal life, but Christ lived in them; they did not live an external life, but an invisible spiritual one; they were guided not by sight, but by faith. When did this rebirth take place in Christ’s disciples? During the death of Christ, which they experienced together with Him... Usually the reason for the rebirth of the apostles is indicated in the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit on them. And rightly so, as will be explained below. But to indicate the reason for the rebirth of the apostles only in the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit, bypassing His death, means seeing in the resurrection of the Lord only an external fact and looking at the descent of the Spirit mechanically; it’s the same as explaining the restoration of organic forces not by sleep, but by awakening. If the apostles had seen the risen Christ without first experiencing His death, then His resurrection for them would have been a rebirth of the flesh, not the spirit, a revival of personal arrogance and external messianic aspirations... The death of Christ, experienced by the apostles, was the grain of the spiritual life born in them. To understand this meaning for the apostles of the death of Christ, we must know that for us, eternal true life is possible only after death and through death: life in the kingdom of heaven is not a continuation of our intensely personal carnal life; its impossibility for us in this world is not based only on the limitations of earthly life, and death is not only the transition of our life to another sphere; but heavenly life is completely different from our temporary life, it is essentially inaccessible to us now, we must die in order to live the divine life, death is purification for us. The work of Christ, who gave us spiritual life, has the power that our death does not remain only annihilation, which it would have been without Christ, but from death we rise to the life of Christ, to spiritual divine life. However, we can inherit His divine life only through death. This is the significance of our death for our spiritual rebirth. True eternal life is available only to the sons of the resurrection. This is beyond doubt. But this must be understood in the sense that under the necessary condition of death, eternal spiritual life will become the complete and only reality for believers in Christ. In a limited sense, spiritual life can be our property even in this life - so that external mental-physical life invariably remains for us a complete visible reality, and spiritual life is an invisible area for us, an area of ​​faith and hope 138. Yet this is real spiritual life. And even after death, only one (Christian) who is already here living a spiritual life can live a full spiritual life. And just as for life after the resurrection we need to die, so for this spiritual life we ​​need to be baptized into the death of Christ, buried with Him, united with Him in the likeness of His death. "He who is dead is freed from sin" (Rom. 6:7): this has power for both. It was this “conformity to the likeness of the death of Christ,” as the beginning of spiritual life, that was experienced by the apostles in the shame that accompanied the death of Christ for them. It was a disgrace to the flesh, its aspirations, it was the stench of personal arrogance, it was the burial of an intensely personal, legally calculated, passionate attachment to the Messiah and His external glory. For this shame, the apostles had to hate themselves and their former image fell from them, like the bark falls off from a healed place: the spiritual life that Christ poured into them broke through from the rotten shell, and everything became clear to them in His previous words. Of course, a double way out of this shame was possible: either the one that Judas followed, or the one that the rest of the disciples rebelled against. And perhaps there was a moment when the condition of the eleven almost approached the condition of Judas, but there was also that, at least apparently insignificant, difference that gave the apostles a tilt in the other direction. § 53. The trial of Jesus by the Jews The condemnation of the Lord Jesus by the Jews to death took place at a meeting of the high priests, elders and the entire Sanhedrin at Caiaphas, described by the evangelists Matthew and Mark, and at the afternoon (morning) meeting of the Sanhedrin, described in Luke and mentioned in Matthew and Mark. Whether these were two different meetings, as is accepted by most theologians 139, or one meeting 140, the essence of the narratives does not change, since the meaning of the condemnation by the evangelists is conveyed in the same way. Theologians love to present the Jewish trial of Christ as unjust (illegal) in a formal legal sense, in order to highlight the guilt of the Jews and the innocence of the Lord Jesus all the more clearly. Meanwhile, as some scholars rightly note, 141 we know too little about the forms of Jewish legal proceedings at the time of Jesus Christ to judge this issue, and it is unfounded to conclude from later Talmudic data to an earlier time, as is usually done. And from an ideological point of view, the idea of ​​the death of Christ as evidence of the worthlessness of worldly life, which does not accommodate Christ, is more consistent with a formally legal human trial over Him than an illegal one. The Lord Jesus struggled not with deviations and accidents in the life of this world, but with its main direction, with worldly truth itself, and had to suffer from this truth, which acted fully armed with formal legality. Of course, the death of Jesus of Nazareth was decided by the Jews before the formal trial of Him, and the latter was actually an empty form; but precisely for this reason, in a formal sense, the Jews had to observe all legality: this court was supposed to give their decision a legal justification so that they could say: “we have a law, and according to our law He must die” (John 19:7). In any case, the chief priests and the entire Sanhedrin sought evidence against Jesus in order to put Him to death (Mk. 15:55); however, they did not accept the multitude of evidence presented, either because they were insignificant, or because the testimony of witnesses, of whom at least two or three were required for each testimony, did not agree with each other (Mark 14:56). Thus, the testimony of the witnesses who attributed the words to the Lord Jesus was considered insufficient: “I will destroy this church made with hands, and in three days I will erect another, not made with hands.” When the interrogation of the witnesses did not produce the desired results, the high priest stood in the middle and, after a failed attempt to call Jesus to an answer to the witnesses that could be used, solemnly asked Him a direct question: “I adjure You by the living God, tell us, Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” The Lord Jesus answered him: “You said; I even say to you, from now on you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The answer was covered with a figurative veil, although quite transparent; and the judges wanted complete clarity. And so they all exclaimed: “So, are you the Son of God?” “You say that I am,” answered Christ. Let us delve into the psychological basis of the question so directly posed by the judges of Christ: “Are you the Son of God?” None of the testimony called them to this question; There was even less reason for it in the external position of the Lord Jesus, betrayed by one of the disciples and abandoned by others, defenseless before the judges, dishonored by the hand of a despised slave and responding to false testimony with deep silence... This question came from the depths of their own souls, from the irresistible impression of the inner truth of the life of the Lord Jesus, awakening their conscience, keeping them in continuous and unrelenting mental tension. Already from the time of the first open sojourn of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, the idea arose among the Jews about the divine embassy of the Lord Jesus, or rather an involuntary feeling of His being sent by God. Initially caused by His miraculous deeds, this thought, under the influence of His moral character and teaching, gradually turned into that premonition of His sonship of God, which could not fade away in them, which they could not suppress in their hearts by any means, which floated into their consciousness against their will. The whole history of their relationship to the Lord Jesus presents us with their spiritual division, the internal struggle of this feeling with the disgusting conviction that He acted contrary to their national expectations, their theocratic ritual belief. Even when the decision to kill Him had matured in them in the name of their theocratic symbolism and national exclusivity, the question continually sounded in their souls more and more loudly, whether He was the Son of God, whether God was acting through Him against them, whether they were rebelling against God. For them it was a question of religious life or death, a question of their theocratic existence. It is this anxiety of people going against their own conscience that is heard in that spell, the name of God, terrible in Jewish concepts, which accompanied the question of the high priest and the Sanhedrin. Therefore, the grammatical form of the affirmative answer of the Lord Jesus in this regard has full logical meaning: “you say that I am,” because you know that I am the Son of God.... On the part of the Jews, this was not a question of ignorance, it was a question generated by the clash of personal interests with conscience. Accepting Jesus Christ as the Messiah, recognizing the Galilean prophet as the Son of God was difficult and downright impossible for them due to His personal humiliation and due to His negative attitude towards their theocratic symbolism, national exclusivity and material messianic hopes. In His life, the matter of personal humiliation coincided with the preaching of universal sonship with God, and for them to recognize the humiliated Son of God meant to renounce their entire past, all worldly glory, all material hopes, and themselves. They could not do this and hence their hatred of the humiliated Son of God. If in the atheism of classical peoples and in later European atheism we encounter a conscious denial of the divine principle - a denial not of God, but of the divine world order, this is the well-known “I do not rebel against my God, but I do not accept His world”; then predominantly such conscious atheism was the attitude of His enemies towards Christ. They did not deny God, they were attached to “their” God, but they could not accept His Son 142, His moral world order. Hatred for the humiliated Son of God gave them extraordinary sincerity, with which the high priest, having heard Christ’s answer, tore his clothes and said: “He is blasphemous,” and the entire Sanhedrin exclaimed: “He is guilty of death.” The Jews lived and judged Jesus according to the law according to which He had to die as the Son of God. The death of the Lord Jesus was the judgment of the Jews because they condemned and crucified Him as the Son of God: in their judgment of Christ, which was their own self-condemnation, it was revealed decisively and irrevocably, with the full light of consciousness and free will, that the Son of God cannot fit into them, that they are not fit for God’s work, that they are flesh. § 54. Repentance of Judas and trial by Pilate The entire process of the trial of Christ, with the accompanying circumstances, within the meaning of the Gospel narratives, confirms and develops the idea that, having condemned the Lord Jesus, the Jews with full consciousness and complete freedom took upon themselves the burden of the divine curse. Such circumstances were the repentance of Judas and the trial by Pilate. Having condemned Jesus to death, in the morning the Jews took Him bound and handed Him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, since the Jews, after Herod’s son Archelaus, lost the right to carry out death sentences. Then Judas, seeing that Jesus was condemned, repented and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the high priests and elders, saying: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” Thus, the last appearance of an internally just cause was taken away from the trial of the Jews over Jesus. Until now, apparently, their excuse was that the Lord Jesus was betrayed by one of His disciples: now this excuse was also taken away from them. Having accepted the guilt of tradition, they refused to be participants in Judas' repentance. “What do we care about that? They answered him: “See for yourself.” And, throwing away the pieces of silver in the church, he went out; went and hanged himself. Reading the latest works on evangelical history, one is involuntarily surprised by the insignificance of the issues in which their authors are interested, and the discrepancy between their content and the meaning of the gospel narratives. In fact, does the tone and purpose of the Gospel narratives about the trial of the Jews over Jesus correspond to the reasoning of any author that “the judges to whom the Lord was brought sat down in turbans, in the Eastern manner, on pillows or headboards, in a semicircle with crossed legs, which were barefoot” 143? This is not enough. Being carried away by such inappropriate realism, historians of the life of Jesus Christ even directly contradict the direction in which the gospel narratives are being presented by the content offered to the attention of readers. So, when describing Pilate's trial over Jesus, they make every possible effort to portray the cruelty of this Roman ruler and conduct the entire description in such a way that it is exclusively an indictment against Pilate. Meanwhile, the gospels do not in the least affect the general character of Pilate. If he really was a bloodthirsty, morally powerless and lawless man, then, on the contrary, in the trial of Jesus he is an extremely humane and fair ruler. He is guilty only in that, in the face of the Truth itself, he did not become a Christian and a participant in the cross of Christ, but, as a pagan, he did everything possible for him to free Christ. He is responsible for this guilt before God, but can we, from a historical point of view, blame him for not becoming a Christian at a time when Peter himself denied Christ? He still gave in to the Jews, it’s true; but is it possible to imagine circumstances that would more mitigate the guilt of a ruler signing a death sentence than what was the case with Pilate’s trial? did he forget anything to absolve himself of the guilt of participating in the crime of the Jews? Could the best pagan not give in to the crowd in Pilate's place?... The meaning of the gospel stories about Pilate's trial of Jesus is solely that the Roman ruler did not diminish the guilt of the Jewish people one iota, that the entire burden of condemning Christ to death remained on the Jews; Pilate's trial was even the highest level to which the consciousness of the Jews and the fullness of freedom reached, with which they denied the Son of God, remaining His only murderers. This very meaning is expressed in Peter’s later speech to the Jews: “The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Son Jesus, whom you betrayed and denied before Pilate, when he thought to release Him. But you denied the holy and righteous, and asked to give you a murderer, and you killed the Author of life” (Acts 3:13-15). The entire trial of Pilate over Jesus is a series of attempts by him to free the Lord Jesus. Demanding the death of Jesus from Pilate, the Jews were forced (John 18:29‒31) to bring such an accusation against Him, which was a sufficient basis for a death sentence from the point of view of Roman legal proceedings: they accused Him of appropriating the royal title and of revolting the people against the authority of Caesar (Luke 23:2.3; John 18:33; Matt. 27:11; Mark. 25:2). Pilate, having learned from the interrogation of Jesus that He is a king in the spiritual sense, as a preacher of the truth (John 18:34-37), announced to the Jews that he recognizes Him as innocent (John 18:38; Luke 23:4). Then, hearing from the ongoing accusations of the Jews that Jesus was from Galilee, Herod’s region, Pilate sent Him to Herod Antipas, who was also in Jerusalem these days. He, deceived in the hope of seeing a miracle from Jesus, humiliated Him and mocked Him, returned Him in bright clothes to Pilate, not finding Him worthy of death, which Pilate again announced to the Jews (Luke 23:6-15). Next, Pilate wanted to take advantage of the Easter custom of releasing to the people one prisoner they wanted. While he was sitting in the judgment seat, his wife sent him to say: “Do not do anything to that righteous man, because now in a dream I suffered a lot for Him.” The Gospel is not one of those books whose authors are interested in women’s dreams out of empty curiosity; but the evangelists do not forget even such a small feature as not to omit anything from the motives of Pilate and his efforts to free Jesus Christ. But the people, excited by the high priests and elders, asked the governor to release the famous prisoner Barabbas, who committed murder during the rebellion, and to destroy Jesus (Matthew 27:15-23; Mark 15:6-13; Luke 23:17-21; John 18:39-40). Next, Pilate handed Jesus over to be beaten and mocked by the soldiers, who laid a crown of thorns on Him, dressed Him in a scarlet robe, gave Him a cane in His right hand, and greeted Him as a king, and beat Him on the head with the cane; ridiculed and beaten, wearing a crown of thorns and a scarlet robe, Pilate brought Him out to the people with the words: “Behold, a man,” hoping to arouse compassion and pity for Him among the people. But the high priests and ministers and all the people, seeing Him in such humiliation, with a great cry demanded that He be crucified (John 19:1-6; Luke 23:16. 22-23; Matt. 27, 27-30; Mark 15:16-19). Here it is appropriate to ask how the people, who had recently solemnly welcomed Jesus, who were afraid of the high priests, who did not want to take Jesus at first for fear of popular indignation, now found themselves on the side of the high priests, the furious enemy of Jesus? To explain this, we must remember that the people had long before become convinced of the inconsistency of the preaching of the Lord Jesus with their aspirations; his excitement towards Jesus Christ in recent days was temporary and superficial, having no internal basis in his spiritual disposition. Nevertheless, the transition from the enthusiastic greetings of the Lord Jesus at His entry into Jerusalem to frantic shouts: “Crucify, crucify Him” must be recognized as extremely abrupt and apparently unmotivated. Its full explanation lies neither in accidental circumstances nor in external motives, but in the fundamental and unchangeable mood of sinful man. The humiliation of Christ, His helplessness in the hands of the authorities - this alone was enough for the recent delight of the people to turn into the most sincere hatred of the “King of Israel.” Worldly man bows before external splendor and power; he is cruel to the humiliated. According to this spiritual law, the first accidental blow to the face of an innocent person causes the brutal cruelty of the crowd against him - this is actually the law of the herd life of animals... In the relations of the Jewish crowd to Christ Jesus, this law was manifested only in that peculiarity, which constituted the most striking revelation of it in world history, that Christ was the Son of God, that the hatred of the people was precisely hatred of the humiliated Son of God, that the people with their hatred paid Him for the deceived messianic hope... After a failed attempt to arouse pity among the people for a humiliated man, Pilate simply wanted to get rid of the Jews, sharply telling them: “Take Him and crucify him; for I find no fault in Him.” But the Jews answered: “according to our law He must die, because He made Himself the Son of God.” Pilate, having heard this word, was more afraid and, still asking Christ, sought to let Him go. He, of course, was not a believer, but for him it was scary to kill a person precisely because he called himself the Son of God (John 19:6-12). And this is what the Jews did. “He who delivered Me to you has greater sin,” said the Lord Jesus to Pilate; but Pilate once again tried to free Jesus with obvious danger to his own position: he wanted to arouse national dreams in the Jews and, bringing Jesus out to them, he said to the people: “Behold, your king!” But the people shouted: “Crucify Him”! “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king except Caesar,” answered the Jews (John 19:14‒15). And this was truly the renunciation of the Jews from their religious calling: from that moment they ceased to be the people of God, i.e. lost, as a people, the right to exist. Pilate's last attempt failed, and meanwhile the Jews, apparently, took advantage of his own words in the fight against Pilate, allowing for a relaxation in relation to their national dreams. “If you let Him go, you are not a friend of Caesar,” they shouted to Pilate (John 19:12). After this, Pilate, seeing that nothing helped, but the confusion was increasing, took water and washed his hands before the people, and said: “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man; look." And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.” Then Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified, hitting Him with a whip (φραγελλώΰας) as a sign of the death sentence (Matthew 27:24‒26). When the Jews took upon themselves the blood of Christ, the Son of God, it was already discovered that the Jewish people were dry wood thrown into the fire. The Lord Jesus, betrayed to the will of the Jews, by the soldiers, dressed Him again in His own clothes, led Him outside the city to a place called Golgotha ​​for crucifixion. He Himself carried His cross (John 19:17), but fainted under His weight, so they laid His cross on a certain Simon of Cyrene. A great multitude of people and women followed Him, weeping and lamenting for Him. He turned to them and said: “Daughters of Jerusalem! do not weep for Me, but weep for yourself and for your children. For if they do this to a green tree, what will happen to a dry tree? The Jewish people were already living on the eve of those days in which barren days were considered blessed and in which the Jews would be glad to hide under the ruins of mountains and hills (Luke 23:26-31). At Golgotha, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified on the cross, on which he died for people. The greatest mystery was being accomplished, constituting the core of human history, its highest meaning - the mystery of the transition of the divine spiritual life of the Son of God into people, its fruition in human history. During the few hours that the Son of God hung on the cross, Calvary was a visual expression of the meaning of the entire life of the Lord Jesus and the entire history of the human race. No other spectacle (Luke 23:48) in world history possessed such an abyss of instructiveness as Golgotha ​​in those hours. The extreme humiliation and complete external God-forsakenness of the Son of God, the unbelief of people thirsting for a miracle, the saving power of faith in the humiliated Son of God and, finally, the spirituality of His eternal life - these are the four ends - lower, left, right and upper - of the cross on which the Lord Jesus gave up His spirit. In itself, crucifixion was a curse in the eyes of the Jews (Deut. 21:23), and was an expression of the greatest humiliation. But all the power of Christ’s humiliation was created by the fact that He was not just a man, but the Son of God, the king of Israel - and this was indicated in the inscription above His head. The circumstances surrounding His crucifixion intensified His humiliation: before the crucifixion, they gave Him wine with myrrh to drink as a stupefying agent, but He did not accept (Mark 25:23); They crucified Him along with two thieves, in the midst of them, so that the word of Scripture was fulfilled on Him: He was numbered with the evildoers (Mark 25:28); He was naked and His clothes were divided by lot by the soldiers; He responded to His crucifiers not with the thunder of heavenly wrath, not with the protection of twelve legions of angels, but with a meek prayer for them to the Father, for “they did not know what they were doing” 144; Moreover, He publicly declared His torment: “I thirst,” He exclaimed, and also: “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? Having filled a sponge with vinegar, one of those standing at the cross brought it to His lips on hyssop (Matthew 27:46-49; Mark 15:34-36; John 19:28-29)... The whole people, with the chief priests, scribes, elders and Pharisees, mocked the crucified Son of God: “if He is the Son of God, if He trusted in God and was pleasing to Him, if He saved others, He will now come down empty from the cross, and we will believe in Him.” Even one of the thieves crucified with Him took part in these mockeries (Matthew 27:39-44; Mark 15:29-32; Luke 23:35. 37. 39). These mockery of the humiliated Son of God revealed the whole spirit of this world, the main direction of his life... But then the first sprouts of a new spiritual life of people appeared - life by faith, and not by vision. While one of the hanged villains slandered the crucified Christ, the other calmed him down and said to Jesus: “Remember me, Lord! when you come into your kingdom." “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise,” the Lord answered him (Luke 23:39–43). Self-righteous Jews, high priests, elders, Pharisees, thirsting for a miracle, crucified the Son of God, and the thief who was crucified with Him believed in Him and became the first heir of His kingdom of heaven. At the cross of Jesus stood some of the people close to Him: His mother with her sister and other women, and his beloved disciple, John. The Lord Jesus said to His mother, pointing her eyes to this disciple: “Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple: “Behold, your mother!” And from that time on, this student took her to him. Usually these words of the Lord Jesus are seen as the final expression of His filial solicitude for His mother. But if it were so, He would have said to His disciple: “Take care of My mother,” and He said: “Behold your mother,” and said not only to the disciple these words, but also to the mother: “Woman, behold your son.” In these words of the Crucified One one must see not earthly care for his mother, 145 but a deeper event of His transition to full spiritual communion with the human race. The Lord Jesus Himself, already during His public ministry, was free from material concerns about his mother; even once, when He was teaching the people, and His mother and brothers wanted to talk to Him, He said: “Who is My mother and who are My brothers”? And pointing His hand at His disciples, He added: “Behold, My mother and My brothers. For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven, he is My brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:46-50 par.). To one woman, who blessed the one who gave birth and nursed Him, He answered: “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28). But His mother, according to the testimony of the Gospels, had purely human feelings for Him; her maternal attachment to Him gave her, as it were, some rights to Him and, in any case, was very important for the beginning of the miraculous activity of Christ Jesus. All His public activities were a difficult test for her maternal feelings; For herself personally, she was losing Him; but her maternal affection for Him did not cease in her until the very cross. And now, when He was hanging on the cross, this affection of hers constituted the only “human” connection He had with the earth: His disciples fled and denied Him, so that they could then enter into a purely spiritual relationship with Him; Only his mother loved Him with her maternal love. But she also had to suppress her natural attachment to Him and freely renounce her Son in order to make possible His exclusively spiritual relationship with the world. What was required of her was as great and difficult a feat as we can imagine. Then truly the weapon pierced her soul (Luke 2:35). It was then that all the greatness of her spirit was revealed. From that time on, this disciple took her to him, and she no longer knew her Son in the flesh. From that time on, “all things were accomplished” for the Lord Jesus. Bowing his head and shouting loudly, He gave up the ghost. When the soldiers who came at the intercession of the Jews, who asked Pilate to break the legs of the crucified, so that they would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, broke the legs of the crucified thieves and approached Jesus, they saw Him already dead and did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers pierced His ribs to make sure of His death. The centurion, who stood at the cross of Jesus and saw how He died, said: “Truly this man was the Son of God.” Then the same faith gave boldness to Joseph of Arimathea, a previously secret disciple of Jesus out of fear from the Jews, and he asked Pilate for permission to bury the body of Jesus. Nicodemus, who had previously come to Jesus at night, also came and brought a composition of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred liters. So they took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in swaddling clothes with spices, as the Jews usually bury. At the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden there was a new burial cave in which no one had yet been laid to rest. They laid Jesus there. A stone with a seal was rolled at the entrance of the cave, and a guard was also posted by the Jews. So the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified by sinners and died for the sins of people. Human thought has stopped over the explanation of this event more often than over anything else. That He died precisely for the sins of people is not an explanation of the fact, not a theological truth, but a fact of gospel history. Theology usually confines itself to the scholastic definition of this fact and the disclosure of this formula, when its real meaning should be clarified. The real meaning of the death of Christ, the Son of God, is that it is the transition of His spiritual eternal life into people, the birth of His spirit in them. This meaning is as mysterious as the growth of grain is mysterious, but it is also as undoubtedly evidenced by the reality of the spiritual life of Christians as the growth of grain is undoubtedly evidenced by the life of a plant. From the psychological side, this effect of the death of Christ on people is accessible to historical observation in His disciples, who with His death experienced the collapse of ritual self-righteousness and were reborn for the religion of spirit and truth. In a broader and externally historical sense, the death of Christ is a judgment on the prince of this world, it is an indisputable and deepest evidence of the sinfulness of man: as a historical event, the death of Christ testifies that people are extremely sinful, that the very truth of the world is evil and a lie, and that ... the only refuge for us is at the foot of the cross, in love for the Crucified One, in the assimilation of His spirit. According to Matt. 21:14 After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus healed the blind and lame in the church; but not to mention the fact that this verse is. Matt. (like XIX, 2) has no parallel not only in John, but also in Mark. and Luke, it cannot be given a strictly chronological meaning (like XXI, 12. 13 par.) in view of the fact that the first evangelists do not talk about Christ’s previous visits to Jerusalem during His public ministry and nothing prevents Matt from seeing. 21:12‒14; Mk. 11:15‒17; OK. 19:45–46 parallels in John. 2:13‒23. Wed. above note. to § 28 regarding identical events conveyed by the evangelists in different connections. Wed. Trencha Interpretation of the parables of the Lord n. I. Christ, b. lane S. II. 18–88, p. 425: this “parable was told to temper impatience, to instill patient waiting for Christ, and to encourage zealous activity until the time of His second coming. This was her purpose for those who completely surrendered to their Lord and became His servants.” Tolkov. for four people Ch. 17. The Explanatory Gospel of Matthew. r. lane Kyiv, 1886, p. 314. That the question referred specifically to the sterility of the Jewish people in the past of their history, to the result of their legalistic discipline, in which therefore the drying up of the fig tree had a completely symbolic meaning in the sense revealed, this is clearly indicated by the evangelist’s remark that “the time was not yet for gathering figs” (Mark 11:13), that only last year’s fruits could be expected from the fig tree. Moreover, it was in the son of the owner killed by the vinedressers - in this stone, which the builders rejected, but which became the head of the corner - that the Lord Jesus showed the Jews their judge, i.e. in their murder they judge them: “whoever falls on this stone will be broken, and whoever it falls on will be crushed” (Matthew 21:44 par.). Of course, the first group of parables itself (see § 33), because, hearing the parables of the second group, the Jews lowered their attitude towards themselves, i.e. their content had historical significance. Some theologians see an indication of this event in Luke. 22:27, and in general the description of the Last Supper is often preceded, according to Luke. 22:24–27, a depiction of a dispute about primacy that arose between the disciples, and this dispute relates to theologians either to the choice of places at meals or to the question of who should wash the feet of those who arrived from the journey instead of the servant. But Lk. 22:24–27 must be recognized as a parallel. Mf. 20:20‒28; Mk. 10:35‒45; otherwise it would be. John's silence about this dispute is strange. In the proposed explanation of the farewell conversation, the dogmatic meaning of the conversation is not at all meant, for reasons that are quite understandable in the philosophical-historical work; but the explanation itself is completely consistent with the conclusions and applications that are made in the patristic interpretations of the dogmatic meaning of the conversation. Doesn't the high priestly prayer according to the gospel of John correspond to the conflict in Gethsemane according to the first three gospels? But now for us the invisible region cannot be the complete and only reality. In this case, Christ was tried by Annas (John 18:13), Caiaphas (John 18:24; Matthew 26:57, also undoubtedly Mark 14:53 and presumably Luke 12:54) and in the morning or afternoon meeting of the Sanhedrin (Matthew 27:1; Mark 15:1; Luke 12:66). How does he think, for example? Meyer-Weiss, referring to Mk. 15:1 the word “in the morning” does not mean “they held a meeting” (according to the Greek proverb), but to the main verb “they took them away,” which is not according to Matt. 27:1 and even more so Luke. 12:66 . But on the other hand, Lk. 12:71 same as Matt. 26:65; Mk. 15:63. In this case, Christ was tried by Annas (John 18:13; Luke 12:54) and by Caiaphas in the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:57 and 27:1; Mark 14:53 and 15:1; Luke 22:66). Eg. Weiss, D. Leben Iesu. V. II, Berl 1882, Ss. 553‒554. We need to remember the parable of the winegrowers, who, seeing the owner’s son, said to each other: “This is the heir; Let’s go kill him and take his inheritance.” Geikie's Life and Teachings of Christ, vol. IV, ch. LXI in trans. Fivoisky p. 196. Luke 23:34. The Lord Jesus prayed this way perhaps for the Jews; but it is quite possible to relate His prayer to the soldiers who crucified Him, which apparently corresponds to the contextual connection of this verse of Luke’s gospel. The earthly care of His mother crucified for the sins of the world would not correspond to the universal meaning of His death, would not be in harmony with the exceptional solemnity of the moment; it would not even correspond to the general character of His ministry, since He, calling people to renounce even family ties for the sake of the kingdom of God, appears to us as alien to material concerns about the mother throughout His entire service to the kingdom of God. In addition, was it really necessary to entrust her to the care of one of the disciples, while all the disciples loved their teacher so much and were already accustomed to fellowship in property, so that later they, and the wives, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and even “all the believers were together and had everything in common” (Acts 2:44 cf. 1:14)? You might be interested in: