Luke 23:2
And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.”
Luke 23:2
Given the unexpected, albeit temporary appearance of Pilate’s scruples, the religious leaders faced the challenge of convincing Pilate of the necessity of condemning Jesus. Pilate would not be sympathetic to their charge of blasphemy, so they built a case for sedition (Matthew 26:63-65; Mark 15:61-64; Luke 23:70-71). The first proof they offered was that Jesus was misleading the nation, where misleading in Greek is διαστρέφοντα (diastrephonta), meaning to distort, corrupt, pervert, or twist. This charge was based on their view of Jesus’ popularity with the crowds and his preaching of the inaugurated kingdom of God. They were threatened by Jesus’ following. Their long-held monopoly on religious and social order depended on the subservience of the people, but now the people were seeing their leaders’ clay feet. Rather than joining the people in following Jesus, they resolved the people were only following Jesus because he was misleading them.
The next proof built on the first, as they described one of the ways Jesus was misleading our nation, namely that he was forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar. Three days earlier these same leaders sought to lay hands on him…for they perceived that he had told the parable of the wicked tenants against them, but they feared the people (Luke 20:19). Enraged by Jesus’ indictment of their sinfulness, they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor (Luke 20:20). That something proved to be a conversation about giving tribute to Caesar. Luke is clear that Jesus knew what they were up to: he perceived their craftiness (Luke 20:23). Jesus insisted paying tribute to Caesar was the necessary part of utilizing Caesar’s economic system. His point about rendering to God the things that are God’s centered on their own lives lived in service to the One whose image they bore. They knew he had not entrapped himself, so marveling at his answer they became silent (Luke 20:26). Three days later they opened their mouths and lied.
The final proof of Jesus’ seditious plot was that he called himself Christ, a king. Demons and disciples had increasingly recognized Jesus as the Christ throughout his ministry, yet he restricted the revelation of that fact until the hour of his death (Matthew 9:30, 12:16, 16:20, 17:9; Mark 1:44, 5:43, 7:36, 8:30; Luke 9:21). Even as the council insisted in the midnight trial, If you are the Christ, tell us, Jesus responded, If I tell you, you will not believe (Luke 22:67). So while Jesus is indeed the Christ, their assertion that he was saying that he himself is Christ, a king is patently false. What’s more, so is the implication of that charge. They anticipated and asserted that Christ is a political, militaristic figure who would seek to overthrow Roman rule and reestablish Israel as an independent state. They intended for Pilate to see this charge as a challenge to the authority of Rome, who placed a puppet king on Israel’s throne. Such sedition could not be tolerated if Pilate was to remain in good standing with the emperor. Jesus, of course, from the beginning was not bringing his own kingdom, but that of the Father, a kingdom that is not of this world.
The spirit of the priests, scribes and elders lives on in those who continue to distort Jesus’ words and disregard his witness. Even as Jesus’ powerful presence continues to draw a following, it also proves divisive as people reject and rebuke him, failing to see that his power is eternal, their’s only temporary. We need not fear. Just as the resurrection revealed the lies of those witnesses calling for his crucifixion, the return of Jesus will reveal the lies of those false witnesses in our own day. Jesus, faithful and true, will have the last word.