John 18:19 Commentary and Bible Study

But now, the narrative switches to Annas and the hearing, the first hearing. Christ hasn’t been put before the Sanhedrin yet, chaired by Caiaphas): ‘the high priest’ – they call Annas the high priest even though he isn’t, it’s a sort of courtesy title and they know that he’s the power behind everything. Why did he ask about Christ’s disciples? You can see the political mind of Annas; all he’s interested in is crushing a movement. He doesn’t believe in Christ; with his hardness of heart he’s rejected his power and his miracles; he wants nothing to do with him. But this movement – how strong is it? Can we put it down? Of course, we can if we execute the head, then the rest of the body will die off, but will it? Can we be sure? How many disciples does he have? How many influential people? We know that many of them seem to be Galileans and fishermen, but are there influential people? How many priests, for example? How vocal are they? What do they do? How many of them are full-time disciples? This is the kind of information that a very political individual like Annas would want, because he’s got to design his strategy to get rid of this movement. You can imagine it: ‘How many disciples have you got? Where are they? Are they armed? Will they fight?’ The old man wants to know just what a danger is posed. He is convinced Christ is like any other insurrectionist.Then he asks him of his doctrine. Why? Did he never hear him? In all probability he had put his head into the precincts of the temple and he had heard Christ preaching. Difficult to believe he had never heard him. But he does not ask as an interested person – ‘What do you teach? What do you say? What is your message?’ No, what he is trying to do is find occasion to accuse Christ. They have rummaged around the city for witnesses who will come when the time is ripe and give evidence against Christ, but he knows that these witnesses, liars as they will be, will contradict each other – that will be a difficult thing, and so it turned out as things go on. But he was challenging Christ in the hope of getting something he can use against him. Let me see if I can provoke him to claim clearly to be God, to be Messiah. Can I provoke him to say something which is against the Roman authority which will give us a good charge against him? Annas is just fishing when he asks him about his teaching.