Mark 14:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ’s enemies now plot to put him to death. They had tried to do this many times, but now it is different. There is a meeting. In Mark it is the chief priests and the scribes; in Matthew the elders are also present. It seems to be, if not a meeting of the Sanhedrin Council, certainly a meeting of all the leading Jewish clergy of the day. Where did it take place? We are told in Matthew, that it was not in the usual allocated hall in the temple, but in the house of Caiaphas the high priest, in his palace, in his great room. It was a secret meeting, and it was a meeting specifically to determine how they may secretly arrest him and take him. It would have to be done with great cunning, because now was the feast of the passover, and Jerusalem was crowded. This first verse refers to the fact that in two days’ time there will be the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That tells us that it is the Tuesday before the crucifixion. Christ has entered Jerusalem on the Sunday. On the Monday he cast out the money-changers and the animals from the temple. Tuesday was a long day, with much teaching and so much accomplished, and it is still Tuesday. On the Thursday will be the beginning of the feast and, of course, Christ will be arrested and the following day, and he will be crucified.We see this deep hatred from the Sanhedrin council, or most of them. Why did they have such hatred for Christ that they were going to have him taken and killed? Of course, they had no power to sentence him to execution. It was a Roman-occupied country and only the Roman authorities had the power to execute. So they would have to take Christ and their plan was along these lines. He is so popular; he has such support; so many people with him. We have to break his mystique, the awe that people have for him, and process his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. But how to do that? They had tried by putting up different people to question him in the temple, in the hope that he would be bettered and he could be made to seem small and fallible. But having failed, they had concluded it could not be done. What they would have to do? People would just have to wake up one day and find that he was arrested, that he was imprisoned, and was a spent force. Perhaps that would break their trust in him, and the masses could then be persuaded to cry for his crucifixion. That was the plan. While he was free, while he was preaching, while he was healing and doing these things, there was nothing we could do. But the whole picture would change if he was seen as a weak prisoner, held in our clutches.Of course, they could not have taken him unless he permitted it, unless he had gone willingly to his death. He had the power to resist them all. But they hated him, because he preached the need for repentance and remission of sin, and he preached that sin could be freely forgiven by God. They preached the opposite: that you have to meticulously carry out and fulfil all the ceremonial law. They thought they excelled at that and therefore they were superior to others. But he put his finger on their heart sins, and they hated him for that. They were sinners? ‘What us?’ The clergy of the day, up to the senior clergy, the chief priests, the scribes, the doctors of law, the Pharisees. They were condemned and under God’s judgment also and needed to repent? They hated him for his message. They hated him also for his miracles. They should have loved him for them – that thousands of people were healed and cured of the most terrible things – but such was their jealousy of him, for the attention he secured and the authority that he carried, that even those demonstrations of compassion and power enraged them. They were jealous of him for having such a following.