Mark 14:48 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ challenges the people and says unto them, ‘Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me? ⁴⁹ I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not.’ What is he doing? He is simply exposing their deceit. Why arrest him at the dead of night? Why arrest in these circumstances when the crowds are not here? Because this whole event, this whole arrest, is filled with deceit and subtlety. ‘It is something you have to do slyly’, he says to them. ‘It is something you have to do dishonestly. You dare not arrest me publicly and openly. It's got to be done in this way. You behave as if you were handling a thief who has to be hunted down and caught off guard. But you know it is for your sake, not for my sake that you are coming to take me in this way. You didn’t need to hunt me down; you knew where I was and could have come an taken me any time you wished, if you had been prepared to do it openly.’ In saying those words he is just convicting them and exposing them and their attitude. They were half afraid of him, they had seen his works of power, his miracles, what would happen? This was the plan; this was the scheme. The people were intensely on the side of Christ and would have been against his arrest but the scheme was this – here was the cunning of it – if we can arrest, if we can take him and the people, the crowds don’t know that we have done it, once he is in our hands, under our power his mystique will crumble. There will be no more basis for the awe in which people hold him. He will be seen just as a convicted or imprisoned person in our power, a very ordinary and defeated individual. Then things will swing and the crowd will be disillusioned and those who were for him will be against him. That was the plan. So we have to do this by cunning, by stealth and take him at night. It has to be an accomplished act and the people see him in weakness, not in power. So that is what they seek to do but it is, of course, his intention to allow that to happen. There is a far greater, higher plan being worked out. The plan of the Trinity, that Jesus Christ the second Person would come and will be crucified and bear our sin on Calvary’s Cross.