The Cross He Bore - Taking the Oath

This is day six of our thirteen days trek through The Cross He Bore by Frederick Leahy. Today’s text is from Matthew 26:63,64: “And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so.’”

In this chapter Leahy continues to look at the farce of a trial Jesus was subjected to by the Sanhedrin. He looks at the oath Jesus took when, by the living God, he attested that he was the Christ, the Son of God. In the midst of all these religious leaders Christ declared that he was, indeed, the Messiah.

Here is a quote taken from the very beginning of the chapter.

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This was the last meeting of the supreme Jewish ecclesiastical court, the Sanhedrin, warranted by God, in the sense that it could legitimately meet in his name and expect his blessing. In the counsels of heaven, once the “curtain of the sanctuary” was “torn in two, from top to bottom,” the Sanhedrin was dismissed. In future it would be redundant. It would be left stranded in the blind alley of its willful rejection of the truth. Historically, it was swept away with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

This last, divinely accredited session of the Sanhedrin—a council which inherited the teaching and noble traditions of a great nation—met as the clock of prophecy indicated the approach of noon and the question to be decided was the question of the ages, the question put by the Saviour himself, “Who do you say that I am?” But the Sanhedrin did not hear the ticking of that clock and had no awareness of the tension and gravity of the hour. The Christ who had refused to share the secret of his riddle with the wicked, maintaining a firm silence before Caiaphas, when put on oath would solemnly swear that he was the Messiah, the Son of the living God.