“It is advantageous for you that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50): A reassessment of Caiaphas’s argument from expediency

Abstract

In this article, I examine the declaration, “It is advantageous for you that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50), which the high priest Caiaphas makes at the Sanhedrin’s deliberations about the necessity of Jesus’s execution. I argue that despite the narrator’s appreciative comment that Caiaphas “did not say this on his own, but, because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he may also gather into one the scattered children of God” (John 11:51–52), the evangelist does not endorse the argument from expediency that Caiaphas advocates. Jesus’s death in John is beneficial for others not because the reasoning “one for many” is morally justifiable but because Jesus freely lays down his life. This redefinition of the redemptive significance of Jesus’s death on the cross also implies the futility of violence because the execution of Jesus did not bring about the non-violent end that Caiaphas hoped for. After all, the Romans did come and destroy the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Thus, the death of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is beneficial for all God’s people, but this act is not the result of the verdict of the Jewish leaders to put Jesus to death but of Jesus’s own decision to give his life for others.