John 7:45 - Meaning and Application

The chief priests and Pharisees were secretly working together to stop Christ. Even on the great day of the feast, they did not attend the public worship. They left that to ordinary people, while they thought themselves too important and busy with church politics. They sat in the council room, expecting Christ to be brought to them as a prisoner, since they had already sent out orders for his arrest (John 7:32).

Here we see what happened between them and their officers, who came back without him, having done nothing. The leaders reproved them sharply: “Why have you not brought him?” Christ had spoken openly, many in the crowd were already upset with him, and this was the last day of the feast. They thought this was their best chance, so they were angry that their own servants had failed them. Wicked people are frustrated when they cannot do the harm they want to do (Psalm 112:10; Nehemiah 6:16).

The officers gave their reason: “No one ever spoke like this man” (John 7:46). That was a true statement. No man ever spoke with such wisdom, power, grace, clear truth, and lovely tenderness as Christ did, not even Moses. These officers had been sent to arrest him, but his words won them over.

That made their testimony even stronger, because they were speaking to men who hated anything that honored Christ. Yet God ordered it so that they had to hear this witness. Their own officers, who could not be accused of favoring Jesus, spoke against them. They should have stopped and asked themselves, “What are we doing when we hate and persecute one who speaks so wonderfully?”

The Pharisees then tried to hold their officers to their side and plant more doubt about Christ. They suggested two things. First, they said belief in Christ would mean being fooled: “Are you also deceived?” Since the beginning, Christianity has been treated by the world as a great fraud, and believers were called deceived even when they were just beginning to see the truth. People who wanted a Messiah full of outward glory thought those who trusted in a poor and humbled Messiah had been fooled. But the truth is that no one has been more badly fooled than those who expected wealth and earthly power from the Messiah.

The Pharisees also tried to flatter the officers. They acted as if smart and respectable men should know better than to be tricked. Second, they warned them that following Christ would lower their standing. Most people, even in religion, like to follow the lead of the high-ranking and important, so the Pharisees appealed to that weakness. They told the officers that no rulers or Pharisees believed in Christ, and asked if they thought they were wiser than their superiors. Some rulers did believe, like Jairus in Matthew 9:18 and the official in John 4:53, and many more believed quietly but were afraid to confess Christ openly (John 12:42). Still, when Christ’s cause is weak in the world, its enemies often make it look weaker than it really is.

This has often kept people from Christ. They see that rulers and Pharisees are against him, and they decide that must settle the matter. But should ordinary, worldly people pretend to know more about spiritual things than those who have made religion their study? If rulers and Pharisees do not believe in Christ, many will refuse to believe so they will not seem strange or unfashionable. People are foolish when they let human approval matter more than eternal truth. They are willing to be lost for the sake of fitting in.

The Pharisees also said believers would be joining themselves to the despised crowd: “This people, who do not know the law, are cursed” (John 7:43). They spoke with deep contempt. By “this people” they meant the common crowd, especially those who were favorably inclined toward Christ. They treated them as if they were trash. But if they meant the ordinary Jewish people, they were still Abraham’s descendants and in covenant with God, so they should not have been spoken of that way.

The public good of the church is harmed whenever one group tries to make another seem small and worthless. And if they meant Christ’s followers, then though most of them were poor and of little rank, they had shown great wisdom, honesty, and interest in God’s favor by receiving Christ. God often chooses what people call weak and lowly, while human pride usually mocks and despises those whom God has chosen.

Second, they wrongfully insult the people by calling them ignorant of God’s word. They say, “These people do not know the law,” as if only the leaders knew it, and as if no Scripture knowledge counted unless it came through their own school and their traditions. In truth, many of those they despised may have known the law, and even the prophets, better than they did. Many plain, honest, unlearned followers of Christ gain a clearer and more useful knowledge of God’s word through meditation, experience, prayer, and especially obedience, than some scholars do with all their learning.

David came to understand more than the elders and all his teachers (Psalm 119:99-100). And even if the common people did not know the law well, the chief priests and Pharisees should not have used that as a weapon against them. Their own fault was greater, because they should have taught the people better. Instead, they took away the key of knowledge (Luke 11:52).

Third, they speak with great arrogance when they condemn the people outright. They call them cursed, hateful to God, and hateful to wise people, an accursed crowd. It is a mercy that their saying did not make the people cursed, for a curse without cause does not come. It is a claim to God’s own right, and a serious lack of love, to say that any particular person, much more any whole group, is rejected by God. We are not able to search hearts, and so we are not fit to condemn them. Our rule is to bless and not curse.

Some think the leaders only meant that the people were easily deceived and made fools of. But they used this harsh word, “cursed,” to show their own anger and to scare their officers away from Jesus. In our godless age, people often use the same kind of language. They call anything they dislike cursed, damned, or ruined. These officers may have had their convictions weakened and shut down by such talk, and they never looked further into Christ’s claims. One word from a ruler or Pharisee often carries more weight with many people than truth itself, or than the great matters of their souls.

Then comes what passed between them and Nicodemus, a member of their own council (John 7:50). Notice the fair and reasonable objection Nicodemus made to their actions. Even in that corrupt and wicked council, God did not leave himself without a witness against their hatred. The vote against Christ was not carried unanimously.

It was Nicodemus who spoke up, the same man who had come to Jesus by night, and who was one of them (John 7:50). Though he had come to Jesus and had taken him as his teacher, he still kept his place in the council and his vote among them. Some blame this on weakness and cowardice, and think he should have left his position. But Christ had never told him, “Follow me,” the way he had called others, so it seems wiser to think Nicodemus stayed where he could still serve Christ’s cause. There he may have had a chance to slow the Jewish leaders’ rage, and perhaps he did more good than we know. He may have been like Hushai among Absalom’s advisers, helping turn their plans into foolishness. We must never deny our Master, but we may wait for the right time to confess him well.

God has his faithful people in many places. He often finds, places, or makes some good even in the worst settings and companies. There was Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar’s court and Nehemiah in Artaxerxes’s. Nicodemus also shows that though he first came to Jesus by night, afraid of being noticed, he later stood up boldly when it mattered. He spoke in defense of Christ and stood against the whole council. In the same way, many believers who once were timid have, by God’s grace, grown bold enough to face strong opposition. No one should excuse hiding their faith by pointing to Nicodemus unless they are also ready, like him, to speak openly for Christ when the time comes, even if they stand alone. Nicodemus did that here, and again later in John 19:39.

He asked, “Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?” (John 7:51). By no means, and no civilized law allows that either. He wisely argued from their own law and from a clear rule of justice, that no one should be condemned before being heard. If he had pressed Christ’s teaching, his miracles, or his conversation with Christ in John 3, it would have been useless. These men were not ready to receive such things, and would only have rejected and attacked him.

He also quietly turned their own charge back on them. They had mocked the people, especially Christ’s followers, as ignorant of the law, but Nicodemus showed they themselves did not understand some of its most basic rules. So they were not fit to make laws for others. The law is said here to judge, hear, and know, because rulers who work under the law speak for it. Whatever they bind or loose according to the law is rightly said to be done by the law itself.

It is plainly right that no one should be sentenced under the law before the law has first examined the case fairly. Judges, when they hear the accuser’s complaint, must always leave room in their minds for the defense. They have two ears to remind them to hear both sides. That was said to be the Roman custom (Acts 25:18). Our own legal process is similar: first to hear, then to decide. People should be judged, not by what others say about them, but by what they have actually done. The law does not ask what opinions people hold about them, or what angry cries are raised against them. It asks, What have they done? What clear acts can be proved? Judgment must follow what is alleged and what is proven. Facts, not faces, must guide justice, and the scale must be used before the sword.

We may suppose Nicodemus’s proposal in the council was that Jesus should be invited to explain himself and his teaching, and that he should be given a fair and open hearing. But though no one could answer his reasoning, no one supported his motion either. They had no real reply to his objection. So, when they could not defeat his argument, they attacked him instead, and what they could not answer with reason they tried to cover with insults and harsh words.

A bad cause is shown when people cannot bear to hear reason and treat it as an insult when someone reminds them of it. Those who resist reason give others reason to suspect that reason is against them. Notice how they mock Nicodemus, the Pharisee who spoke up for fair hearing, saying, “Are you also from Galilee?” (John 7:52). Some think he got what he deserved for staying among people he knew were enemies of Christ, and for saying no more for Christ than he might have said for any accused criminal, that no one should be condemned without being heard.

If he had said, “I have heard this Jesus myself, and I know he is a teacher sent from God, and in opposing him you are fighting against God,” he could not have been treated worse than he was for this small defense of Christ’s fairness. Their words to Nicodemus show both falsehood and foolishness. They wrongly assumed that Christ was from Galilee, though that was not true and careful inquiry would have shown it. They also assumed that because most of his followers were Galileans, all of them were, though he had many followers in Judea as well.

They also said that no prophet had come from Galilee, and they appealed to Nicodemus’s own search, but that was false too. Jonah came from Gath-hepher, and Nahum was an Elkoshite, both from Galilee. So they made lies their refuge. Their reasoning was just as foolish as their facts were false, and it brought shame on rulers and Pharisees. A person of worth and virtue is no worse because of the poverty or low standing of his country. The Galileans were descendants of Abraham, and barbarians and Scythians are descendants of Adam. We all have the same Father.

Even if no prophet had risen from Galilee, that would not make it impossible for one to come from there. If Elijah was the first prophet from Gilead, as some think, and if the Gileadites were called fugitives, that would not prove that he was not a prophet. In the end, the court broke up in confusion and haste, and each man went home. They had gathered to plot against the Lord and his Anointed, but they came away empty-handed. Not only does God in heaven laugh at such plans, we may see the same thing on earth, when all their secret plotting is shattered by one honest and plain word.

They would not hear Nicodemus because they could not answer him. As soon as they realized one such man was among them, they saw there was no point in pressing ahead with their plan. So they put off the matter to a more convenient time, when he was not there. In this way, the Lord’s counsel stands firm, despite the plans hidden in human hearts.