“Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way:” (John 18:8)
When Judas came to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, he brought with him a multitude, a crowd or mass of ordinary people. John writes that it was a band of men. And with them were officers of the chief priests and Pharisees. Among them also was the high priest’s servant who had his ear cut off by Peter. There is the mistaken idea that soldiers arrested Jesus, but the Bible never says this. These were not soldiers as depicted in some pictures, but an ordinary mob put together by the religious leaders, not the Romans. (John 18:3; Matthew 26:47; Mark 14:43; Luke 22:47) This was an illegal seizure.
They had no basis on which to arrest Jesus. They couldn’t go to the Roman authorities to have Him arrested. He hadn’t broken any Roman laws. John writes that they came with lanterns and torches and weapons. Matthew, Mark and Luke write that they came with swords and staves. The sword was a weapon of choice in those days. You could say they were allowed to carry a sword as did Peter and even some of the other disciples because when this mob came looking for Jesus, the disciples were ready to fight. “When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” (Luke 22:49)
Jesus identifies Himself and makes an appeal for His disciples, “...let these go their way.” He protected His disciples from the sacrifice He had to make and for the sin offering He would become. It was His alone. In His prayer as High Priest, Jesus prayed, “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12) Jesus prayed this High Priest prayer after the Last Supper and after washing the disciples’ feet before He took them to the garden to pray.
No human sacrifice would be sufficient to pay for sin. Man is tainted with sin. God demands a pure and spotless sacrifice. Only Jesus, a man without sin, could pay the price for sin. Only God could redeem man from sin, because only what is divine and holy is pure and spotless. Since the beginning, every sacrifice had to pure and it’s something man cannot produce. The sacrificial lambs were innocent and without defect. Man didn’t do that. God did. Jesus, the man was without sin. Jesus, our God was divine.
We not only see God’s hand in our redemption, but His initiation, His work by His hand, His miracle then, now working and working for eternity. It’s all God. Man messed up for all. God shows up and makes a way, before Jesus and for eternity. God has always been there for man and is there even now. Man has relegated our Lord to an afterthought. But we are not an afterthought with Him. Even when Jesus is about to be taken to die for us, His thoughts are with His disciples saying, “...let these go their way.”
It's beyond awesome to think we are a forethought of God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are ever present in God’s thoughts. And everything was done for us, beginning with the Garden of Eden, the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the Jews carrying the knowledge of the One True God Almighty, Jesus, our redemption and our eternity. David understood this. “Many, O LORD my God, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” (Psalms 40:5) And again David writes, “LORD, what is man, that Thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that Thou makest account of him! (Psalms 144:3)
The Lord has declared from the beginning of man’s enslavement to sin, “Let my people go.” (Exodus 8:1) He has done everything there is to do to free us from our bondage of sin. “Who His Own Self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1Peter 2:24) He has freed us. We belong to Him. Jesus prayed to the Father for us in His prayer as High Priest. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;” (John 17:20) Before His death, Jesus was thinking of us.
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