John 11:47,48 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then gathered the chief priests, &c. “The account which these men gave of Lazarus's resurrection, raised the indignation of the rulers to the highest pitch. They called a council forthwith, and after consultation blamed one another for having suffered Jesus to go so long unpunished. But this miracle being too evident to be denied, as all his miracles indeed were, they did not, even in their most private conferences, say or intimate to one another, that their displeasure and opposition proceeded from his passing false miracles upon the ignorant vulgar. They rather condemned him upon the truth and notoriety of his miracles; pretending that they were designed to establish a new sect in religion, which might endanger, not their church only, but their state.” They said, What do we? What, indeed? Why, you resist the truth, confirmed by the most astonishing and convincing miracles ever wrought: you show that death itself yields to the power of Christ sooner than infidelity. For this man doeth many miracles Thus, though they were his sworn enemies, they could not help giving him an ample testimony, even in full court. If we let him thus alone If we suffer him to go on thus uncontrolled. But how can you prevent his going on? How can you control one who walks on the water, calms the winds and waves with a word, and with a word cleanses the lepers, heals the sick, and raises the dead? All men will believe on him And ought they not? Will they not be justified if they do, nay, and inexcusable if they do not? And are not you inexcusable in not believing on him? Surely for this very reason, that he does so many miracles, all salutary and tending to the good of mankind, and with such evidence of a divine power as you yourselves think is likely to draw all men to believe in him, you should acknowledge him to be the true Messiah, and profess yourselves his disciples, subjects, and servants. But the Romans will come If we suffer this man to proceed thus, and continually to increase the number of his followers, it will give such umbrage to the Romans, that, on pretence of an insurrection being raised in the country, they will send a powerful army and destroy both our place, our temple, and nation Both our church and state. Will overturn both our religious and civil constitution. Were they really afraid of this? or was it a mere pretence, a fair colour only for their conduct? Certainly it was no more. For they could not but know, that he who raised the dead was able to conquer the Romans. They entered, however, at this time, immediately after this most astonishing of all Christ's miracles, this most convincing of all the evidences he had given of his being the Messiah, into a resolution of putting him to death at all hazards. “But those politicians were taken in their own craftiness; for while they proposed, by killing Jesus, to avoid the destruction of their temple and city, the sin which they committed in killing him was so great, that God, in his just indignation, made the very people, whose resentment they proposed to avoid by this wicked measure, the instruments of his vengeance. He brought the Roman armies against them, who destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city; leaving, in that dreadful catastrophe, an awful warning to all statesmen, to beware of prosecuting unjust measures, on pretence of consulting the good of the nation, whose affairs they direct.” Macknight.