Mark 15:1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus… It is interesting to observe the remarkable resemblance which is found to exist in several particulars between the ceremonial of the daily sacrifice of the lamb on the altar in the Temple and the sacrifice of the true, spotless Lamb of God. After the lamb had been kept under watch for four days, and had been examined by an inquisition of the priests on the evening before, to make sure that it was without spot or blemish, it was brought forth early in the morning as soon as it was light. At the cockcrow the altar had been swept clear of ashes to prepare it for the victim. Then "the president said to the other priests, 'Go out and see if it be time to slay the lamb.' If it was, the observer said, 'There are bright streaks of light in the east.' The president asked, 'Do they stretch as far as to Hebron?' If he answered that it was so, then he said, 'Go ye and bring the lamb from the prison of the lamb.'" Now, in like manner, on the fourth day after Jesus had come to Jerusalem to be offered up as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," when the morning was come after the night inquisition into the spotlessness of the Lamb of God, He is brought forth from His prison to he re-examined and ordered to be slain. The lamb of the daily sacrifice, before being laid on the altar, was bound. "Those priests," we read, "whose lot it is to attend to the pieces (with the view of laying them upon the altar) took hold of the lamb and bound it." So in the Antitype, "they bound Jesus, and carried Him away." Christ is bound when He is in the hands, the power, of men. So is it always with the world. It desires to have not a free, but a bound Jesus. As the servants covered His face, so does the world desire to have a not all-seeing God. The world strives to emancipate itself from the bonds of obedience to the will of God. Let us break, they say, the bonds which the Lord God and His Christ lay on us; and even the very cords of love whereby they would draw us, let us cast away. There is a cry for freedom. Freedom is the most perfect blessing man can have. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? Among the many, the desire is to be freed from responsibilities caused by duty, and to do their own will unrestrained by any obligations. That is, indeed, the great cry of the day. All duties are irksome, all obligations intolerable. No man can develop his individuality except in absolute freedom. But at the same time that the world seeks freedom from the bonds of Christ, it tries to impose bonds on Christ. Providence is to be bound with laws. Science imposes rules on the Most High, and lays down principles by which God must act — if there be a God — or science will do without Him. Prayer is declared to be worthless, because man cannot alter the course of Nature. God is fettered by self-imposed laws. He is not a free agent. Not only so, but God's Church must not be free. It also must be hampered and restricted in every way — prevented from doing all it may for the cause of Christ. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate. |
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