XXXI. “THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT”

John 18:36.—“Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.”

Nothing could have been more natural than for his enemies to have reminded our Lord that in one instance at least, and that too of very recent occurrence, his servants did fight. Indeed Jesus himself might here be almost thought to challenge inquiry into the assault Peter had so lately committed upon the servant of the high-priest. Assuredly there was no disposition on the part of his accusers to spare him. The council sought for witness against Jesus, and where could it be found more readily than in the high-priest’s own house? Frivolous and unfounded calumnies of all sorts were brought forward, which agreed not together; but this act of violence, indisputably committed by one of his companions in his Master’s cause, and, as they would not have scrupled to assert, under his Master’s eye, is altogether and intentionally, as it should seem, kept out of sight.

The suppression of the charge is the more remarkable, from the fact, that a relation of Malchus was actually present at the time, and evidently aware of the violence which had been done his kinsman, though not quite able to identify the offender. “One of the servants of the high-priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, said, Did I not see thee in the garden with him?” (ver. 26.) Surely nothing could have been more natural than for this man to be clamorous for redress.

Had the Gospel of St. Luke never come down to us, it would have remained a difficulty (one of the many difficulties of Scripture arising from the conciseness and desultory nature of the narrative), to have accounted for the suppression of a charge against Jesus, which of all others would have been the most likely to suggest itself to his prosecutors, from the offence having been just committed, and from the sufferer being one of the high-priest’s own family; a charge, moreover, which would have had the advantage of being founded in truth, and would therefore have been far more effective than accusations which could not be sustained. Let us hear, however, St. Luke. He tells us, and he only, that when the blow had been struck, Jesus said, “Suffer ye thus far: and he touched his ear and healed him.”—(22:51.)

The miracle satisfactorily explains the suppression of the charge—to have advanced it would naturally have led to an investigation that would have more than frustrated the malicious purpose it was meant to serve. It would have proved too much. It might have furnished indeed an argument against the peaceable professions of Jesus’s party, but, at the same time, it would have made manifest his own compassionate nature, submission to the laws, and extraordinary powers. Pilate, who sought occasion to release him, might have readily found it in a circumstance so well calculated to convince him of the innocence of the prisoner, and of his being (what he evidently suspected and feared) something more than human.