Neither Will I Tell You
Neither Will I Tell You
'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things' (Mark 11:33; Matt. 21:27; Luke 20:8)
Why did Jesus refuse to give a straight answer to those who asked him why he acted as he did?
It was during Holy Week, while he was walking in the temple precincts in Jerusalem, that some representatives of the Sanhedrin, Israel's supreme court (comprising chief priests, scribes and elders, as Mark tells us in verse 27), came to Jesus and asked him, `By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?' By `these things' they meant not so much his teaching in the outer court but his cleansing of the temple, which had taken place the previous day. What right had he to put a stop to buying and selling within the bounds of the temple, or to forbid `any one to carry anything through the temple' - to use the outer court as a short cut on their business errands? Many religious people might have agreed with him that the sacred area should not be turned into a bazaar, but a temple police force was stationed to protect its sanctity: who authorised Jesus to act as he did?
His cleansing of the temple was what would have been recognised in Old Testament times as a prophetic action - the kind of action by which a prophet would occasionally confirm his spoken message and bring it home to the people around him. Jesus protested that the temple was being prevented from fulfilling its purpose as `a house of prayer for all the nations' (cf. Isa. 56:7). Gentiles were not allowed to enter the inner courts, but in the outer court they might draw near to the true and living God and worship him, like those `Greeks' who, according to John 12:20, went up to worship at Passover. Because of this the outer court was sometimes called `the court of the Gentiles'. But Gentiles were hindered in using it for its proper purpose if space within it was taken up by market stalls and the like. One of the latest Old Testament prophets had foretold how, when representatives of all the nations were to go up to Jerusalem to worship, `there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day' (Zech. 14:21). Jesus's prophetic action was designed to enforce this lesson.
But by what authority did he perform such a prophetic action? By what authority did any of the ancient prophets perform prophetic actions? By the authority of God, in whose name they spoke to the people. So, when Jesus was asked, `Who gave you this authority?' the true answer was `God'. Why then did he not say so? Because his questioners would not have believed him. He tested them first with another question, to see if they were capable of recognising divine authority when they saw it. Reminding them of John the Baptist's ministry, he asked them whether John's authority was derived `from heaven (that is, from God) or from men'. This put them on the spot: `they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven', he will say, `Why then did you not believe him?' But shall we say, `From men'?" - they were afraid of the people, for all held that John was a real prophet.' Could they recognise divine authority when it was expressed in the actions and teaching of John? If so, they might be expected to recognise it when it was manifested in the deeds and words of Jesus. But they professed themselves unable to say what the source of John's authority was. So Jesus said to them in effect, `If you cannot recognise divine authority when you see it in action, no amount of argument will convince you of its presence. If you cannot tell me by what authority John baptised, I will not tell you by what authority I do these things.' There are some people who will demand authority for truth itself, forgetting that truth is the highest authority (see pp. 96-7).