John 11:45-54

New Testament for Everyone

⁴⁵ The result of all this was that several of the Judaeans who had come to Mary, and who had seen what he had done, believed in him. ⁴⁶ But some of them went off to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

The plan of Caiaphas

⁴⁷ So the chief priests and the Pharisees called an assembly.

“What are we going to do?” they asked. “This man is performing lots of signs. ⁴⁸ If we let him go on like this, everyone is going to believe in him! Then the Romans will come and take away our holy place, and our nation!”

⁴⁹ But one of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, addressed them.

“You know nothing at all!” he said. ⁵⁰ “You haven’t worked it out! This is what’s best for you: let one man die for the people, rather than the whole nation being wiped out.”

⁵¹ He didn’t say this of his own accord. Since he was high priest that year, it was a prophecy. It meant that Jesus would die for the nation; ⁵² and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the scattered children of God. ⁵³ So from that day on they plotted how to kill him.

⁵⁴ So Jesus didn’t go around openly any longer among the Judaeans. He went away from there to the region by the desert, to a town called Ephraim. He stayed there with the disciples.