John 18:21 - Exposition

Why askest thou me? If thou wantest evidence touching my design, my disciples, or my teaching, ask , interrogate , £ those who have heard me, what I have said to them. Lo, these (pointing to numbers in the angry crowd around him) know what I spake unto them (the ἐγώ at the end of this sentence is very emphatic). Christ thus rebukes the craftiness and hypocritical endeavor of his enemies to induce him to inculpate his disciples, or to give his prosecutors matter against him. To false witnesses he preserved an invincible silence, and before Caiaphas and Pilate he answered to many of their queries not a single word, insomuch that these governors marveled greatly. However, the case was altered when Caiaphas, in full Sanhedrin, officially challenged him to say whether he was the Christ, and adjured him to declare whether he was the Son of God. Then, on the most public scale, knowing well the issues of his declaration, and of his oath-bound word, he did not hesitate to confess that he was the Son of God, and would come in the glory of his Father, and that he was no less than the Christ of God. On the present occasion, when Annas was seeking to justify his own craft, and to utilize the disgraceful betrayal which he had diplomatically and cruelly contrived, Jesus refused to incriminate either himself or his disciples. Renan has the temerity to say that this great announcement was quite superfluous, and probably was never made. Any conclusion whatever may be derived from historical documents, if such liberties may be taken with impunity.