John 11:50

“Nor consider that it is expedient for us, etc.] Priests, Levites, Pharisees, the sanhedrim, and ecclesiastical rulers of the people; who, as Caiaphas apprehended, must suffer in their characters and revenues, must quit their honourable and gainful posts and places, if Jesus went on and succeeded at this rate: wherefore it was most expedient and advantageous for them, which was the main thing to be considered in such a council, so he thought it was, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not; he proceeded entirely upon this political principle, that a public good ought to be preferred to a private one; that it was no matter what the man was, whether innocent…”

“It is expedient for us - It is better for us. Literally, “It is profitable for us.” That one man should die - Jesus they regarded as promoting sedition, and as exposing the nation, if he was successful, to the vengeance of the Romans, John 11:48. If he was put to death they supposed the people would be safe. This is all, doubtless, that he meant by his dying for the people. He did not himself intend to speak of his dying as an atonement or a sacrifice; but his words might also express that, and, though he was unconscious of it, he was expressing a real truth. In the sense in which he intended it there was no truth in the observation, nor occasion for it, but in the sense which the words…”

“It is expedient that one man should die for the people - So God overruled his tongue, for he spake not of himself, by his own spirit only, but by the spirit of prophecy. And thus he gave unawares as clear a testimony to the priestly, as Pilate did to the kingly office of Christ. John 11:52”

“11:50-51 it’s better . . . that one man should die: Caiaphas’s words were ironic. He meant that it was better for a revolutionary to die than to have the Romans crush the entire Jewish nation. But Caiaphas was correct in a way that he could not perceive. The salvation that Judaism needed had little to do with Rome; it would come through the cross of Christ. John notes that Caiaphas’s inspiration was not his own but came from God.”

“Joh 11:48, Joh 18:14, Joh 19:12; Luk 24:46; Rom 3:8 John 11:51”