Luke 22:67

“If you are the Messiah (the Christ), tell us.” But he said to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe,”

Luke wastes no time on the preliminaries. He goes to the heart of the charge against Jesus, and involves all present in it. As far as he was concerned they were equally responsible with their spokesman. Unless they protested (and we know nothing direct about a protest, but see Luke 23:51) they bore joint responsibility. All other attempts to trip Him up had failed. Now they moved to the central one, which if proved could raise a charge of blasphemy, and could then be manipulated into the criminal offence of treason. As far as they were concerned the former would justify them before the people, the latter should hopefully be sufficient for Pilate.

So they questioned Him as to whether He was claiming to be the Messiah, and pressed Him to ‘tell' them the truth. They would then interpret His reply in the way that they wished. Men never change. They use catch phrases which they interpret in their own way and then apply regardless of the facts. In the main they are not interested in truth. They are only interested in getting their own way while at the same time convincing themselves that they have retained their ‘honour'. The world is, and always has been, duplicitous. And never more so than today. For democracy and civil rights are both hotbeds of duplicity and hypocrisy. The only thing to be said in favour of democracy, when men and women are involved in it, is that it is better than the alternatives. For absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Jesus quietly pointed out to them that their question was not an honest one. They had not asked it with a view to believing it, or with a genuine wish to discover the truth. They had asked it simply because they were out to trap Him. For they were looking for any excuse to find Him guilty by the use of words and titles which once admitted to would then be interpreted according to their own particular slant.