Episode:Jesus Faces Death—Brought to Trial (Part 6)

From Symmetry of Soul


Alone with Jesus in the audience chamber of Caiaphas' palace, the servants and the temple guards mocked him, spit upon him, and cruelly buffeted him. They went on for one full hour, reviling and mistreating this unresisting man of Galilee. These are the moments of the Master's greatest victories in all his long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-flung universe.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Hour of Humiliation, Formal Indictment, Capital Charges

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

We touched on the purpose of legal due process as a civilized attempt to mitigate the human tendency to find fault in our fellows. Our partial and imperfect nature does not represent a design flaw in our creation, neither does it represent punishment for ancestral missteps. Peruse the inevitabilities, as they illustrate the quest for perfection through experiential contrast with imperfection.

We also elaborated a little further on our gift of freewill from the Father. With the Father’s bestowal of personality, he relinquished to each person a measure of his will (freewill). It no longer belongs to him and as such he is unwilling and unable to abrogate or otherwise interfere with its exercise even to intervene on our behalf to prevent us from going to iniquity.

Unfortunately, today self-assertion is routinely mistaken to be freewill. Only in the 5th ER is this distinction even partially explained. How thrilling is it to be introduced to the inner life, a domain where the individual person is sovereign in his/her engagement to an eternal cosmos!

184:4. The Hour of Humiliation

As previously mentioned, in capital cases Jewish law required two sessions of the Sanhedrin court held on successive days. Waiving this requirement, the vengeance-minded rulers waited but one hour before reconvening. We have also mentioned that the gospel accounts of this entire series of events in the Master’s life are seriously muddled and lacking in precise detail. We are about to find out how this obscures the greatest victories in the Master’s long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-flung universe.

The Master spent this hour between sessions of the court suffering the physical abuse and indignities of the temple guards and servants, in silence and alone, John having been directed by Jesus to leave, lest he be riled to violent indignation and lose his life in the process.

There was no more bitter portion of his cup of humiliation than this hour with the ignorant and cruel guards and servants. Still personally intact, the Master now makes a new and unprecedented revelation of man to God, as he exhibits externally the inner integrity and composure he mustered in his garden prayer. Here is the challenge to his professed followers, to return good for evil. We are reminded of the twelve spiritlike unnatural reactions to various trying situations of real human existence in [101:3].

Our discussion attempted to address the midwayer question: “What is this trait of the animal in man which leads him to want to insult and physically assault that which he cannot spiritually attain or intellectually achieve?” In terms of adjutant mind, we see the 6th adjutant as the source of the religious impulse (zeal), and when ungoverned by the 7th adjutant gives rise to these behaviors. The term half-civilized man clues us to the missing functioning of the 7th adjutant. We know that animals are not zealous. Evil brutality can only be performed by the fancy animal human. Neither do animals recognize spiritual or intellectual attainment in others. Humans naturally have 6th adjutant zeal so that we might master its expression with artful overcontrol by the 7th.

Using the 5th ER’s explanation of our mindal architecture we can easily see how a religious impulse must be subjected to the coordinating and harmonizing influence of the 7th adjutant mind-spirit to begin to produce anything resembling genuine religious behavior. The serious student will want to consult the archive of the broadcast for the complete discussion.

In the final paragraph of this section, the midwayers remind us through this episode in the Master’s life of the potential for transcendent human behavior. Here we see the Master bridging the greatest vertical extremes of human behavior, from the depths of creature isolation (his prayer in the garden a few hours earlier) to citizenship on high in association with the eternal realization of the divine destiny of perfection attainment.

184:5. The Second Meeting of the Court

Jesus was not present for this second session of the court; his presence was so disconcerting to the rulers. It required only one half hour for the court to draw up three charges designed to justify to Pontius Pilate a penalty of death. The entire so-called trial was most irregular and contrary to Jewish law. Three of the Pharisees, though they desired to see Jesus destroyed left the proceedings rather than formulate charges against him without witnesses and in his absence.

We expressed puzzlement over the Master’s response to some of the women about the high priest’s palace who asked him if he were the Messiah, to which he replied "If I tell you you will not believe me; and if I ask you, you will not answer."

It is now six o’clock in the morning as Jesus is led to appear before Pilate for confirmation of this unjustly and irregularly decreed death sentence.

Notes by Brad

  • A well-functioning judicial system is not about nitpicking the faults in your neighbor.
    • But with zeal in play, it's easy to get carried away.
    • Can you focus on living, not focusing on the faults in your neighbor?
    • This author reports learning a lot about this by interacting with neighbors on his street over the years.
      • Building shared fencelines. Knocking on doors asking them to tone down the party. Not litigating.


  • Free will is not self assertion
    • Self assertion has limits; I cannot endlessly assert myself. There always are larger energies that can overpower me.
    • But my will is free, and is unconstrained. But it's an inner-life phenomenon (assuming you have a proper definition of self-assertion versus free will‏‎.
    • Your inner life is where you're really free and sovereign. Not even God can touch it. That's exciting!


  • We strive to get above the mere emotion these passages evoke.
    • With a philosophical perspective, you can have the fortitude to read passages like this.


  • The Bible says only a little about the hour of humiliation and the 2nd meeting of the court.
    • And it's a confused tale.
    • If all you've ever known is the Biblical account all your life, this should be a breath of fresh air.
    • This clarified story is appropriate to reflect on. Without it you cannot discern, within these events, the greatest achievement of our Creator Son's existence!
    • Do you see signs of (metaphorically) people being mocked or spat upon in their trials these days? Does this story speak to us today?


  • We are animal-origin creatures who naturally follow example so easily.
    • The servants and guards follows the example of the Sanhedrists here.
    • During this hour of humiliation, Jesus could still stand--his body was not severely beaten up so much yet.
      • Standing majestically on his own two feet is an outer shadow cast by the integrity within.
    • He shows us here what internal integrity, free will, can do when projected into the outer life.
      • The more unjust, the more unfair the situation, the greater the opportunity to display your true humanity.
      • Could you suffer rank injustice and still be a religionist? Return good for evil?
    • The list of 12 properties of a religionist are very salient. [101:3.4]


  • The 6th of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, the religious impulse, is what can 'lead a man to perverse delight.
    • Even though the (non-human) animal kingdom uses only 5 of the 7 adjutant mind spirits, it is still proper to refer to numbers 6 and 7 as essentially animal in their nature.
      • Insomuch as they are not the Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth, or Thought Adjuster
      • So let's refer to 5-adjutant animals here as "forest animals" for convenience.
    • Forest animals may brutal to outsiders in the group, but they don't derive pleasure from such behavior.
    • A forest animal cannot be zealous.
    • A forest animal is not evil with only 5 adjutants. They have no real relation to spirit.
    • Today many people observe in society the abuse of the 6th adjutant (vis a vis religious zeal)
      • their solution? Dial it back and only use 5 adjutants. Or even fewer!
      • Sure! Nothing but plants on earth would indeed be peace. But not a very meaningful one.
      • Our challenge is to have all 7 adjutants, and still find peace. Peace that passes all understanding, because it comes from influences above the adjutant mind-spirits.


  • Section 4 ends with the Midwayers stepping far above the brutal events, showing us how this reveals capacity all humans have inside them, by reflecting on what is happening to Jesus.
    • Jesus has achieved happiness in this hour of humiliation. Indeed, happiness is a high word.
    • This moment is the full vertical extent of God's reach down to man.
      • "Behold the man!" You cannot make a man like this on Havona, where there are no cruel guards spitting on prisoners.
      • (Shortly, Jesus will be scourged so badly he falls below the level of fully human--so this is the apex of the journey)
      • This is a demonstration of triumph over all fears.
    • Notice the pattern in here: Fact and truth, supreme and supernal; facts of time, truths of eternity.
    • The paragraph ends with the 6th level of meaning, the "God-knowing believer."
      • It written in truth, not in literal fact. You're not eternally perfected at this point, but in truth it's as if you are.


  • Jesus does not face the Sanhedrin when they present the indictment.
    • They can't stand to face him again. They know how shameful this all is.
    • The Book of Luke attempts to describe this second meeting of the Sanhedrin court, but got many details confused.


  • This author reports that our study this week helped him with some ideas he formed in his early 20s about the emotional content of this part of the story.
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