Luke 22:53

“When I was daily with you in the temple, you did not stretch forth your hands against me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” '

Jesus then turned to them and asked them why, if they had wanted so badly to arrest Him, they had they not done it openly while He was preaching in the Temple? They were responsible for the Temple, were they not? And yet they had made no attempt to stretch forth their hands against Him there. It made it quite clear then that they were behaving surreptitiously, and that they were afraid of what people would have said if they knew of it. Indeed the very hour that they had chosen revealed their villainous intent, and demonstrated that they were in league with ‘the power of darkness'. But it was not surprising. It was ‘their hour' because that is the kind of people they were, dishonest and unscrupulous. No other types of people would have operated at such an hour. By it they were revealing the truth about themselves.

For the phrase ‘the power of darkness' compare Colossians 1:13. It represented the Tyranny of Darkness in contrast with the Kingly Rule of God. He was thus pointing out that they were behaving like men of darkness, slaves of darkness, men who operated away from the light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19), men who avoided the light of God. They were doing the work of the Evil One (compare Acts 26:18) under whose rule they were proving themselves to be. They were demonstrating under whose kingly rule they were.

The point that Jesus was making was in fact very important and probably partly intended to make clear to the Roman chiliarch that all this talk about Him being a dangerous insurrectionist was a lot or nonsense. Dangerous insurrectionists do not attend the Temple every day preaching, unless they are teaching subversion, and if He had been doing that they would have arrested Him themselves. Let him judge then who were the dangerous subversives. Jesus was probably also defending the actions of His disciples. He wanted it to be realised that had the arrest been carried out properly there would have been no violence. We must remember that He was concerned that His disciples should not be arrested with Him (John 18:8).