John 11:48

John 11:48. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe in him: and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. The fear was natural. It is true that they were already subject to the Roman power. But, with their usual policy towards tributary states, the Romans had left them their worship, temple, and religious administration, untouched. If Jesus (whom they will not recognise in His religious claims) shall be owned as Messiah, and popular tumult shall ensue, all these privileges will be taken away from them. Their fear therefore is real; their guilt lay not in a hypocritical pretence of alarm, but in their wilful blindness to the truth. There can be no doubt whatever that their words are quoted by the Evangelist as an unconscious prophecy (comp. chap. John 7:35; John 12:19; John 19:19, and below, John 11:50), or rather as a prophecy to be fulfilled in that irony of events which shall bring on them in their unbelief the very calamities they feared, while faith would have secured for them the contrasted blessings. Because the Jewish people did not believe in Jesus but rejected Him, the Romans did take away both their ‘place and nation:' had they believed they would have been established for ever in the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah.