Control, Allegiance, Love
“Control, Allegiance, Love” – February 15th, 2026
In 1980, I read a novel that chilled me to my very core. Even though it was assigned reading in my high school English class, the book’s content and even the title were really difficult to wrap my head around! However, as with many classic works, George Orwell’s dystopian speculative fiction novel, 1984, sheds light on deep truths. Sometimes things that are more culturally accessible to us, even books that shock and disturb us, can help us to better understand what was going on 2000 years ago. One of 1984’s major themes is the repressive regimentation of people and behaviors. Even if you haven’t read the book yet, it doesn’t take much imagination to consider the traumatic effects of living in a world such as Orwell describes:
“What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated. A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police … He has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever … A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party … The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”
Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster and the Official Historian of the BBC, says that 1984 has become a way to “take the temperature” of global politics. “People turn to it … to refresh [their] grasp on the present. It’s useful because you think, ‘How bad are we in comparison to this?’”
Orwell’s Party wants total control and allegiance. As followers of Jesus, we do well to remember that “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). In one of my readings a couple of weeks ago in my current seminary course, Paul M. Joyce wisely noted, “One is acutely aware of one’s own ignorance when encountering another discipline. And yet, if bridges are to be built and insights gained, we must individually and collectively be ready to risk the vulnerability involved in interdisciplinary work.” It’s interesting how modern psychology intersects with the Gospel of John, as it sheds much light on what was going on behind the scenes.
Philosophy professor Monica Vilhauer notes, “Control, or rather, seeking to have control, is a form of anxiety. It is rooted in the default, and often unconscious belief or feeling that … ‘Things will not be okay.’” She goes on to explain that when “things will not be okay” is someone’s default belief, it usually leads to two coping mechanisms: trying to control the externals of your own and other people’s lives as much as possible, and planning for the worst possible outcome in every situation. Does this remind you of anyone? We may need to work on personal control issues, just as we all need to work on our well-being, mental health, troublesome habits, false beliefs, and compulsive behaviors. Vilhauer’s observations mostly remind me of the Jewish religious leaders in Jesus’ day. They controlled every aspect of community, religious, and private life. They controlled how Scripture and Sabbath were interpreted, even adding many additional laws as they saw fit. They controlled Temple rituals and profited from the sacrificial system. They even controlled expectations of who the Messiah could be.
Sidebar: whenever we see the phrase “the Jews” in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospel of John, it refers to the Jewish religious leaders, not the Jewish people as a whole. The unfortunate translation of “the Jews” has caused countless misunderstandings and much harm over the years. Keep in mind that Jesus and the overwhelming majority of his early followers were all Jewish. So, in passages that include this phrase, for clarity, I will use the phrase “the Jewish religious leaders.”
Clearly, the Jewish religious leaders were getting pretty fed up with this Rabbi who was going around doing miracles. They were a powerful and wealthy elite group, and if Jesus kept disrupting the status quo, they were afraid they would lose their power and wealth.
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that in the Gospel of John, the whole section from John 1:19 to the end of John 12 is known as the Book of Signs, named for seven miracles that it records. Of course, we know that Jesus did way more than seven miracles! In the last verse of the last chapter of his Gospel, John tells us that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” John tells us why has crafted his Gospel carefully in John 20:31 – “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
We looked at the first two signs already: Jesus changed water into wine (John 2) and Jesus healed a royal official’s son (John 4). Then came the next four signs: Jesus healed a paralytic (John 5); Jesus fed 5000 people (John 6); Jesus walked on water (John 6); and Jesus restored a man’s sight (John 9)
Jesus is having quite a long conversation with some Pharisees, who are divided because Jesus did not observe the Sabbath when he healed the blind man’s eyes. The ones who were upset are harassing the formerly blind man, his parents, and Jesus, trying to distort the miracle Jesus has just done in great love! Now we’re into John 10. Jesus starts talking to them about sheep and sheepfolds, revealing that he is the Good Shepherd. John 10:6 notes, “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” In John 10:19, John tells us again that they were divided because of Jesus’ words – is he a miracle worker or does he have a demon? Next John adds that it was during the time of one of those festivals or feasts that Beth mentioned last week. Because of that, Jesus was walking around in the temple.
John 10:24-25a,30,33 – “So the [Jewish religious leaders] gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe … The Father and I are one.’ The [Jewish religious leaders] took up stones again to stone him … ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.’”
OK, now the Jewish religious leaders are not just fed up. They are murderously angry. Jesus is trying to get them to see that his miracles prove that he is who he says he is. He healed things like paralysis and blindness. He defied the laws of nature. No one had ever seen or even imagined this kind of thing before. Why were the Jewish religious leaders so upset? Because they were the 1984 Party that Orwell described. They were interested solely in power. They could tolerate none of Jesus’ deviations of opinion. They could give Jesus no freedom to do things that were not in their rulebooks. They were so obsessed with control that they missed the Messiah, who is right in front of them. Jesus pleads with them to open their eyes to see that these miracles that he’s been doing are actually the works of God, the creator and restorer of the universe and the God of love!
John 10:39 – “Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands.”
Now comes a detail that is easy to miss. John 10:40 tells us is “He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there.” The next two verses add that many came to him and believed in him there. The ordinary people can see that what Jesus had been doing was miraculous. They can see that the miracles Jesus has been doing are exactly like the things God does. No human ever did stuff like that.
That brings us to the introduction to the seventh and last sign that John includes in his gospel. At the beginning of John chapter 11, Jesus receives word that his friend Lazarus is ill.
Let’s take a long pause here to talk about locations. Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, lived in Bethany, just two miles from Jerusalem. And the place where Jesus had gone and remained? That was called “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” (or BBJ), the place where John had been baptizing. BBJ is situated on the east bank of the Jordan River, about 21 miles from Jerusalem.
Some interesting history has sprung up around that location. Early Christians began making pilgrimages to BBJ, a practice that continued for hundreds of years. Structures were built and rebuilt many times for about 800 years. Due to numerous regional conflicts, not to mention earthquakes, by the end of the 15th century, the site became deserted and was lost for well over 500 years.
Astonishingly, just over thirty years ago, following the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty, BBJ was rediscovered! A Jordanian professor of philosophy, who is 16th in the line of succession to the Jordanian throne, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, is deeply interested in religious history. He began searching the area after a Christian monk convinced him it was the most likely location where Jesus was baptized. Prince Ghazi’s initiative led to the discovery of the ruins of BBJ on the east side of the Jordan. Landmines were cleared, and archaeological digs were established. Painstaking work unearthed several Byzantine-period buildings, including a series of churches celebrating the site of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. As you can imagine, this news sparked an influx of tourists and pilgrims, and even papal and state visits.
In July 2015, BBJ, now called Al-Maghtas (“site of immersion”), was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Just a few months ago, in the October 2025 edition of Architects Journal, seven finalists were announced for an international design competition for “Christ’s Baptism Museum” in Jordan, to be completed by 2030 to mark the bimillennial of Jesus’ baptism. After all those centuries of lost history, isn’t it beautiful how Scripture, tradition, pilgrim accounts, and archaeological evidence have all come together?
All this to say – Jesus had gone and remained in Bethany Beyond the Jordan, just over a days’ walk from the town of Bethany where Lazarus lies sick. Apparently, Jesus had not shared the news of Lazarus’s illness with his disciples right away. When he tells them, “Let’s go to Judea again,” his disciples, alarmed, say, “Rabbi, the [Jewish religious leaders] were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” They do not want to go towards danger like that! They try to reason him out of it, eventually resigning themselves to the impending doom. Thomas gloomily sighs, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When they arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days! In an ensuing conversation Jesus has with Martha, he states, in John 11:25a – “I am the resurrection and the life.” This is astounding! Jesus has just revealed who he is in words so plain that the church has been saying and singing this ever since! N. T. Wright puts it this way, “The future has burst into the present. The new creation, and with it the resurrection, has come forward from the end of time into the middle of time. Jesus has not just come, as we sometimes say or sing, ‘from heaven to earth’; it is equally true to say that he has come from God’s future into the present, into the mess and muddle of the world we know. ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ he says. ‘Resurrection’ isn’t just a doctrine. It isn’t just a future fact. It’s a person, and here he is!
There is so much to be gleaned from this seventh miracle, and we could spend a lifetime delving into all the treasures John has tucked into his narrative. Let’s cut right to the miracle, in John 11:43-44a – “[Jesus] cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out …” N. T. Wright describes this as “a heart-stopping moment of shuddering horror and overwhelming joy.” THE DEAD MAN CAME OUT! Jesus had reversed death. For Lazarus, it would be temporary, because he would eventually go the way of all humans and die one day. But Jesus, the creator of life, showed that he had power over even death. He was about to journey through death and come out on the other side to life, to once and for all conquer all enemies, including death. In the resurrection, Jesus would bring light and life and healing and restoration to his world!
The Jewish religious leaders convene a meeting, and John 11:47b-48 reveals their struggle, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
It’s interesting that this is the only place in all the gospels that mentions “the Romans.” The Jewish religious leaders are growing increasingly anxious, angry, and hostile. Why? Because of the Romans. In 63 BCE, Roman general Pompey the Great had conquered Jerusalem, marking the end of an independent Jewish state. The region was annexed gradually, leaving local princes in charge, managed for a while as a kind of client state. By the time Jesus was born, Judea had become a Roman province, autonomous but dependent on the Romans and obliged to pay tribute. The Jewish religious leaders knew that the Roman governor of Judea (Pontius Pilate) could call on Roman soldiers to help any time he needed them.
The Jewish religious leaders are scared, anxious, angry, hostile. They do not want Jesus to go on “performing many signs” because then everyone will end up believing him. More to the point, they are afraid that the Romans will come and destroy the Temple and the nation. They are willing to crucify Jesus, who even ordinary people already realize is the Son of God and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Why? It’s all about power. This all happened during the 200-year period known as Pax Romana (“Roman peace”), which one historian described as “a simple formula for propaganda, but a difficult subject for research.” Rome promised “peace” to all, as long as you gave your total allegiance to Caesar, the emperor.
What were they to do? The high priest suggested, prophetically, that Jesus [the one man] should die for the people. John 11:53-55a tells us that “from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near …”
This is the situation behind this powerful and wealthy elite group. Jesus comes along, both saying and showing that he is the true King by doing all kinds of miracles that reflect the love of God in all kinds of surprising ways. If Jesus keeps disrupting the status quo, they might lose their power and wealth. “What are we to do?” they had asked one another. The Jewish religious leaders wanted Jesus dead for one reason and one reason alone: they did not want to give up any power or wealth. It wasn’t as though they had total freedom, of course, but as N. T. Wright points out, “they greatly preferred the semi-freedom that Rome granted them to the devastation that would follow if a major revolution sprang up.” And that is exactly what they thought would happen if Jesus kept doing what he’d been doing.
How it must have broken God’s heart to hear what was said by the very leaders who claimed to represent him, the ones in charge of the Temple itself! Tragically, their words and their actions showed that their allegiance was not given to God, not even to Caesar, but to power and wealth.
They had tolerated his early signs – changing water into wine at a private event; healing a child remotely; even healing a disabled person by a pool on the Sabbath. That last one caused a lot of division among them, because of their tight control on the Sabbath. But then Jesus started doing signs in public, in front of lots of people who went around telling everyone they knew about what they’d experienced – feeding 5000 people with a single meal; walking on the largest body of water in the region in view of many; healing the sight of a person blind from birth, again on the Sabbath. And then Jesus went and raised someone from the dead! He’d gone too far this time! Bringing a dead person back to life was the last straw. And it made them angry, so angry that they began plotting Jesus’ murder.
John makes it abundantly clear in his carefully crafted gospel that Jesus is not mounting any kind of political-style revolution, as the Jewish religious leaders fear. N. T. Wright says that the victory Jesus intends to win “will be won by self-giving love.” John brings all of the threads together at the end of John 11, when Jesus withdraws with his disciples to a town near the wilderness to wait, to pray, to prepare.
Throughout his gospel, John has been building up this clash of kingdoms to ensure that his readers understand the meaning of Jesus’ death. John wants us to understand who Jesus is and why he’s been sent. John started calling Jesus “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” back in his very first chapter. Jesus has spoken of himself in terms of the destruction and raising up of the Temple (John 2:19-21); as the one who will be lifted up so that anyone who believes in him could experience eternal life, the life of God’s coming age (John 3:14-15); as the one who gives his own flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51); and as the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:15-18). At the same time, John peppers his narrative with clues about the growing hostility towards Jesus.
By the time we get to John 11:54, everything is starting to come together. Two incompatible kingdoms are clearly visible: the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of God. Two conflicting motivations are clearly visible: the motivation of power and wealth, and the motivation of love. In the kingdom of this world, motivated by self-serving power and wealth, the Jewish religious leaders begin to plot how and when they are going to put Jesus to death. In the kingdom of God, motivated by self-giving love, Jesus gets ready to offer his life freely for the sake of the world. It won’t be long until this clash of kingdoms reaches the point of no return. The world is about to be forever changed.
What about us? Jesus, as our Lord, requires our total allegiance. We must resist control and we must follow Jesus on the way of love, making it our aim to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love others as well as we love ourselves.
In closing, I invite you to ponder four reflection questions:
1. In my thoughts, in my words, and in my actions, in what specific situation have I been motivated more by trying to control the situation or the other person, instead of being motivated by love, which is to will the good of the other, expecting nothing in return?
2. In what specific area have I allowed myself to be overly controlled by what others have decided I should think, say, or do?
3. In what specific way is Jesus inviting me into greater freedom and courage to think with the mind of Christ and to allow the Holy Spirit to ignite my imagination with what the kingdom of God could look like here on earth?
4. What would it look like for me to follow Jesus on the way of love, no matter how others react to my choices?
