When somebody is being arrested, who’s the person with the power? Who seems to be in control? Ordinarily, you’d think it was the guy putting the handcuffs on, right? Not the one with his hands behind his back. But when Jesus of Nazareth comes out into the open and faces hundreds of soldiers who are waiting to arrest him, it might look at first glance like he’s just stepped into a trap, but I think by the end of this conversation you’re going to see that—even in his arrest, Jesus was completely in control.

And at the end of this episode, I’m going to invite you to live like that is true.

I’m so delighted to have my new friend Lindsay Schott joining me today to talk about The True Story of the Arrest, captured in John 18:1-11.

Guest: Lindsay Schott

Bible Passage: John 18:1-11 NASB

Get your Freebie: The Live Like It’s True Workbook

Mentioned Resources:

• • Trying: Reflections on Faith Through Infertility, Miscarriage, and Loss.
  • Control Girl: Lessons on Surrendering Your Burden of Control From Seven Women in the Bible

Music: Cade Popkin Music 

Lindsay Schott

The Arrest of Jesus

Here are some of the things Lindsay and I talked about:

• What is John, in particular, wanting us to notice?
• How are the captors apparently expecting Jesus to respond to being arrested? What’s surprising about Jesus’s response?
• What is significant about Jesus’s two-word answer?
• What is astonishing about the reaction of the soldiers?
• How does Jesus take initiative, and what do we see about his character?
• Where is Judas and why is this significant?
• Who is in control here?

Living Like this Story is True

There are many false narratives in the world about control. Here are a few:

• God’s obviously out of control of what’s happening. The circumstances of my life are beyond his reach.
• If he is in control, and this bad thing happened, then that means he isn’t good.
• God is so unkind to give me something good and then take it away.
• God cannot bring good from this bad thing that has happened.

But this story of Jesus corrects all of these false narratives!

• Bad things were happening to Jesus. He was a completely innocent man, being betrayed and arrested and he was about to die on a cross. And yet this story shows that he was completely in control!
• If Jesus could speak two words, and cause a whole army to fall backward, then he was obviously in control. And yet the things that followed were horrific, not good.
• The disciples thought something very good (the Messiah) had come, yet their Messiah is being arrested. But even so, the end of the story has not been altered.
• Jesus going to the cross seemed very, very bad. And yet God redeemed the cross and brought something very, very good for us: salvation.

Don’t Miss the Retelling!

We’ll be back on Saturday for the retelling episode, where I’m going to focus on spotting false narratives of the world, by reading the true story found in the Bible. You won’t want to miss it!