The chief priests, the leaders of the Jews but not the Jewish people, gave Him up to be tortured and killed. Why did it have to be the chief priests and leaders? They were the ones who instituted and performed the sacrificial system, so they had to present the sacrifice. It’s biblical, it’s Levitical, and it’s right. Nobody else could put their hands on Him because they were presenting the offering for Israel and the world.
And how many times do we hear "the religious authorities of Jesus's day" or "the conservatives of his day" and miss the so clearly obvious truth? We are so quick to impose our ideological framework to score points for a worldly agenda that we miss the point.
