An unlikely prophet

One of the biggest things that Jesus has in his favour in terms of who he was and what he did is the number of hostile sources (ie. non-Christian) that refer to him and his life, the most noteworthy is the Jewish historian Josephus, who was a contemporary of Jesus and lived during the intertestamental period. One of the really interesting ones comes from the high-priest Caiaphas, who makes an interesting statement in John's Gospel.

The Sanhedrin is together and Caiaphas makes this dramatic statement:
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (John 11:49:50 NIV)
It's clear that this is a prophecy, Caiaphas is correct it is better that one man die for the people than the whole nation perish. Indeed John 3:16 has already pointed at this and that's what we'd take on surface level from this. But that's not really what Caiaphas mans.

To get a good understanding we need to look at why Caiaphas says this:
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” (John 11:47-48) NIV)
Their concern is not with salvation but rather staying out of trouble with the Romans. Judaism was a protected religion, so long as they worked within the status quo, as long as they didn't cause any troubles the Romans were happy to allow them to keep worshiping in their own way. As such the concern of the Sanhedrin was often just about keeping the peace and quashing any riots. They were worried about what Jesus would do, would he start a riot? And so they met to discuss how best to prevent that from happening in order to protect their religion, their town and their position in society. It is from there that Caiaphas makes his statement, it's better to kill Jesus than to risk him starting a riot that would result in the Romans taking over Jerusalem.

And so the Sanhedrin makes a conclusion:
He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. 53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life. (John 11:51-53 NIV)
Caiaphas was already working towards this end, this was his firm belief, that Jesus had to die in order to save Jerusalem. Not only that but it would bring back the lost sheep of Israel. Caiaphas felt that by killing Jesus he would restore Israel. He's absolutely right, just not in the way he thought. Caiaphas thought that by killing Jesus he'd get rid of him and the political and geographic Israel would be restored. But what actually happens is that Jesus just proves who he is, but he does die for the good of the whole 'nation' and he does bring in the scattered. Israel in the New Testament tends to mean 'the people of God' and as such that is what Jesus achieves, he dies for the good of the people of God and he brings in all who are far away.

Caiaphas was right, but little did he know the levels that it would apply to. Where he was thinking on a Geo-Political level it was actually working on a spiritual level.