How They Missed Jesus

They had been waiting, praying, and watching for Him for centuries.

But when the Son of God did come, performing miracles and fulfilling prophecies and promises from their own Scriptures, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah they expected.

Free Good Friday Scripture Walk

Why not? You’d think that if anyone would recognize Jesus as God in person, it would be those who had dedicated their lives to serving YHWH. Yet their expectations had become so fixed, so shaped by tradition and assumption, that when God moved in ways they did not anticipate, they could not see Him clearly. They longed for deliverance, order, and peace. But this Jesus seemed to be sowing discord. He was turning their religious world upside down, challenging their traditions and teachings—and even redefining their very words.

Jesus Redefined Neighbor

Although the religious leaders did teach that people should love their neighbor, here was Jesus telling a parable that sought to radically redefine their understanding of neighbor (Luke 10:25-37). The point of His parable was that a hated foreigner, a Samaritan, was actually their neighbor. In fact, in this story, this Samaritan was a much better neighbor than the priest or Levite.

Jesus Redefined the Sabbath

In the centuries before Jesus came, the scribes had been busy protecting the fourth commandment. Their vigilance for keeping the Sabbath holy had resulted in innumerable legal restrictions concerning what was forbidden on the Sabbath. For example, no one could throw an object into the air and then catch it—because that was defined as work. (And then came their next question: Could an object be thrown with one hand and caught with the other?)

Medical care given on the Sabbath–unless lives were in danger—was also considered to be work. And here was Jesus, healing people on the Sabbath who had been ill for years and years.

Jesus Redefined Righteousness

What must the religious leaders have thought of this statement by Jesus!

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

Even though it may sound like a compliment, Jesus wasn’t praising them for their righteousness. Instead, He was calling out the Pharisees and teachers for caring only about how they looked to others: “[O]n the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:28).

In place of their whitewashed righteousness, Jesus spoke about a new righteousness that shows up not just in behavior but also in the heart. Murder, He said, begins with a heart filled with anger. Likewise, adultery starts with a heart filled with lust. Jesus wanted righteousness that is real on the inside and the outside, a righteousness that seeks not the eyes of others but those of God.

The problem with this kind of righteousness was that nobody could fulfill its requirements. In fact, there wasn’t even a sacrificial system in place that could provide forgiveness for those missing the standard of this kind of righteousness.

Jesus Redefined Forgiveness

Everyone knew who could forgive—YHWH alone—and they knew the process for forgiveness.

Priests were ordained by God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin. It was a meticulous sacrificial system with various sin categories, six different blood sacrifices, and detailed instructions for the priest to carry out in the temple. Merchants were a significant part of what happened in the temple. Allowed only in the non-Jewish area, they provided sacrificial animals and changed money into temple currency. God’s forgiveness of sin had become a complicated and ongoing business facilitated by the priests.

And here was Jesus just telling people their sins were forgiven, claiming that God had given Him the authority and power to forgive sin on earth—without the temple, without a priest, and without a sacrifice! Everything was wrong about what He was doing. Even worse, He was forgiving everyone, even offering forgiveness to people who hadn’t asked for it.

It was a scandal to the religious leaders. Only God could forgive sin. Moreover, Jesus was offering forgiveness to obvious sinners (the people the Pharisees shunned). And He was even suggesting that people would repent out of love—and not fear!

Jesus was disturbing the peace of the religious leaders in ways that they could not let continue. If Jesus’ kind of forgiveness took root, it would eventually do away with priests, the temple, and animal sacrifice.

Jesus Redefined Peace

What the religious leaders of Jesus’ day failed to recognize was that Jesus did bring peace—not their idea of peace but the peace that comes from reconciliation with God.

They didn’t understand that Jesus was the sacrifice, the priest, and the temple. It was His blood on the cross that bought and brought forgiveness so that we could have peace with God. It was His blood that will eventually bring the universal peace that the religious leaders expected. When Jesus comes again, peace will reign not just in our hearts but also in the new heaven and earth of the Kingdom of God.

Today, Don’t Miss Jesus

The first-century religious leaders missed Jesus because He didn’t look like what they expected. This Good Friday, may we see Jesus clearly as He is, the Son of God, who gave His life for us, forgave us in advance, and invites us to the peace that only He can bring.