How Did the Religious Leaders Miss 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.
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. But in their understanding that God would come personally one day to bring them freedom, the Pharisees and scribes assumed the Messiah would bring universal peace. Instead, 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. The point of his parable was that a hated foreigner, a Samaritan, was actually their neighbor. In fact, in his story, this Samaritan was a much better neighbor than the priest or Levite.
Jesus Redefined the Sabbath
In the four 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, since God’s people were to rest from their labor on the seventh day of the week, the scribes thus defined what comprised prohibited labor. 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.
It’s easy for us to see that the religious leaders had taken a day meant by God for people’s rest and made the Sabbath itself a burden. But when Jesus told them that the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath—and that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath—they began to plot his execution.
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 them out 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 white-washed 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 required 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 had become 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 was 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. It was time to get rid of Jesus.
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. It was his blood that will eventually bring the universal peace that the religious leaders expected—but peace with God had to come first. 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.
Until then, the peace Jesus that bought with his own blood is available to everyone. Jesus forgave, in advance, and is now waiting for our response—repentance.
Because Jesus is risen, we can know peace with God.
He is risen indeed.
Do you know the radical forgiveness that Jesus offers? Do you know how to forgive those who hurt you? Check out the link to an incredible video with Andy Stanley (message beginning at 21:10) or the audio below.
