Jesus Had Haters

Jesus Had Haters

 

The New Testament records that the religious leaders hated Jesus to the point that they arrested Him, tried Him, and brought Him to Pilate for a sentence of death. What made them so angry at Jesus that they wanted to see Him dead?

There Are Many Reasons They Wanted Jesus Dead

There were a number of things about Jesus that infuriated the religious leaders. These included.

1. The claims that He made.

2. The deeds that He did.

3. His threat to their religious system.

4. His threat to their way of life.

5. The people with whom He socialized.

6. The lack of respect He had for their religious traditions.

These six things caused outraged among the religious rulers. Consequently they wanted to see Jesus dead. We will consider each of these reasons.

1. Jesus' Claims Outweighed Their Authority

When Jesus claimed to be the Messiah it meant His authority outweighed their authority. The religious leaders did not believe His claims and were angry that some of the people did. They said,

Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed (John 7:48,49).

The religious leaders assumed that the belief of some of the crowd was due to ignorance. But the attention Jesus was getting brought out the leaders' hatred and jealousy. The jealousy of the religious leaders caused them to want Jesus dead.

2. His Deeds Outraged The Religious Rulers

The deeds of Jesus also angered the religious leaders. After seeing Jesus heal a demon-possessed man some of the multitude questioned if Jesus could be the Messiah:

And some of the multitudes were amazed and said, 'Could this be the Son of David [the Messiah]?' But when the Pharisees heard it they said, 'This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons' (Matthew 12:23,24).

The miracle was undeniable, for the man was blind and mute as well as demon-possessed. Rather than believe Jesus to be the Messiah, these religious rulers attributed Jesus' power to the devil. Thus their "official" explanation was that Jesus' power came from Satan. This was another cause for which they wanted Him dead.

3. Jesus Was A Threat To Their Religious System

Jesus was also a threat to their religious system. He pointed out the hypocrisy that was connected with their practice. The Bible records that on two different occasions He came into the temple precincts and drove out the moneychangers.

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. And he made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves he said, "Take these things away; stop making my Father's house a place of business." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me (John 2:13-17).

4. Jesus Was A Threat To Their Way Of Life

There were political reasons that the religious leaders wanted Jesus dead. There was an unstable situation between the Jews and the Romans. The thought of a Messiah who may lead an uprising against Rome

5. The People With Whom He Socialized Outraged The Religious Rulers

The religious leaders were filled with pride and arrogance. They were particularly proud that they did not socialize with "sinners." They did not believe that the Messiah would socialize with such a crowd. When one Pharisee saw Jesus allow a woman to wash His feet, he said,

This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner (Luke 7:39).

Jesus noted their opinion of Him.

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' (Matthew 11:19).

The religious rulers believed themselves to be righteous by avoiding sinners. When Jesus kept company with these individuals, it infuriated the proud Pharisees and other religious rulers.

6. Jesus Had A Lack Of Respect For Their Traditions

As much as anything, the lack of respect that Jesus had for their religious traditions incensed the religious leaders. Jesus ignored these traditions, which they observed so minutely. He knew they were human-made rules that had not come from God. And it was Jesus' disregard for their traditions concerning the Sabbath that caused the most outrage. God had commanded the Sabbath to be a day of rest from labors and a time to worship Him. The religious leaders added all types of restrictions to the Sabbath making it difficult, if not impossible to observe.

Jesus was grieved and angry at the way they had perverted the Sabbath observance. He asked the religious leaders,

Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they kept silent. So when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts (Mark 3:4,5).

Jesus then healed a man in their presence. This healing on the Sabbath was more than they could endure. They concluded that the genuine Messiah would not dare do such a thing. Their response was immediate:

Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him (Mark 3:6).

They were convinced that Jesus had to die.

They Had No Godly Or Righteous Motive

It was not for anything godly or righteous that the religious leaders wanted to put Jesus to death. It was their hypocrisy, pride and arrogance that caused them to bring Jesus before Pilate to be crucified. They did not want to hear the truth of God.

It is sometimes said that Jesus was killed on account of his inclusion and tolerance, that the Jews hated him for hanging out with sinners and tax collectors. This is the sort of sentiment which has a bit of truth to it, but only a tiny bit. No doubt, Jesus upset many of the Jewish leaders because he extended fellowship and mercy beyond their constricted boundaries. But it is misleading to suggest that Jesus was hated for simply being too doggone loving, as if his inspiring tolerance were the cause of his enemies' implacable intolerance.

Take Mark's Gospel, for example (because it’s the one Gospel I’ve preached all the way through). By my reckoning, Jesus is opposed once for eating with sinners (2:16), once for upsetting stereotypes about him in his hometown (6:3), a few times for violating Jewish scruples about the law (2:24; 3:6; 7:5); and several times for "blaspheming" or for claiming too much authority for himself (2:7; 3:22; 11:27-28; 14:53-64; 15:29-32, 39). As Mark's Gospel unfolds, we see the Jewish leaders increasingly hostile toward Jesus. Although the fear of the crowds stays their hand for awhile, they still try to trap Jesus and plot his destruction (8:11; 11:18; 12:12; 12:13; 14:1: 15:3, 11). There is a lot the Jewish leaders don't like about Jesus, but their most intense, murderous fury is directed toward him because he believes "I am [the Christ, the Son of the Blessed], and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven" (14:62).

The four Gospels, as we might expect, emphasize different aspects of the Jewish opposition. Luke, for instance, makes more of Jesus' identification with the society's cast-offs as an issue for the Jewish leaders, while John makes more of Jesus' unique status as God's equal. But the basic outline is consistent in all four accounts. As Jesus’s reputation as a healer and miracle worker spreads, the crowds come to him in larger and larger numbers, prompting the elites to despise him more and more.  As a general rule, Jesus was popular with the masses (the exception being in his hometown of Nazareth), and as his popularity increased with the crowds, so did the opposition from the Jewish leaders.

The Jewish leaders disliked, and eventually grew to hate, Jesus for many reasons. Mark 15:3 says the chief priests “accused him of many things.” They were angry with him for upsetting their traditions and some of their scruples about the law. They looked down on him for eating with sinners and associating with those deemed unclean or unworthy. But most of all, they hated Jesus because he claimed to be from God, and as time went on, dared to make himself equal to God.

That’s why they hated him; that’s why the crowds turn on him; that’s why Jesus was put to death. The Jewish leaders could not recognize Christ’s divine authority and identity. Jealousy was no doubt part of it (Matt. 27:18). But deeper than that, they simply did not have the eyes to see or the faith to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's why in all four gospels, when the opposition against him reaches its climax, Jesus is not charged with being too welcoming to outsiders, but with being a false king, a false prophet, and a false Messiah (Matt. 26:57-68; Mark 14:53-65; Luke 22:66-71; and less clearly in John 18:9-24). They killed Jesus because they thought he was a blasphemer.

In the end, it was the implicit and explicit claims Jesus made to authority, Messiahship, and God-ness, not his expansive love, that ultimately did him in. This is not an excuse for our own hard-heartedness or a reason to distance ourselves from today’s “sinners and tax collectors." We need Jesus's example to set us straight. But we must put to rest the half-truth (more like a one-eighth truth, really) that Jesus was killed for being too inclusive and too nice. The Jewish leaders may have objected to Jesus's far-reaching compassion, but they wanted him dead because he thought himself the Christ, the Son of the living God. If Jesus simply loved people too much he might have been ridiculed by some. But without his claims to deity, authority, and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, he likely would not have been executed.

So as we approach another Holy Week, let's certainly talk about the compassion and love of Jesus (how could we not!). But if we don't talk about his unique identity as the Son of God, we have not explained the reason for his death, and we have not given people reason enough to worship.

Why Did the Pharisees Hate Jesus So Much?

It may well be in the calculus of evil that the only character faring worse than a Nazi is the Pharisee. These were the original black hats. In each of the gospel accounts they are the no-accounts, the very foil of Jesus Himself. We, because we are sinners just like them, ascribe to the Pharisees every conceivable sin that we think ourselves not guilty of. We may have to confess to this sin or that, but at least, we tell ourselves, we aren’t like those guys. In our scapegoating narrative we think that when Jesus showed up the Pharisees hated Him for the simple reason that He was good and they evil. He walked down the street, and they hissed and sputtered. He healed a puppy and they kicked it.

The truth is that the Pharisees did hate Jesus, and He rightly isn’t known for showing them a great deal of grace. He called them out for their hypocrisy. He exposed their inner tombs. But the hatred they felt for Him wasn’t mere sour grapes at His approval rating, nor was it as principled as mere evil versus good. It was rather more craven. They hated Jesus not because He called them names, but because He threatened their security, prestige and income. He was going to ruin everything they had worked so hard for, and getting everybody killed.

The Pharisees had brokered a rather uneasy peace between the powers of Rome, and their own people. Rome, you will remember, had no great desire to remake the cultures their army had conquered. Any nation willing to submit to Rome’s military and political authority could go on about their business. Israel, however, wasn’t a nation given to separating their political and theological loyalties. Thus the rise of the Zealots, that sect who, in the spirit of the Maccabees, sought to remove Rome’s yoke. Thus the uprising in 70 AD that led to the utter destruction of Jerusalem. It was the Pharisees who kept their finger in that dyke. And they made a decent living doing it. It was Jesus, however, who kept poking at the levee.

His popularity, His talk of the kingdom, His affirmation that He was in fact the Messiah, this threatened the uneasy peace. If the people got behind Joseph’s son, Rome would awake, and start killing Jews indiscriminately, not bothering to distinguish the Pharisee party from the Jesus party. This is how Caiaphas came, in a moment of treachery, to speak a gospel truth when he said, “nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50). The Pharisees hated Jesus not because He made them look bad with the people, but because He made them all look bad to Rome.

We would be wise to remember this, for the pattern remains. When persecution comes it comes first not from the state, but from that part of the church that seeks to appease the state. The zealous, the faithful, those unwilling to confess that Caesar is Lord will be turned over to Caesar by the feckless, the faithless, those who fear man rather than God. It is those who aspire to maintain respectability, those who remove the gospel’s offense, those who exchange their prophet’s mantle for something more hip, these are they who betray Christ, and His bride. Persecution, in the end, doesn’t divide the church, but exposes where the line is between wheat and chaff. In times of persecution the true church may be burned, but those who escape will only be blown away.

Jesus had plenty of haters and the Bible gives clear instructions on how to handle them:

1. Do Nothing

Luke 21:17-19 - Everyone will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm, and you will win life.

2. Don't Hate Them Back

1 Peter 3:9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

3. Don't Try To Figure Out Why

Psalm 38:19 Many have become my enemies without cause; those who hate me without reason are numerous.

4. Forgive Them

Ephesians 4:32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

5. Bless Them

Romans 12:14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.