Jesus offended the Jewish religious leaders of His day, the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. But what was it about Him that offended them most? Was it that He could do things they couldn’t, like heal the sick and lame, give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, even raise the dead?
Surely, they felt threatened by these miraculous acts. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the religious leaders, especially the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection, made it their top priority to eliminate Lazarus as proof of Jesus’ power over the grave, so they tried to kill the man Jesus had brought back to life. (I can’t imagine why they didn’t understand the futility of that plan.)
What about Jesus’ teaching? Is that what it was that offended them most? It was said that He taught with authority, and not like the other teachers of His day. Hearing that must’ve really cooked their goose. He said things like, you’ve heard it said…but I say to you…the least among you shall be the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven…your righteousness must exceed that of the religious leaders.
The things Jesus said and taught were doubtless offensive to His opponents. I believe what He said got their attention more than anything else He did, but I’ll return to that in a moment.
First, though, let’s consider another offensive factor, popular opinion. What the Jewish population thought of Jesus and were saying about Him was important to the religious leaders. They valued popular opinion because they needed it to accomplish their agendas. So, when the crowds who followed Jesus around to see His miracles and hear His teaching said they thought He was the Messiah, the religious leaders took it as a threat; people were believing the promised epic political-religious-military leader was there to receive all their allegiance, the allegiance the religious leaders craved for themselves so badly.
Returning to the matter of Jesus’ own words being most offensive to the leaders, there was one message in particular that sent the religious bigots over the top. It was His own claim that He was the Messiah – or any phraseology that resembled such a claim – that they found most offensive.
It was one thing for the crowds to say it, but quite another for Jesus, Himself, to say it. That’s why they made such strong attempts at getting Jesus to say something offensive; if they could hear it from His own mouth, they’d have ammunition enough to legally kill Him.
So, they salivated when He referred to Himself as the Son of Man or spoke of His Heavenly Father.
As long as He was teaching challenging truths or working undeniable miracles, His eventual accusers, although not pleased, didn’t accuse Him of blasphemy. But once He showed awareness of His own position in God’s Kingdom, He was persecuted, captured, falsely accused and killed.
A powerful principle shows itself in this process, one that applies to you and me as well. We offend most when we show that we’re aware of our own favored position in God’s kingdom.
Our enemy knows God favors us, and he knows we don’t deserve it. It isn’t that the devil is ok with that reality. But what really shakes him is when we become aware of the love, favor, privileges, gifts and abilities God has given to us. He knows that, until we know our God-given potential, we’re sleeping giants. He’s hoping against all hope that we don’t wake up to our reality.
We may see people in our lives become jealous of us, feeling it unfair that we have benefits we haven’t earned. But those people aren’t our problem. We wrestle not against flesh and blood (people), but against the demonic forces of Hell’s kingdom, which is always against us, but over whom we have victory in Christ Jesus.
We can allow neither Hell nor earth to deny us the privileges Jesus afforded us by His sacrifice and His powerful return to life.
So, let us be courageous; let us remain aware of who we are in Christ, supernaturally empowered beings gifted with abilities we don’t deserve, but are called by God to use for Him. Let the enemy be offended; it will not change who we are, but only defeat him further.
