Thoughts On Opposition to Jesus

Opposition, Persecution, and Killing of Jesus in John's Gospel

John writes the gospel of Jesus from the viewpoint of the cross. From the beginning of the gospel we read of the Word, which Word becomes flesh in the person of Jesus (1:14),through whom was the cosmos created, but whose creation did not know him (1:10); the Word who came to his own, but his own received him not (1:11).

In previous notes, we considered the seven self-identifications of Jesus: (1) I am the bread of life; (2) I am the light of the world; (3) I am the door of the sheep; (4) I am the good shepherd; (5) I am the resurrection and the life; (6) I am the way, the truth, and the life; (7) I am the vine.

We noted further that each of these has intimations of God’s own identification of himself with Moses at the burning bush event, “I Am,” “I Am that I Am” (Ex. 3:14). It is not really a name in the proper sense, but a statement of God’s own existence, that he is existence itself. The name becomes, consequently, an identification that sets the biblical record for all covenant relations between God and his people, Israel.

This self-identification of God (I Am), is rendered in English transliteration as "YHWH". This is the name that one should not use in vain, according to the Law. So, in order to guard against improper use, even accidentally, it became the custom of the Hebrew people not to say the term at all, but, even when reading Scripture itself, to substitute the term with the phrase ha shem, that is, “The Name.” This custom became so prevalent, pervasive, and persistent that it became no longer known even to this day what the proper pronunciation of the word is. People make their best guess, “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”, but nobody knows. Since there are four letters to this term, it is sometimes called “the tetragrammaton,” that is, “the four letters.” Most Bible translations seldom translate the term, if at all, but conventionally substitute “The Lord” in capitalized letters for the tetragrammaton.

As we see, this Name of God held the deepest reverence for the Hebrew people. And at the very center of John’s gospel, we find this statement on Jesus’ lips: “Before Abraham was, I AM” (8:58). We shall return to this again.

Intimations of this identification come earlier in the gospel. For example, when the woman at the well says that she expects the Messiah to come and resolve all religious questions, Jesus answers with, “The one who speaks with you: I am.” 4:26. Our Bibles usually render it (and appropriately) more like this, “I who speak to you am he.”

It was not lightly that Jesus said this, nor was it lightly received. It is because of who Jesus is, his very nature, that we find the mystery of his actions and teachings revealed plainly. The clear and present implication of Jesus’ identification of himself is not lost on his hearers, and this is the account for these current thoughts, the story for today.

Shortly after John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (1:29), Jesus has the occasion of visiting a wedding feast in Cana, Galilee, where he performs the first of his signs: changing water into wine (2:1-11). Since Passover is at hand (2:13), he then goes up to Jerusalem where he drives out sellers of cattle and money changers from the temple grounds (2:14-17).

And here comes the first confrontation in this gospel between Jesus and the Hebrew authorities. They ask him for the credentials that give him permission to upset the lucrative temple trade, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” (2:18). Jesus’ response gives away the whole of the gospel: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (2:19).

We understant that he spoke of his body, of course, and not of the temple built with stones by human hands. He spoke of his own death, burial, and resurrection, which events would not come for several years yet. However misunderstood he was by his challengers at that moment, we have foreshadowed once again for us here at the beginning of the gospel the key events in Jesus’ life: The presentation of his being, the response of rejecting him or of believing him, his tragic end and glorious resurrection.

Some time later, again in Jerusalem at another religious festival, Jesus heals a man, paralytic, ill for 38 years. As the authorities realize that the healing takes place in opposition to the Sabbath laws, in which it was not lawful to engage in the healing arts or in any work (including carrying a bedroll), they confront Jesus with his illegal activity.

Here is the first explicit reference in the gospel to a reason why the Hebrew authorities went after Jesus: not only did he aid and abet another to break the Sabbath law by telling him to pick up his bedroll and walk (5:10-11), he himself broke the Sabbath law by engaging in the healing arts. 5:16.

Beloved of God, we ourselves, so unaccustomed to thinking that religious concerns should take precedence over work or sports, cannot begin to imagine the challenge of Jesus’ actions to his peers. So foreign are we to that time and place, so alien are we to that culture, that as a matter of course our sympathies lie immediately with Jesus who stands against this "obviously" silly law.

The modern religious failure to comprehend the otherness of God, leads people to a degree of casual relationship with God that cripples. In modern culture, intimacy with God finds a place, not of awe, respect, and profound obedience, but of humdrum boredom with the divine. God "understands" that the Superbowl exempts one from real worship ... that indulging private pleasures over feeding hungry children is excusable ... that deployment of bombs is necessary when the nations don't give proper respect ...

Sometimes, out of a forced sense of enlightened spiritual understanding, we scoff at the foolishness of the Sabbath laws and applaud Jesus in his keenness to recognize their folly. In taking such a view, however, we fail to grasp the gravity of the events. We fail to grasp what Jesus would say to us in the similarly foolish religious laws we moderns have devised in binding heavy burdens hard to bear on men’s shoulders. Mt. 23:4.

But this was no trivial matter: John clearly says Jesus was persecuted for this very point.

Jesus, however, does not allow the difficulty to rest in a matter so slight as mere civil disobedience against unjust law. He answers his critics with that which infuriates them, and brings out the best they had to offer God: not only will they pursue him as a lawbreaker, they decide to kill him.

The words of Jesus that elicited this response in his accusers were these: “My father is working still, and I am working” (5:17).

We hear those words, and again, we moderns are so far from that culture, so far from a sense of the divine, so far from the sense of the transcendent and the holy, so far from the sense of deepest awe and respect for God, that we fail to grasp the stunning statement of Jesus. How could those words solicit such extreme reaction from his detractors? This is no mere dispassionate, theoretical, theological confession that he, the Son, is the second person of the Trinity, as sometimes is stated in such a banal manner. (Nor does writing such thoughts imply whatsoever that this present writer has a grasp of all the implications!)

Nonetheless, Jesus makes an unpalatable statement about God first: God is at work. For the deist of that time, and of our time, this does not fit well in our schema. God created and then God rested, and the remainder is up to us. Jesus, contrarily, says God is working still. God has not left alone the creation as though he were a clockmaker who built a clock, wound it up, set it in motion, placed it on the mantel, and then went off to play a restful game of golf. God, rather, pursues actively the working of creation right now. Still.

But on what basis was the law given that the Hebrew people should keep the Sabbath holy and do no work in it? It is, after all, the fourth of the ten commandments. The rationale given for the law is this: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11.

The law said, “God rested on the seventh day.” Jesus said, “God is working still.”

This is why Jesus heals on the Sabbath, because his Father is working. Still. This is the second reality Jesus presents about his being. Since his Father is at work, therefore, he, Jesus, is at work on the sabbath. He must work on the sabbath for the very reason that his father works. There is a profoundly intimate relationship between God and Jesus, indeed, between the Father and the Son. He will say that he does what he sees the Father doing. Jesus reveals a reality of God that was not apparent before.

And the authorities hear that in calling God his Father, in this context Jesus made himself equal with God. They hear him as a blasphemer, as one who misrepresents God, as one who does not convey the reality of God at all. And therefore, as one who must die as the law says. Lev. 24:10-23. “He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.” (L. 24:16).

Later, during the Feast of Tabernacles, again in the Jerusalem temple, the people listening to him wonder why the authorities do not arrest Jesus. The crowds think they know Jesus’ background, they think to know his origins. But Jesus responds to say, “I have not come of my own accord; he who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.” 7:28-29. The authorities try to arrest him on the spot, but cannot do it.

The next day Jesus made the claim that if God were the father of those opposing him, they would have received Jesus. Those who had believed in Jesus say they are children of Abraham. Yet, since they did not receive Jesus, Jesus said it is evident that their father is the devil. 8:44. The authorities respond to say Jesus is a despicable “Samaritan,” and, “You have a demon!” They exclaim, “Who do you claim to be?”

Jesus said that God, his father who sent him, glorifies Jesus. Abraham himself, Jesus goes on to say, was glad to see the day of Jesus. (Now Abraham lived about two thousand years or more earlier!) The people ridicule Jesus, “You are not yet 50 years old – and you’ve seen Abraham?”

We feel the tension rise, until Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”

The people, livid, pick up stones to kill Jesus then and there on the spot. But Jesus hides quickly and escapes.

The following winter Jesus is back in Jerusalem for another religious festival, the Feast of Dedication. 10:22. The authorities collect about Jesus and press him to tell them plainly whether he is the Messiah or not. Jesus’ answer brings them to pick up stones once again to kill him right then and there. He concludes to say, “I and the Father are one.” 10:30-31.

Not hiding this time, Jesus stops them from throwing the stones with a question, though. He asks them for which of the good things he had done were they planning to kill him. In the ensuing exchange, Jesus calls them to believe at least the good works he does, even if they cannot abide what he says. He then ends his call to them with, “that you may know that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” 10: 30. At which point they try to arrest him, but he escapes their grasp.

Later, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. An increasing number of people believed in him, and the priestly authorities feared there would be no stopping his increase.

It is at this juncture where we see a second reason for wanting Jesus dead. The authorities feared the Roman government. As more and more people are swayed by the signs Jesus showed, and as the nation of Israel receives Jesus, then the Romans will come and destroy the temple and Israel both. 11:48. The high priest Caiaphas, made his unwitting and infamous prophecy to the council, then. “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and the whole nation should not perish.” 11:50.

Finally, apparently some weeks later, during another Passover feast, the temple guard arrests Jesus, whereupon Annas and then the high priest Caiaphas try him. They send him on to Pilate, the Roman governor for final sentencing, and anticipate that Pilate will determine Jesus’ guilt. Pilate, unhappily, has difficulty ascertaining the nature of the accusation, partly because the authorities would not tell him what the problem was. The temple authorities simply said that if he were not guilty, they would not have handed him over to Pilate. 18:30.

After a lengthy examination, Pilate accepts Jesus guilty of rebellion and sedition, in the claim that Jesus is a king of the Jews. And when Jesus is nailed to the cross, that was the charge put on the cross with him.

So, the reasons John presents for opposition to Jesus are:

1. Jesus breaks the Sabbath laws
2. Jesus blasphemes the Name of God, claiming to be "I AM"
3. Jesus will bring the wrath of Rome on the nation, destroying it
4. Jesus claims to be King of the Hebrews, in violation of Roman rule

We may see that Jesus, then, is not simply a misunderstood man who was condemned unjustly. He was, rather, a disbelieved man, whose statements about himself were understood quite well, a man pursued at times secretly, at times openly, but always relentlessly by his opponents precisely because they understood clearly who Jesus said he was.

The challenge with which Jesus confronts us remains: Who is this Jesus? Is he who he says he is? Or is he a Samaritan, a demon possessed madman?