The accusation was that Jesus broke the Laws of God, to which Jesus responded, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Mat 5:17). Indeed, Jesus was a prophet, but rather than using the mouths of “sons of men” (as in the prophets of old), Jesus used his own mouth as “Son of God.” Therein lied a huge problem - Jesus claimed to be God! Forty-eight times he used the expression “Ego Eimia;” Greek for “I AM” Likewise, he said, “I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.” (John 10:30-31).
What made the mob angriest? That this young carpenter claimed to be the same Creator who “cut wood”, so to speak, to generate everything in existence! That was a fantastical claim, albeit not uncommon. Many others had claimed to be God, and they were laughed at. People still think they are gods and have grandiose thoughts of themselves, and perhaps are schizophrenic. Jesus was accused of that himself! (Mark 3:21; John 10:20). He may have appeared to many as Charles Manson appears to us! Psychologists, even to this day, question the sanity of Jesus (see Wikipedia article on “Mental Health of Jesus”).
The very fact that Jesus perceived himself as God would be considered insane! Throughout history, kings of Israel and Judah had been decimated by their enemies because they acted as if they were gods. This new “King” was no different. All men, even his accusers, play the part of God when they diminish God and elevate themselves. Ironically, those who judged Jesus “guilty” and had him crucified played God as they wrongly judged their Savior. Jesus told Pontius Pilate that their sin was greater than his executioners. That is, perhaps, because Pilate merely represented his king and god, Caesar, but the Jewish leaders took a life that only God alone had a right to take.
The most scandalous thing that anyone could do was claim that they themselves are Almighty God. Albeit, sinners, when they sin, know better than God and offend God. Jesus did nothing offensive, but his killers did. The Jews misunderstood their entire religion as they undermined and destroyed their promised Messiah. Judaism is all about Jesus, but when God came in the flesh, they saw Him, not as the glorious promise, but as a crazy man who claimed that he is God! Pharaohs, oriental emperors, Roman emperors, Inca emperors, and even Dalai Lamas have all claimed to be God. The list goes on! Totalitarian dictators assume the role of God, and ancients such as Nebuchadnezzar saw themselves as gods. When people sin, despite the Will of God, they are acting as God.
Simon Magus claimed he was the Messiah. His claim to fame was that he was God. Obviously, Simon is still in the grave, validating he was not, but in apostolic times, half the Roman Empire believed that Simon was the promised Messiah; that he was God!
All those who claim to be God viewed themselves with grandiose thoughts, and here comes another man who claimed that he was God! The New Agers are an eclectic group of heretics, all of whom have one thing in common; they believe that they are gods or can become gods. Even Mormons and Swedenborgians as Helen Keller believe that they would be gods after death! The world is full of people who perceive themselves as gods, but Jesus alone IS God! When people admit what they think of themselves, they are considered to be mad, and Jesus was no exception! However, that Jesus IS God in the Flesh, is the truth that sets people free from the false perception that they are supreme to God.
Jesus’s claim was the greatest scandal of his ministry, and as we have seen, that the perceived harlot Mary was his mother. Worse yet, that Mary claimed that a “ghost” came upon her. Was the entire family crazy or was Jesus’s birth prophesied and fulfilled? If the Jews had only believed what they claim to believe, they would see that the promised Savior had come!
Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead! Was he just another Simon Magus who performed sorcery? The Jews knew that sorcery was an abomination to the Lord, and here we have another “magician” who was better at his tricks than even Simon. That a magician would claim to be God was acceptable regarding Simon but scandalous when Jesus did miracles. The greatest miracle ever performed was declared in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” It was scandalous that a mere carpenter believed he had done that! The apostle John knew that Jesus was there at the Creation and that his hand did the miracle (John 1). Everyone else, it seems, likely even his own mother, had doubts about that. Many Christians today have the same doubt.
Since the definition of a “god” is an entity with the power to create, denying the Creation is denying the only God with the power to create, and that “man” is Jesus! If Jesus did not serve mankind an existence, he certainly could not preserve that existence with eternal life. If Jesus did not Create, he certainly could not resurrect the habitat that he Created! That a mild-mannered man claimed that he was the Creator was a scandalous claim. When Jesus performed miracles, the disbelieving Jews doubted even more:
For after that
in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a
sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. (1 Cor 1:21-22)
The Jews required signs (miracles), but the Gentiles wisdom, presumably reason and logic. Ironically, the Jews disbelieved the miracles, and their illogical conclusions caused their disbelief. Jesus said that if they Jews could not believe Moses and the prophets, they would not belief even if one was raised from the dead. In other words, Jews always asked God for signs, but when they were given, their reasoning made them doubters.
God is literal much of the time. At the top of the cross, there was a sign: “King of the Jews.” What better sign could be posted, and the doubting Jews did not believe it, but the Gentiles did! Hence the gospel was taken to those who claimed to have wisdom and believed the sign which was posted!
The “Wisdom Tree” is the Jewish name for the Tree of Knowledge. (I call it the “Philosophy Tree.”)
The wisdom of that tree was twofold: discernment between good and evil. The Jews should have seen that it was the evil Judas who was dead because of Jesus’s crucifixion. That’s what the brazen Serpent on its “tree” represents. If they had, then seeing Jesus alive, their reasoning would have been that if Jesus died, but still lives, then logically, he must be God! Christianity is a reasonable doctrine. The miracle of Creation validates that there IS a God, and the Resurrection (Re-Creation) that there still IS!
That Jesus created and was resurrected is mythology according to the wisdom of the world, but that existence just happened and that Resurrection never will, is logical to them. The real scandal is that people believe that chance did it all! Like any creed of the world, those who deny reason accuse the one declaring truth as the scandalous ones.
Jesus ate with publicans and sinners. He was accused of imbibing with drunks. They actually saw Jesus with publicans and sinners, and sitting with drunks, and presumed that he was a vile sinner and a drunk! It never occurred to the rumor-mongers that Jesus was not there to be one of them, but to save them from calamity. That a perceived wicked man would be King and Savior was scandalous (I am overusing that word because it is the topic of discussion.)
Jesus was innocent of all sins, but his accusers were determined from the outset to impeach that impeccable man with fallacious accusations! Does that not sound familiar? Jesus was born to preserve mankind, but mankind was shapen in iniquity to disserve Jesus! What was the sin that caused Jesus to be crucified? People presumed that he was guilty of crimes. There are different kinds of sins, but the one who killed Jesus was presumptuous sin: “But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die” (Exod 21:14).
“Presumptuous sin” is playing God with the lives of others, and the penalty for causing the death of the innocent is death for the accuser. Presumptuous sin is the worst sin because it sent an innocent man who came to save mankind to die himself. Jesus’s accusers deserved death, but it was the accused who died! That an innocent man died is scandalous when it was the lynch mob who deserved death!
Jesus was charged with much that he did not do. Jesus denied his family. The Law required that fathers and mothers be honored, and that the reward was a long life! That is the very “prescription” for eternal health. When Jesus asked, “Who is my mother?” in the eyes of the legalistic mob, he was breaking a commandment. That “commandment” was Jesus’s “Fifth Word” that he wrote with his own hand, but the mob assumed that he was denying his mother! That a True God will deny His own Command was preposterous to the mob because they were unreasonable. Jesus was not denying his mother because he was without a biological mother. The crowd presumed that he was lying and that was another scandal attributed to him!
Of course, Jesus was not scandalous, but the irrational mob created scandal after scandal for him. To the scribes and Pharisees, everything that he did was scandalous. To the Sadducees who did not believe in the Resurrection, Jesus’s claim that he would be, was scandalous. How can the dead come alive again? That was silly thinking, as silly as this crazy man thinking that he created it all!
The irony of it all, was that it was the Jewish mob who were the rascals and Jesus and the disciples who followed him were the honorable ones. That’s how mob mentality always works. We see that now in our daily lives. Jesus was accused of being the rascal, but the rascals are those who presumed he was as sinner and had the Savior die for their presumptions!
Tomorrow, I will complete the Scandal of the Cross, about what the Cross meant, and the accusations after Jesus arose from the grave.
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