Jesus Christ’s Opposition to the Jewish State: Lessons for Today

The trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and the High Priest Annas. Painting by José de Madrazo y Agudo (1781–1859). Original Source.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

The New Testament portion of the Bible, and specifically the first four books of the New Testament which are referred to as “Gospel Accounts” documenting the historical life of Jesus Christ, has numerous accounts of Jesus’ encounters with the Jewish leaders of his day, and his constant opposition against them.

Much of this is recorded concerning his teaching in the great Temple in Jerusalem, and opposing the Jewish State.

In the Gospel written by the Apostle John, we really see things come to a head in the Jewish leaders’ opposition to Jesus in Chapter 8, where the Jewish leaders claimed that they had special privileges in the world due to their ethnicity, and relationship to Abraham, who they saw as the historical leader of the Jewish people.

Jesus refuted this, as he claimed a higher authority over them.

Jesus did not pull any punches, and did not seem to be too concerned about being polite, as he stated flat out that the leaders of the Jewish nation did not know God, and in fact were children of the Devil, serving him instead.

Here are some excerpts from John Chapter 8, and Jesus debating with these Jews in the Temple:

They (the Jewish leaders) said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?”

Jesus answered,

“You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”

These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him,

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him,

“We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.”

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.”

Jesus said to them,

“If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.”

They said to him,

“We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.”

Jesus said to them,

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?

Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

Unable to cope with the wisdom of Jesus and his superior debating skills, they did what the servants of Satan always do when they cannot win a debate based on merit, and instead resorted to personal attacks against Jesus, and slandered his character.

When that didn’t work, they just simply tried to kill him in order to silence him.

The Jews answered him,

“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

Jesus answered,

“I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

The Jews said to him,

“Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?”

Jesus answered,

“If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him.

I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

So the Jews said to him,

“You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

Jesus said to them,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. (John Chapter 8)

Jesus clearly challenged their authority, and source of power. And for doing so, the leaders of the Jewish State began to look for ways to kill him.

Suffering and Jewish Persecution for Following Jesus

The Beheading of St John the Baptist by Jan Rombouts, 1550. Image source. Biblical story in Mark 6.

Jesus did more than just make fools out of the ruling Jews by debating them, he also directly challenged their authority, and the most common way he did that, was by healing people.

By Jewish Law, only priests had the authority to declare anyone “healed” of diseases under the laws of Moses.

Jesus knew this, and often after he healed someone, he told them to go show themselves to the priests, and let the priests take the credit for the healing, but this was mostly done in the earlier part of his ministry as he tried to avoid conflicts with the Jews as much as possible.

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him,

“I will; be clean.”

And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him,

“See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45)

After the debate in the Temple recorded in John Chapter 8, however, the gloves came off, and Jesus appeared to get very serious about making the Jewish rulers look like the fools they were, and demonstrating just how superior his power was over theirs.

In John Chapter 9, we have the record of an amazing event, where Jesus heals a man who was actually born blind, which had never happened before.

And he did it on a Sabbath, which the Jews claimed was illegal, just to piss them off even more.

And since it was the Sabbath, when no priest would have been available to declare this man healed, Jesus did not bother to tell the man, after he was healed, to go show himself to the Jews.

But the Jewish rulers found him anyway, as his own neighbors and “friends” brought him to them, and his story is a powerful example of what all of us can expect when we follow Jesus, where even our own family and friends may desert us, for fear of the Jewish “Authorities.”

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him,

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered,

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him,

“Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent).

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying,

“Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.”

He kept saying, “I am the man.”

So they said to him,

“Then how were your eyes opened?”

He answered,

“The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”

They said to him, “Where is he?”

He said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.

And he said to them,

“He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”

Some of the Pharisees said,

“This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

But others said,

“How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”

And there was a division among them.

So they said again to the blind man,

“What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them,

“Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”

His parents answered,

“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”

(His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him,

“Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.”

He answered,

“Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They said to him,

“What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

He answered them,

“I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

And they reviled him, saying,

“You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”

The man answered,

“Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.

Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

They answered him,

“You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?”

And they cast him out. (John Chapter 9)

When it is written that the Jewish leaders “cast him out“, it refers back to the fear of his parents earlier in the chapter where “they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue“.

While the English translations of the underlying Greek language here read “to be put out of the synagogue“, it is one word in the Greek original language: ἀποσυνάγωγος – aposunagōgos.

“Synagogue” here means “assembly” and aposunagōgos means to be “excluded from sacred assemblies of Israelites, excommunicated” from the Jewish religion. (Thayers Greek Definitions.)

Here is how one commentator describes what this word meant to the First Century Jews:

Among the Jews there were two grades of excommunication; the one for lighter offences, of which they mentioned 24 causes; the other for greater offences.

The first excluded a man for 30 days from the privilege of entering a synagogue, and from coming nearer to his wife or friends than 4 cubits.

The other was a solemn exclusion forever from the worship of the synagogue, attended with awful maledictions and curses, and an exclusion from all contact with the people.

This was called the curse, and so thoroughly excluded the person from all communion whatever with his countrymen, that they were not allowed to sell to him anything, even the necessaries of life (Buxtorf).

It is probable that this latter punishment was what they intended to inflict if anyone should confess that Jesus was the Messiah: and it was the fear of this terrible punishment that deterred his parents from expressing their opinion. (Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, 1830)

This man, who is not identified by name in the Bible, was probably a young man, perhaps in his 20s or early 30s, and had been born blind.

Imagine being cured of your blindness by Jesus, and then being attacked by everyone in your culture, and even being disowned by your own parents, just because now you were no longer blind!

But if he were to claim that Jesus did not heal him after all, just to please the Jews, remain part of the culture, and obtain the approval of his parents, then he would have been a LIAR.

And Jesus had just articulated in the chapter before, in John Chapter 8, that Jews who lie and deny Jesus, are children of the Devil.

This young man made the right choice, and suffered for it. He literally lost EVERYTHING, just to be healed by Jesus.

He became a “cast-off” completely cut off from the country and culture he grew up in. But at least he had his eyesight, and now he could see things very clearly….

Jesus too was a cast-off, and was ultimately executed, outside the walls of Jerusalem, cut off from the nation of Israel.

Everyone reading this today is going to have to soon make the same decision.

Will you bow down to the Jewish Zionists and deny Jesus is the Messiah, or will you become a fellow cast-off with Jesus, as this man born blind and healed by Jesus had to do, and be disowned by your own family and friends, and potentially lose everything?

Original background image: Christ on the Road to Calvary – HANS JORDAENS I – 1555 – 1630. Source.

We must go out to him, then, outside the camp, bearing the abuse he experienced.

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. (Hebrews 13:13-14)

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