Articles
The Rejection of Christ
A brother wrote recently expressing his consternation at how Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries could have possibly remained in unbelief considering OT prophecy, John’s preaching, Jesus’ miracles and His overall divine presence: “No man ever spoke like this Man!” (Jn 7:46). It is puzzling, no doubt, and also disturbing, for the first century Jews demonstrate the potential for spiritual blindness in all of us.
They were not unique, for Jesus equates their behavior with that of their ancestors: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (Mt 23:29-33). These words may shock those who have warm, fuzzy feelings about Christ but don’t truly know Him. Jesus is here voicing divine wrath against those who are persistently, incurably faithless.
But the particular thrust of this article centers on our recent study of the period “between the testaments” or the 400 years of “silence” wherein God still providentially governed and preserved Israel but sent them no prophets and offered no messages from heaven. In our classes we have documented the state of affairs after Alexander’s empire fragments and warring factions fight over the Mediterranean world for the next 200+ years.
This took a toll particularly on Judea as the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Syrian dynasty of Antiochus wanted a buffer state between them. Thus Judea was like the flag on a tug-o-war rope, constantly pulled back and forth. When Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to force Hellenism on the Jews, they fought back under the leadership of the Maccabees. This took place a little over 100 years before Herod the Great began his reign in Palestine.
I responded to my inquiring friend that so many NT features grow out of this period with little explanation: synagogues, Pharisees/Sadducees, the influence of Greek language/culture, the Romans, the legacy of constant warfare, false Messiahs, political instability, the humanism of the Jews, etc.. When we consider the Jews’ replacement of the law by their traditions, when we realize that God had not spoken authoritatively for 400 years, when we understand how thoroughly secular the Jews had become (with some exceptions such as Simeon/Anna/Zacharias/Elizabeth/ Mary/ Joseph, etc.), it should be less perplexing that Jesus’ contemporaries – a “wicked and adulterous generation” by Jesus’ own reckoning – would not recognize a spiritual Savior. That would require one’s recognition of impending doom, and there just wasn't that much spirituality left in Israel. This is why Jesus lamented over Jerusalem’s coming destruction. All God had done via the prophets, judgments, exile, return, etc. had been for naught. And Jesus says this replicates the behavior of previous generations (Mt 23).
Here are some additional perspectives on the Jews’ rejection of Jesus:
Caiaphas’ political advice: “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish” (Jn 11:50). Of course, the flaw in this reasoning is that if Jesus truly is God’s Messiah, then the nation would not perish no matter who opposed them. God had amply and repeatedly demonstrated throughout history that His power could subdue any nation. This is a clear example of a false dichotomy; there are more choices than the two Caiaphas laid before the Sanhedrin.
Self-centered righteousness. “They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Rom 10:2-3). The Jews had created a false image in their own minds and felt that, regardless of what God was saying through John and Jesus, they were already God’s chosen and did not need “saving.” They missed the point – and limitations – of Mosaic law.
Heredity. “‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this” (Jn 8:39-40). Humans put a lot of stock in their ancestry. People sometimes define themselves by a heritage that has little bearing upon their own present lives. But the Jewish people had legitimate ties to an illustrious ancestry, a special status and a law straight from God. However, they did not emulate the faithful fathers but the ungodly ones.
Ignorance of the law. “There is one who accuses you – Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Jn 5:46-47). Jesus repeatedly asked the scribes and Pharisees, “Have you not read?” or “Do you not know?” Again, tradition and rabbinical commentary had largely replaced Scripture as the guiding force in Jewish thought. This enabled them to retain Moses in their affections while actually rejecting the truth he spoke.
Hardness of heart. These things, and more, create a hardened heart that resists all overtures from God. Jesus said of His generation, “In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled … ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart and turn, so that I should heal them’” (Mt 13:14-15). Jesus’ generation was spiritually dead.
The takeaway: I further noted to my friend: “The behavior/attitudes of the Jews should be a stark wake up call to us all. The human capacity for carnality and worldly values and resistance to spiritual values is seemingly limitless. What futility Jesus must have felt to work miracles and then be told it was the wrong day, or He did it by Beelzebub, etc. … No matter what He did the Jews rejected it.” The Holy Spirit issues various warnings in the NT against replicating this Jewish blindness (Heb 3:17-19; 1 Cor 10:1-13; Rom 11:17-24; etc.). The faithless mind can find a thousand ways to reject God.
