Rules vs. Truth

For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. (John 5:18)

We tend to view this verse from the perspective of looking back and seeing the animosity that finally led many of these same Jews to crucify Jesus because of their hatred of Him. But it might be much more useful to try to get into their minds a little bit to see where they were coming from and then to see how similar we may actually be to the way they viewed their situation.

The Jews were God's chosen people on earth. The Jews had been given their laws and instructions directly from heaven through Moses, the prophet that they honored the most in their history. There is little dispute that the Jews had the religion closest to God's will for humanity given all the other mixed up notions about the supernatural that were circulating around the world in ancient times. The religion of the Jews was far superior to that of any nation around them, but at the same time they had failed to obey the true purpose and spirit of all of the laws and guidelines that God had given them, but they had instead turned them into a means of distorting God's true nature in the minds of most people.

Like many people today, the Jews had externalized religion and had come to view it as primarily belief and performance-based, not a relationship with their Creator God based deep in the heart. As a result they had synthesized a system of religion over the years that included a great deal of extra regulations for the purpose of supposedly protecting people from even getting close to violating the commandments given to Moses. They honestly thought they were doing God a favor by building extra walls of regulations around what they thought was right, but in reality they had shifted people's focus away from an intimate relationship with their loving Father in heaven to a religion that had caused most people to have in their hearts a picture of God that was very far from what was true.

These Jewish leaders and teachers had a solid foundation for their beliefs and practices based on their reading of the Torah, the first five books in the Old Testament written by their prophet Moses. When the contents of those books are taken into consideration, it is much easier to see why these Jews felt so compelled to carry out a death decree on Jesus based on what they were seeing Him do in their midst. Consider just two of these commands from the Torah.

Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. (Exodus 31:14)

Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24:16)

Do you see more clearly now the correlation between what this verse from John talks about and these commands given by God to Moses? The Jewish leaders were not just jealous of Jesus' rising popularity but felt that they were actually defending the very rules that God had given them through their prophet Moses. They were simply wanting to carry out the instructions that God had given centuries before so they might execute God's justice against a common man who was clearly in their minds violating at least two very serious laws of their nation and religion.

We tend to struggle to see this story from that perspective because we start with the assumption that they should have known somehow that Jesus was no common man. But that is to miss the point that this fact was not really overwhelmingly clear to many people at that point in history. They had neither the accumulated evidence of the truth about Jesus' Sonship of God or the history of His death on the cross like we have much farther downstream. Of course they also lacked the faith in Jesus that would be vital to being able to perceive Him differently than just an ordinary man. As a result of all these factors they saw Jesus as a somewhat mysterious person with supernatural powers but that also clearly seemed to be violating the fundamental principles and laws that governed their view of what true religion was supposed to look like.

Their opinion that Jesus should be put to death would have been solidly supported by the above texts and they would have had the upper hand if the argument were to take place as to the right thing to do. The Scriptures clearly stated many times that anyone who violated the Sabbath by working on it was to be put to death. Likewise, His claims as a human to be the direct Son of the God of the universe thereby refuting what appeared to them to be clear evidence that He had been born out of wedlock, conceived from an unknown father source, was nothing less than clear blasphemy. As such they felt that they had more than enough evidence to convict Him of violations and that the law clearly determined a death sentence upon Him. Thus they felt justified in their desires to put Him to death based on the clear rules and punishments laid out in the books of Moses.

How often do we rely so insistently on what we believe is our plain reading of the Bible for our judgments against others? How often do we feel we are justified in the harsh way we treat certain people who appear to us to be out of line with church policy? I had the unfortunate experience of getting caught up just yesterday in a very similar situation. A person felt that they were justified in attacking another person in the church (not even yet a member) and berating them for apparently resisting authority because there appeared to be clear violations of the rules governing how they believe the church is supposed to be run. There was more concern that the rules be upheld than there was for the feelings of the people being attacked. As a result there were wounds inflicted and hard feelings and confusion and pain spread throughout a number of church members that should have never happened if people had been guided by the Spirit instead of the letter of the law.

Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-- not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:5-6 NIV)