The Trouble with Jesus
by Constance Hastings
Game Over
After this? They’re done with him, got nothing left. No more trick questions, sneaky set ups, traps to make him look stupid, bring him down. They won’t even try. Every time they stepped into the ring, they got shut down. He’s won every round. Get out of this fight, walk away before he destroys what’s left of your credibility.
But the lead priests, the Pharisees as they are known by their position and theological thought, weren’t ready to take the L yet. Give it one more try, take a last shot. Drag Jesus into one of those pointless religious debates on a small point of law. Sooner or later, they figured Jesus would slip up, say something slightly off. Then they could at least raise doubts, twist it and use it against him.
“Teacher, (as the people thought of him) what is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Sounds deep, equivalent to how many angels can dance on the pin head of a needle. Religious nerd stuff. Make the useless seem important. Bore everybody. Make faith look like a dead-end debate club.
Foundational
He won’t play that game. Jesus doesn’t invent some new doctrine, deliver any new insights or even approach the legalistic religious loopholes that tripped up so many. Cutting through their bull, he hands back what all Jews knew as “Shema”, that which they were called to hear and teach to the next generations. “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Right out of their own holy scripts. (Deuteronomy 6:5) Jesus declares it the greatest commandment.
He doesn’t stop there. He doubles down. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18) Everything else, all of the Big Ten and all the other teachings find their foundation on these principles.
Full Surrender to Love
Anyone with half a brain sees where it starts. Love. But not the cheap version. The road Love takes is way beyond liking, good vibes, warm affection. It’s dedication that burns the soul with the divine. Heart, soul, and mind means it takes everything from you. Nothing you wish for, desire, believe is right, even what you think you need is permissible in position before God. Everything gets laid before God. This power and being calls unto you and yet ultimately is beyond full understanding.
Love, at its core, is trust.
Trusting God's will over your own. Trusting God's purpose when you don't understand it. Trusting the One who's calling you, even when He's bigger than anything your mind can completely grasp.
Full Sharing of Love
Love your neighbor as yourself. Necessarily, you need to be in touch with your own needs in order to really show up for somebody else. Again, nothing revolutionary. Jesus was not the only wise one to suggest it. But Jesus takes it somewhere nobody expected. Your neighbor isn’t just your people, has no limitations on its object. Not just your friends. Not just those who agree with you. Not just people inside your circle who look like you, vote like you, worship like you, or live like you. His preaching had emphasized if you only love those who love you or who are like you, the very exclusivity of it demonstrates a lack of love.
Loving neighbor is stretched here to love the outsider, those with whom you have no commonality all the way to those against whom you have been conditioned and race-d to hate (Matthew 5:43-47) Yeah. Call them your enemy, but you’ve got no loopholes or exemptions in God’s realm not to extend love.
It’s bigger than huge; it’s colossal. It’s costly, beyond holiday serving the poor or generously giving to places and programs that proclaim God and help others. Bigger than posting nice Bible verses online. It’s total reorientation and rearrangement of priorities that will sacrifice one’s core self, one’s core relationships.
Godly love demands a steep price. Sacrifice. Real sacrifice. Yeah. Godly love comes with a price tag. And it’s steep.
The crazy part? Jesus’ questioners have no comeback. What’s to argue? He speaks right out of what they teach themselves. Stop. Wait. Pause. He doesn’t condemn them here as he’s done before. No challenges of being hypocrites. He let truth sit there, soak in for what it meant then as well as now.
Return the Punch
He knows what they/we need. It’s his turn, switches gears. Jesus asks a fundamental question. “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” That’s what this was all about, why a grasp of the law and commandments was so crucial. Their understanding was the Messiah would not come until Israel finally got its act together. These questions were meant to prepare the people to receive the one they would know as Savior.
What follows is rather foreign and confusing to modern readers, but the Pharisees and crowd around were familiar with its background. The Messiah was to claim heritage from the ancestry of King David. Yet, in one of the Psalms attributed to David and considered to be a prophecy of the coming Messiah, there’s this statement: “The LORD said to my Lord, Sit in honor at my right hand….” (Psalm 110:1) LORD was understood to be Yahweh, God of the Hebrews. The passage indicates God was speaking to the Messiah, and David refers to the Messiah as his Lord.
So? Carefully follow this. If David refers to the Messiah as Lord, and basically does so in a present tense, how can the Messiah be David’s son or ancestor?
A Decisive Blow
Well, if you have no answer, neither did they. They shut up and the room got real quiet. The struggle was in the wrestling and relinquishing what they hoped God would do. If the Messiah was in the ancestry line and followed King David, it indicated a Messianic triumph over the oppressors, the enemies of Israel. Political victory wrapped in religious language. The hope was ultimately that Israel would be restored to the greatness it had known with David’s rule. Nationalism was the god they worshipped.
But if the Messiah was present and one to whom Yahweh spoke as equal and worthy of divine honor and worship, that’s a different ball game. Now you had a Messiah that was the embodiment of these great commandments, one who embodies perfect Love. To know this Messiah is to be in this new kind of kingdom, built not on domination but transformation. It’s an expression of Love that entails the forgiveness, mercy, and grace extended to all who claim a new kind of Savior.
A Different Kingdom
This Savior would change the world through people willing to be changed by love. Jesus’ life stands as supreme example of that. His coming execution on a cross was an act of Love in action, the greatest act of surrender, mercy, grace. Love brought the hope of change and a new way to live, a new hope, a new kingdom.
That day the final bell rang in the Temple. Jesus had within him the power and right to deliver a knockout punch to squelch challenges to his teaching and ministry. Yet, instead of delivering the finishing blow, he offered them something better. Love. He extended the Love he drew from the ancient writings to his challengers. They leave with the possibility of realizing God had for them a bigger design than they in their limited deliberations could fathom. Mercy and Grace in new thinking and living was available.
In a way, it was anticlimactic. It has to. God’s story isn’t built around winning arguments. It’s built around Love. Love doesn’t have an expiration date, a deadline to meet. And it doesn’t run out of time.
Love doesn’t end.
Named 2024 Notable Book Award by Southern Christian Writers Conference
and
Kingdom Book Awards 2026 Finalist!
The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings
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