29. The growing opposition

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The opposition and hatred of the Pharisees, Scribes, and temple leaders against Our Lord grew from the inside out, as it does in most human hearts. First, they hated Him in their own hearts; second, they expressed their hatred to His disciples; then, they manifested their hatred openly to the people; and finally, the hatred centered on Christ Himself.

The evil dispositions of their own hearts were manifested when a man sick of the palsy was brought to Our Lord at Capharnaum. Instead of immediately working the miracle, Our Lord forgave his sins. Since sickness, death, and evil were the effects of sin, though not necessarily personal sin in any individual, He went first to the root of the disease, namely sin, and pardoned it:

Son, thy sins are forgiven.

MARK 2:6

Instead of considering the miracle as evidence of the One Who worked it, His enemies:

Reasoned in their own minds.

Why does He speak so?

He is talking blasphemously.

Who can forgive sins,

But God, and God only?

MARK 2:7

They did not mistake the implications that Christ was acting as God. The Old Testament did say that such power belonged to God. True, only God could forgive sins, but God could do it and was doing it now through His human nature. Later on, He would give that power to His Apostles and their successors:

Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them.

JOHN 20:23

But men who exercised this authority would still be only human instruments of His Divinity, as in a greater way His human nature was the instrument of His Divinity. Though the thoughts of the Pharisees remained in their own minds, no thought of man is unknown to God.

Jesus knew at once, in His Spirit,

Of these secret thoughts of theirs, and said to them,

Why do you reason thus in your minds?

Which command is more lightly given,

To say to the palsied man,

Thy sins are forgiven, or to say,

Rise up, take thy bed with thee, and walk?

And now, to convince you that the Son of Man

Has authority to forgive sins while He is on earth

(here He spoke to the palsied man):

I tell thee, rise up, take thy bed with thee

And go home. And he rose up at once, and took his bed,

And went out in full sight of them.

MARK 2:8–12

In their minds, He was guilty of blasphemy because He claimed the power of God. Concerning His authority to forgive sins, He gave them sensible evidence that His claim was not fictitious. Though they could not deny what they had seen, they did not acknowledge His power. Faith in Christ was increasing among the people but decreasing among these Pharisees, Scribes, and Doctors of the Law and of every village of Galilee and Judea and in Jerusalem. Miracles are not necessarily a cure for unbelief. If the will is perverse, all the evidence in the world would not convince, not even a Resurrection from the dead.

Up to this moment, the Scribes and others merely thought evil. The hatred now found utterance on their lips against the disciples of the Lord. The occasion was when He called Matthew, the publican, as an Apostle. A publican was a Jew who betrayed his own people by becoming a tax collector for the Romans who occupied their country. The publican would promise to collect a certain sum in taxes from a community; but all he took over and above that amount, he retained. Naturally, this gave rise to many dishonesties; as a result the publican was one of the most despised of citizens.

When Our Lord saw the publican at his table receiving taxes, He gave no promise to Matthew, but merely said, “Follow Me.” Matthew followed immediately. He who was so anti-patriotic later on wrote the first Gospel and became the most patriotic of citizens, recounting a hundred times from prophecies the glory of Israel in having begotten the Savior.

Our Lord accepted an invitation to eat in the house of Matthew. This was a great scandal to the Pharisees and their strait-laced righteousness. But when they saw:

Many publicans and sinners were to be found

Sitting down with Him and His disciples,

they asked the disciples:

How comes it that your Master eats

with publicans and sinners?

MATTHEW 9:11

He was being recognized as a Master and a Teacher, but now He was hazarding His reputation by associating with the outcasts of society. If lepers herded together, was there not in His companionship with sinners a proof that He was a sinner, too?

Before He read their thoughts; this time the disciples probably told Him the charge of the Pharisees, to which He answered that it was precisely because He was unlike sinners that He came into their midst. Their rigid formalism which expressed itself in external sacrifices ignored the real sacrifice of self which would save sinners. They boasted of their knowledge of Scripture, so He gave the Pharisees a reference to Osee that God delighted more in mercy than in formalisms.

It is not those who are in health

That have need of the physician,

It is those who are sick.

Go home and find out what the words mean,

It is mercy that wins favor with Me,

Not sacrifice.

I have come to call sinners, not the just.

MATTHEW 9:12, 13

Once more, He said that He “has come” into the world, not that He was born. Always, there is the affirmation that He did not begin to be in time, but only that He as God became something He was not, namely, a man. And the reason of His coming was not to write a new code of morals; He came to do something for sinners. Those who, like the Pharisees, refused to admit that they were sick with sin, did not need Him as the Physician of their souls. The blind who refused to admit the existence of light could never be healed. Not for a mere literal adherence to ceremonial law, understood as “sacrifice,” but to lift up the fallen, had He come. As a Physician, He could do no good to those who were curious, or who denied guilt, or called it an Oedipus complex; He came only to be a sin-bearer, and hence only the sinners and not the self-righteous would profit by His coming.

Love of the sinners was a new thing on the earth. If He came uniquely to be a teacher, He would have written His law as did Laotze, and He would have told men to “Learn and practice.” But since He came to be a Savior and to give His life “as a ransom,” He summoned men to a purging of evil:

I have not come to call the just;

I have come to call sinners to repentance.

LUKE 5:32

Opposition now came more into the open when Our Lord cured the dumb demoniac. It now left the closed circle of their own dark hearts and was directed to the people to stir them up against Him. The multitudes who saw the miracle were filled with amazement, saying that nothing like this was ever seen in Israel. This drove the Pharisees to open blasphemy:

It is the prince of the devils that

Enables Him to cast the devils out.

MATTHEW 9:34

Our Lord answered the charge by showing that He drove out Satan through the power of His Godhead, using the analogy of a besieged house occupied by a strong man. But someone stronger than he enters and seizes all the weapons, defenses, and possessions of the house. Our Lord said that if He entered the domain of evil, and took possession of the house, such as the body of the one possessed, then there was manifested some great anti-satanic power which was nothing less than that of God Himself. But because they had said He had an unclean spirit, they were guilty of the unpardonable sin; they were putting themselves beyond forgiveness. If they poisoned the fountain of living water, from which alone they could slake their thirst, then they must die of the poison. If they blasphemed the One from Whom forgiveness flowed, then where was the hope of forgiveness? The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem.

The final stage of their attack was directed against Our Lord Himself.

Jesus was walking through the corn-fields

On the Sabbath Day.

And the disciples, who were hungry, fell to

Plucking the ears of corn and eating them.

The Pharisees saw this, and said to Him,

Look, Thy disciples are doing

A thing which it is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

MATTHEW 12:1–1

The Old Testament did not forbid the plucking of the corn from a field; but doing so on the Sabbath, according to the Pharisees, involved a double sin. As the Talmud put it:

In case a woman rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is considered as sifting; if she rubs the heads of wheat, it is regarded as threshing; if she cleans of the side-adherences, it is sifting out fruit; if she bruises the ears, it is grinding; if she throws them up in her hand, it is winnowing.

What scandalized the Pharisees was not the breach of Biblical law, but the breach of rabbinic law. Having seen what they thought was a desecration of the Sabbath day, they now openly attacked Our Blessed Lord for something the disciples did.

The answer of Our Lord was threefold: first, He appealed to the Prophets, then to the Law, then to One Who was greater than either, namely, Himself. Both instances which He quoted were those in which ceremonial niceties gave way to a higher law. Our Lord appealed to their great national hero, David, who ate the shewbread which was forbidden to all save the priests. If they allowed David to break a Divine prohibition of a mere ceremonial affair in favor of bodily necessity, why should they not allow it to His disciples? When David was flying away from Saul and was hungry, Our Lord said that he and his followers

Went into the tabernacle,

And ate the loaves set out there before God

Although neither He nor His followers,

Nor anyone else except the priests

Had a right to eat them?

MATTHEW 12:4

The Pharisees certainly would have admitted that the danger to life superseded the ceremonial law; but more than that, David was allowed to eat of this bread not just because he was hungry but because he pleaded that he was in the service of the king. The Apostles, who were following Our Lord, were also in the service of someone greater; and ministering to Him was more important than David ministering to an earthly master.

Our Lord then answered more directly the charge of violating the Sabbath law. The ones who accused Him labored in the temple on the Sabbath; they prepared sacrifices, they lighted lamps; and yet because these were part of the temple service, they were not considered as violating the Sabbath law. But here, on this Sabbath, in the midst of this field of corn, and with no apparent trappings of glory stands One Who is greater than the temple.

And I tell you there is One standing here

Who is greater than the temple.

MATTHEW 12:6

These profound words were blasphemy to the Pharisees, but they were another affirmation of what He said when He cleansed for the first time the temple in Jerusalem, saying that His Body was a Temple because the Godhead dwelt therein. In Him the Godhead dwelt corporally; nowhere else on earth was God to be found except veiled in His humanity. His Apostles, therefore, if they had broken a ceremonial regulation, were guiltless because they were in the service of the Temple, aye, even of God Himself.

Seven times in all, they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath. He confounded them once in the synagogue of Capharnaum, after healing the man with the withered hand, by saying:

Is there a man among you that has a sheep,

Who would not take hold of it and pull it out,

If it should fall into a pit on the Sabbath?

And of what value is a sheep compared to a man?

There is nothing unlawful, then,

In doing a work of mercy on the Sabbath Day.

MATTHEW 12:12, 13

Now the opposition closes. From hateful hearts, it passed to disputatious words to disciples, then to blasphemous charges in the hearing of the people, and finally to the Lord Himself. Not being able to answer Him, after the miracle in Capharnaum:

Thereupon the Pharisees left the synagogue,

And plotted together to make away with Him.

MATTHEW 12:14

Our Lord withdrew from their strife. It was not the time for judging them. Matthew, at this point, quoted a passage from Isaias in which was foretold the meek character of Christ:

He will not snap the staf that is already crushed,

Or put out the wick that still smolders,

Until the time comes when He crowns His judgement with victory.

And the Gentiles will put their trust in His name.

MATTHEW 12:20, 21

There was nothing more feeble than a cracked reed which sometimes was used by shepherds with which to pipe tunes; nor was there anything more weak than a flickering wick of a candle; yet neither of these would He crush, so gentle would be His character. He would not quench the slightest aspiration toward Him nor regard any soul as beyond use. A smoking wick could no longer illumine a room, but no soul would ever be regarded as such an offensive object. The bruised reed could not entertain with sweet music, but no soul is to be discarded as useless and beyond hope of responding to heavenly harmonies. The bruised reed could be mended, and the smoking flax could be re-enkindled by a power and a grace outside of either.

The Gospel could not have chosen, in the midst of such conflict and hatred and bitterness, a better moment to have pictured His patience, gentleness, and forbearance than in the midst of the assaults of the Scribes and Pharisees. They were distinct parties, but because they had found a greater enemy, they united and came to Him this time in a semi-polite manner and they asked:

Master, may we see a sign from Thee?

MATTHEW 12:39

The miracles of healing and the like were not enough, they said. They desired some extraordinary sign from heaven. He answered:

The generation that asks for a sign is

A wicked and unfaithful generation.

MATTHEW 12:39

Some versions have it an “adulterous” generation, because the sin of adultery was used in the metaphorical sense of spiritual unfaithfulness to God. Once again He affirmed the importance of moral conduct as an essential for seeing truth. He contrasted the practical conduct and faith of the repentance of Nineve at the preaching of Jonas, and the faith and zeal of the Queen of Sheba when she heard of the wisdom of Solomon, with the unrepentance of the Scribes and Pharisees and the coldness of their hearts. Though the visitor of Solomon was a queen, she journeyed for a great distance for no other reason than the quest of wisdom; she, therefore, would rise up in judgment against the Scribes and Pharisees who spurned truth.

She came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom

Of Solomon, and behold,

A greater than Solomon is here.

MATTHEW 12:42

Our Lord here claimed superiority to the one great prophet of the Jews who was listened to by the Gentile nations, and who drew an enquirer from the ends of the earth. The Gentile believers will judge those very Pharisees who saw Him and yet rejected the Gospel. But not only will the real intellectuals of the world rise up in judgment against those who refuse to accept Him who was greater than Solomon, but also:

The men of Nineve will rise up with this generation

At the day of judgment, and will leave it without excuse;

For they did penance when Jonas preached to them,

And behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

MATTHEW 12:41

The men of Nineve were heathen and if they did penance at the preaching of Jonas, then should not the Scribes and Pharisees do penance at the preaching of One Who was greater than Jonas? The people of Nineve had not the privileges of these Scribes and Pharisees of talking to God in the form of man; the rejection of Him was therefore a presage of the coming judgment. In asking for a sign they showed moral perversity, for if He did the kind of miracle that they required they would still not believe. They wanted signs not for conviction, but in order to condemn Him.

This brought Him to the only sign that He would give them: the sign of the prophet Jonas.

Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-beast,

And the Son of Man will be three days and three nights

In the heart of the earth.

MATTHEW 12:39–40

Once again the shadow of the Cross falls on the Scribes and the Pharisees. In veiled language He told them that on the third day He would rise again. He would be treated as was Jonas by the sailors, except that Jonas was thrown into the sea, and He would be thrown into a grave. But as Jonas escaped the heart of the sea on the third day to fulfill his mission of preaching penance, so He would rise to fulfill His Mission of sending His Spirit unto the healing of sin and the preaching of repentance. The miracle of Jonas was a sign that he was a Divinely commissioned prophet, and it authenticated his calling of the Ninevites to repentance; so the Resurrection would authenticate His works. Those who will not accept the sign of humiliation and death, and then of Resurrection and glory, would accept no other sign.

Behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

MATTHEW 12:41

If the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonas, then why did they not repent unto Him, to Whom Jonas pointed? They asked for a sign to condemn Him; He gave them a sign which condemned them. They wanted a sign from heaven; He gave them one from the depths of the earth; they wanted a sign which would excite wonder; He gave them one which would stir up repentance; they wanted a sign for themselves alone; He gave them one from the land of the Gentiles to which His Gospel would pass after His Resurrection. At Nazareth, when His fellow citizens attempted to kill Him, He gave two examples from the Old Testament drawn from the Gentiles to show that His Gospel would pass to them. In this controversy, He used three more examples from the Gentiles. But since “salvation is of the Jews,” as He told them, they must first reject Him before the Gentile world would receive His truth and life. Once more, the Cross and risen glory are placarded before them as the reason of His coming from heaven to earth.

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