Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?
Mark 12:24
Yup he really just did that.
With one question, Jesus just invalidated an entire Jewish sect.
The Sadducees came to Jesus asking a hypothetical theological question about the resurrection. The Sadducees, if you don’t know, were a liberal religious sect in Israel who didn’t believe in a literal resurrection after the dead. After asking a question central to their entire sect, Jesus tells them:
You are wrong. And you don’t know the power of God.
I find it so fascinating how willing Jesus is to offend in order for us to hear the truth. Over and over again in the gospels, Jesus is found offending, angering, and upsetting whole groups of people with things he says and does.
To our present world where we are so easily offended by anything, I wonder how we would receive Jesus. The truth is, we probably can’t.
One of my most vivid memories while I was in seminary was a vibrant discussion about a passage in scripture. One after another, students confessed how they were offended at what Jesus said. I sat there a bit shocked at our approach to Jesus.
For we would be found in the company of the rich man who would walk away after Jesus told him to sell his goods. We would be found in the company who wanted to throw him off the cliff after he declared that he would go to the gentiles. We would be found in the company of Peter who told him that he couldn’t die on the cross.
Because Jesus positively impacts our lives not on our terms, but on his. And his love isn’t a pampering love; it’s a perfecting love.
The problem with a hyper-offensive world is that the core belief is that the world revolves around me and my truth. We are offended because someone has come against our own internal construct of truth and the value systems that revolve around that.
However, for a God who made the world, made the truth, and made our minds to even conceive the truth, perhaps we should reconsider the center point of which the world truly revolves around.
Hint–it’s not us.
Lord, help us to reconfigure our center of truth in our lives such that we could hear a word from you. For you are the way, the truth, and the life and you give us the truth not to hurt our feelings, but to set us free. Remove the hubris and arrogance that blinds us from seeing it today. Yes, even at the expense of our feelings.
