Lecture

Repeatedly Jesus’ countrymen concluded that He sinned against heaven by claiming to be equal with God.

Darrell Bock: The question is often asked: Why did the Jews get so upset with Jesus? Why did they crucify Him? And of course this ultimately boils down to one scene; there’s a painting in a British museum in London that’s of this scene. And that’s Jesus standing before a lighted candle with the high priest staring Him in the face, and He’s standing, and everything else is kind of shrouded in black, darkness, you can barely see the faces of the Sanhedrin around these two figures standing at the table. I don’t know if that’s what it really looked like, but it certainly is a dramatic portrayal of this moment. And the question is asked: Are You the Messiah? The Son of God? The priest asked the question. And Jesus replies by saying that He’s going to be seated—they’re going to see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Father coming on the clouds. And then the priest rips his garments, because for him that was blasphemous.

Matthew 26:64–66 (NKJV)

Jesus said to him, “It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, “He has spoken blasphemy! What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy! What do you think?” They answered and said, “He is deserving of death.”

Darrell Bock: What was it that offended him? I think what offended him in the claim is the idea that Jesus …

because they all knew He claimed Himself to be the Son of Man. It’s a title out of Daniel: authority, a picture of a judge. But He was claiming to be able to go directly into God’s presence and to do His bidding, to be His vice regent if we were to use royal terminology. And this was something the Jews had trouble contemplating. They had categories that allowed people to go into God’s presence, maybe even be at His side for a time, being next to Him. But this was reserved for people like Moses and Enoch who got translated and taken up to the Lord. These were the great Old Testament luminaries, not a Galilean rural preacher who went around in their time. This would have been offensive. It would have been worse than claiming to walk in the Holy of Holies of the temple, sit by the Shekinah and live there.

Now we know how the Jews felt about people who wanted to walk in the Holy of Holies and live there, because they fought wars over that. That’s the offense of Jesus’ claim. Any idea that He would come back as Judge—the riding on the clouds is a divine image and a picture of the Son of Man is a picture of someone who’s going to exercise the final judgment. And so what Jesus is really saying had an edge to it, because what He was saying … you may think you have Me on trial, but you’re the one on trial, and one day I will judge you. And that also was an element of blasphemy, because the Old Testament said you could not challenge the appointed leaders of the nation, and that was the challenge to the appointed leaders of the nation from the Jewish point of view. They had to kill Him, because if they didn’t, their authority would have been undermined.

If Jesus’ friends wanted to believe that Jesus was more than a man, His enemies did not. The religious leaders of Israel were outraged to think that the same One who accused them of being hypocritical, blind leaders of the blind, would at the same time claim to be able to forgive sins, speak of God as His Father and even say,

“I and My Father are one.”

(John 10:30).

Michael Wilkins: Jesus claimed to be one with God, yes, in terms of His mission, yes, in terms of His submitting His will to the Father’s will, so that they were one. But the Jews, when they heard that statement in John’s gospel, tried to pick up stones to kill Him, because they were recognizing that He was claiming oneness of His essence as God: that He shares the very essence of Deity, so that He and the Father are one God—behold, the Lord our God is one God (see Deuteronomy 6:4)—in the great mystery that now has unfolded before their eyes … was that Jesus is the Son, one with the Father in their very essence.