Last week, I wrote about the playful Jesus, and he often was, especially with his disciples. This week I want to tell you about the dangerous Jesus. Jesus started his life in danger when his parents had to take him to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath (Matthew 2:1-16).
During his ministry, Jesus was constantly in danger. John 7:1 says, “Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life.” Matthew 12:14-15 says, “The Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place.” John 10:39 says, “Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.”
Jesus was always in danger, frequently fleeing the authorities of the day. So hunted was he that he lamented that the Son of Man (God’s Messiah.) had no place to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). Whether by the Roman authorities or the Jewish leaders, Jesus was constantly a hunted man.
Don’t feel too sorry for Jesus, however. The reason that he was hunted was that he was God’s hunter. As God’s Messiah, he was constantly targeting evil and trying to destroy it. When the religious authorities did not want him to heal on the Sabbath, he fumed at them for their hardheartedness. In defiance, he healed the man with the withered hand, to the embarrassment of the Jewish leaders (Mark 3:5).
Similarly, when Jesus healed a woman who had been crippled for 18 years and the synagogue leader became indignant because he had healed on the Sabbath, Jesus verbally assaulted him, calling him and others like him hypocrites who would rather keep rules than liberate people (Luke 13:10-17). Jesus was on a mission to heal and liberate the downtrodden, and he was at war with anyone who stood in his way.
According to the Gospel of John, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus took a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and found corruption in the temple. He calmly sat down, braided a whip out of cords and proceeded to drive all the sheep and cattle out of the temple area where they were being sold for outrageous prices by the religious authorities.
To make a sacrifice and become right with God, people had to buy these animals, available for purchase only with temple coins, which they had to purchase on the temple grounds at exorbitant exchange rates. While he was driving out the animals with a whip, Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers, sending their coins bouncing away on the stone floors.
The dangerous Jesus conducted a very loud and violent protest against the corruption in the temple that was keeping people from God. Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, and Luke 19:45-48 record the cleansing of the temple at the end of Jesus’ ministry, but John puts it at the beginning of it, which may have been John’s way of saying that every time Jesus went to the temple during his public ministry, he conducted those violent protests.
I can imagine the temple merchants saying, “Look out. Here he comes again.” Jesus was a dangerous man. He was outraged that the religious authorities were keeping people from God, rather that helping them find God.
A demon-possessed man once shouted, “Ha. What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God.” (Luke 4:34). Jesus silenced the demon and commanded it to come out of the man. Yes, Jesus was in the destroying business. He consistently cast demons out of people and restored them to their right minds. He was a dangerous man to the demons and the empire of evil.
In John 11, Jesus returned to Bethany, where Lazarus had died. When he met Mary and saw her broken heart, the Bible says that “he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled” (John 11:33, NIV). However, the root of the Greek word here means “to snort in anger” like a warhorse. Jesus was angry at humanity’s final enemy, death.
Outraged, he went to Lazarus’ tomb and commanded him to come out of the tomb. When Lazarus did, wrapped like a mummy, Jesus commanded bystanders to “take off the grave clothes and let him go” (John 11:44). Jesus wants to liberate us from death and the fear of it. He is a dangerous foe of all the enemies that keep people from God.
Jesus could be playful, meditative, peaceful and calm, but he was also a lion stalking its prey. He was fierce in his pursuit of overthrowing the kingdoms of darkness as he ushered in the Kingdom of God.
Dr. Dan Darby is a retired United Methodist pastor.
