Jesus Asks a Question: “Why are you trying to trap me?”

Jesus Asks a Question: “Why are you trying to trap me?”

The Grand Inquisitor. Messiah Jesus was a Master of asking questions: some were open-ended, others were very pointed; some were out of curiosity, others were challenging; some seemed rhetorical, others seemed painfully obvious; some were to reveal Himself, others were to guide the other into self-understanding; some were intentionally provocative, others were to kick-start a conversation; some questions were asked to explore a topic to deepen understanding and stretch toward the truth; some were leading questions that He designed to suggest a particular answer, and others were questions in response to questions asked of Him; some were hypotheticals to stimulate the imagination, other questions were used  by Him as stepping stones to think logically from one point to the next. Jesus used questions to dignify the listener, letting that person know that He is taking that person seriously and listening carefully. Many of His questions were acts of friendship and used to pursue a more profound intimacy with someone. Jesus asked very few yes-no questions, and since time was usually irrelevant for Him when He was with people, He rarely asked a “when” question. Several biblical scholars have studied the gospels with Christ’s questions in mind, and they have literally counted a total of 307 questions in His various conversations and teachings. It seems that a worthy spiritual exercise when considering the many questions of Jesus is that we ask ourselves… should I take His questions personally, as if He was asking us that question right now?

The Question. “Why are you trying to trap me, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:18).

A Revolving Door of Tricksters. Sometimes it seemed that religious authorities were lining up, one after the other, to trap Jesus in His own words with their supposedly shrewd questions. Jesus had to remain intellectually agile as they kept attempting to trip Him up, to put him to the test. They tried every trick in the book… flattering Him with praise just before their dishonest questions; sending deceitful spies to ask awkward questions; pretending to be concerned with Torah issues and motivated by a love of God’s teachings; making a show of innocently seeking the truth. Time and again, the religious doubters tried to bait the hook, expecting Jesus to bite so they could reel Him right in and incriminate Himself. But no, they always walked away from their traps embarrassed, speechless, stunned with His arguments and knowledge, amazed and confounded. Finally, they knew they would never expose Jesus as a phony scholar of Torah, a political revolutionary, or a collaborator with Rome, or a misguided prophet. They came to see that Jesus was too quick on His feet, too shrewd, to knowledgeable, too wise for them. Finally, these tricksters wised up… “No one was able to answer Him a word, and from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions.” (Matt. 22:46).

A Full Day of Traps.  Matthew seemed to enjoy himself as he recounts three traps that were set for Jesus, one after the other by different religious authorities, all of them unsuccessful, in Matthew 22:15-40: First, concerning paying taxes to Caesar. Next, concerning the resurrection.  Finally, concerning the greatest commandment.

In TRAP #1 we see an unlikely team of Pharisees and Herodians trying to trick Jesus into either agreeing with the Pharisees or the Herodians. “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying…” (read Matthew 22:17-22; also refer to Mark 12:13-37 and Luke 20:2041). Jesus decided to teach them with a simple object lesson:

Object: A denarius, the Roman coin stamped with Caesar’s image. One denarius is worth a day’s wage. The Jews were required to pay an annual census tax to Rome, a tax of one denarius. Some of the tax went to pay for pagan temples and the unholy lifestyles of the Roman aristocracy. The Pharisees were bitterly opposed to the tax, because they didn’t consider Caesar their king. Only God was their king. The Herodians were Roman sympathizers, so they fully supported the tax.

Lesson: Knowing He was being trapped by the unlikely coalition of Pharisees and Herodians, Jesus asked for a Roman coin. It was time for an object lesson. They asked Him if Jews were supposed to pay the Roman tax. If He answered yes, He would be in trouble with the Jews who were opposed to Roman occupation and so didn’t want to support Caesar in any way. If He answered no, He could be thrown into jail for rebellion against the authority of Rome. Jesus took a denarius coin worth a day’s wage, pointed to it, and, like He did often, responded to a question with another question… “Whose image is on this coin?” Obviously, it was Caesar’s image on the coin. ‘So then, give to Caesar the things that are due Caesar, and to God the things that are due God.” In other words, it’s a question of ownership. Caesar should receive what is rightfully his, and God should receive what is rightfully His. If we are to pay taxes to Rome for government benefits and services, then do so. After all, that is Caesar’s image on the coin. But we owe ultimate allegiance and loyalty to God, because we are imprinted with God’s image. Because we are stamped with God’s image, God has overriding authority in our lives. If Caesar is due loyalty to a certain extent, then pay. We already know God is due our supreme commitment, so we owe Him that. We are ultimately obligated to God, for we carry His image just like the coin bears Caesar’s image. That wasn’t the answer either group was expecting, so they marveled at how Jesus outthought them once again. And they went their way speechless, amazed at His words.

TRAP #2:  “That same day some Sadducees came to Jesus. They claim that there is no resurrection of the dead, and they tried to trap Jesus with a technical question about marriage in heaven…” (Matt. 22:23). Jesus had just finished a confrontation with the Pharisees about whether to pay taxes to Caesar, after which the Pharisees marveled at Jesus’ adroit handling of what was supposed to be a trick question. Soon after that, another group of religious authorities decide it’s their turn to try to trap Jesus into saying something controversial or questionable. They threw out a rather ridiculous hypothetical about marriage in heaven between seven brothers and one widow.

“But Jesus replied to them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor God’s power. For in the resurrected state neither men nor women are given in marriage, but they are as the angels in heaven. But as to the resurrection of the dead, have you never read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob!’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living!” And when the throng heard His teaching, they were completely astonished and filled with glad amazement with His wisdom.” (Matt. 22:23-33).

The Sadducees were an unpopular group of elite aristocrats and ruling priests who headed up the Temple finance system. The common Jew on the street did not like the Sadducees because they were wealthy, disconnected from the common folk, and they considered themselves above it all. The high priest Caiaphas was a Sadducee, for example. The Sadducees were also known as Roman sympathizers so that they could retain their financial control of Temple operations. They believed that only the first five books of the Torah were divinely inspired, and ignored the rest of Hebrew Scriptures. They were hardline skeptics, and so rejected anything that was considered miraculous or supernatural. Since the notion of the resurrection of the dead gradually unfolded in the later writings in Scripture, the Sadducees refused to admit that the resurrection was even a possibility.

Resurrection. There are hints throughout the Hebrew Bible of the resurrection of the body. The Jewish belief in the general resurrection continues to this day, as it is listed as one of the core Articles of Faith. Orthodox Judaism considers resurrection one of the cardinal principles of Rabbinic Judaism.

1. “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.” (Isaiah 25:8)
2. “Your dead shall live; Together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust.” (Isaiah 26:19).
3. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2).
4. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself.” (Job 19:25-26).
5. “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction!” (Hosea 13:14).
6. And we can’t forget to mention these passages from the Psalms: “As for me, I shall see Your face in righteousness; I will be [fully] satisfied when I awake [to find myself] seeing Your likeness.”(17:15); “But God will redeem me from the power of Sheol (the place of the dead); for He will receive me.” (49:15);  “You, who have shown me many troubles and calamities, will revive me once more. From the depths of the earth, you will raise me up one more time.” (71:20).

Resurrection in the Hebrew Bible. It is true that Jewish believers throughout the Hebrew Bible were for the most part not all that interested in the afterlife. They didn’t talk much about heaven or hell as a place to go after death. Their sense was that God’s judgments were intended for life here on earth. People who were cursed in their life if they didn’t obey God were experiencing for the most part their hell on earth. They were judged here and now, and were suitably punished if that’s what God wanted to do. And the same for God’s blessings. People living on earth could be blessed during this life for obeying God. They didn’t need to think about the blessed life after they die, since they more or less have their heaven on earth. There were a few hints, though, as noted above, that some old saints in the Hebrew Bible were thinking about an afterlife with God.

Jesus, Yahweh and Moses. In His rather heated conversation with the Sadducees, though, Jesus referred to a portion of Scripture that they would have known well and supposedly believed in fully. After frankly telling them that they don’t know the Torah as well as they think they did, and that they underestimated God’s power to create a heaven after a general resurrection from the dead, Jesus quoted from one of the most important scenes in all of Scripture… the burning bush passage with Moses and Yahweh in Exodus 3:6.

God of the Present Tense. Yahweh introduced Himself to Moses through the burning bush by claiming to be the God of the Jewish Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God didn’t say He was their God in the past tense, but that He is their God in the present tense. So obviously, says Jesus, the Lord is saying to Moses that these long-dead Patriarchs are still alive and being sustained by God until the resurrection of the dead. God would not have claimed to be the God of the living if these men were dead and buried forever. So according to Jesus, Yahweh claimed with Moses that these Jewish Patriarchs were all alive in God waiting for the final resurrection, and that there is an eternal nature to God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Jesus triumphantly states here to the unbelieving Sadducees that the Lord is the God of the living, not of the dead. God is the Author of life, life eternal, which makes the resurrection a spiritual fact.

TRAP #3. “When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had bested the Sadducees, they gathered together their forces to try to trap Him again. One of their Torah scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would trip Him up…” (Matt. 22:34-35).

Torah Commandments. Rabbinic authorities by that time had determined that there were over 600 commands in the Mosaic Law. They even detailed that of those religious laws of Moses, 247 of them were positive laws, and 365 of them were negative laws. So the scholars of the Law spent a lot of time sorting through all these laws and ranking them as to which were “heavy” and which were “light.” In other words, which laws were the most important, and to violate them would prove to be something like a religious felony. And which were least important, so if violated it would be more like one our misdemeanors. The trick question posed by the temple scribe was one that was sure to incite differences of opinion with someone somewhere.

 “‘Rabbi, which of all the commandments is the most important?’ Jesus responded by telling him, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ This is the greatest and most important command. And a second is tied in together with it, ‘You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Torah and the Prophets are summed up and dependent on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:34-40).

Shema. Jesus gave the scribe the best, truest, most meaningful, and  most Jewish answer He could have given… the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6:5. The Shema is the first prayer taught to children in a Jewish household, and it is prayed twice daily by every believing Jew, every sunrise and every sunset. Love your God, with everything you got, heart, soul, strength, mind, everything. The lawyer then adds Leviticus 19:18 to the Shema, something that Jesus himself said many times. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus simply quoted the central creed of the observant Jew, the statement of biblical faith that every believer has accepted since birth.

Jesus Added ‘mind’ to the Shema! In Mark’s version of Jesus quoting the Shema, as well in Luke’s, (Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27), repeating this most famous passage in all of Judaism, Jesus added, “and with all your mind.”  He was not adding something so much as clarifying something for his listeners. The Hebrew understanding of heart (“lebab”) from the Shema included all the insides of a person, including thoughts and feelings, the intellect, the emotions, and the ability to act. The Hebrews believed that whatever a person thought or felt or did, the heart was literally right in the middle of all the action. To the Hebrews, one’s heart included the mind, because the heart was considered to be the source of one’s thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Jesus confirmed this with His comment in Matthew 15:19, that “Out of the heart proceeds thoughts…” So to love God with all our mind implies with all of one’s understanding, and intelligence, and shrewd discernment.

“The vocation of every Christian is to outthink the opposition.” (Elton Trueblood). The truth is that Jesus was an inspired, spiritual genius. He could use His intellect, His reason, His memory, and his imagination to run circles around whomever tried to trap Him. What an unspeakable gift, that those who are ‘in Christ,” who are inside Him and in intimate union with Him, are able to acquire the very mind of Christ!

“Who is able to understand the mind of Lord Yahweh? Who is able to be His teacher? We, however, have the mind of Christ!” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

“We have…” (Greek, “echomen”), which means ‘are having,’ ‘are keeping,’ or ‘are holding;’ to have and to keep on having, an action in progress; a process that is now taking place; the present state is a continuing state. So the literal translation is, “We, however, are having the mind of Christ.” Through the Holy Spirit, we now are new creatures who were given the capacity to learn how to think like Jesus.

… the mind of Christ.” (Greek for mind is “nous,” which means the highest knowing faculty of the soul; the spirit and understanding behind all we think and do). Through the Holy Spirit, then…

1. We are being given the capacity to think the thoughts of the Anointed One;
2. We have the growing ability to reason, to be logical, and to think things through like Jesus;
3. We are being infused with the ability to understand God’s wisdom;
4. We are being equipped with the moral intelligence of the Lord;
5. We are being given access to the reasoning behind the actions of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit;
6. We are in the process of perceiving spiritual matters as Christ perceives them;
7. We have an increasing ability to understand life from God’s perspective;
8. We will be continually inspired to develop the divine common sense and street-smart shrewdness that Jesus was known for;
9. We are gaining insight into what truly matters according to the thinking of God;
10. We have a growing ability to reflect and ponder according to the will of Christ;
11. We enjoy an ongoing co-mingling of our mind with Christ’s mind, until the end, when the new will have completely replaced the old, and those two minds will be indistinguishable.

“Gird the loins of your mind; be sober minded, self-controlled. Set your hope completely on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”  (1 Peter 1:13).

Gird Your Loins (“anazonnumi”). In the biblical era, men always wore flowing tunics, a robe that could have been knee-length or even down closer to the ankles. To “gird up” meant gathering the loose lower parts of the tunic, folding them up into the waist area, and tucking it into the waistcloth.  a belt-like article of clothing called a girdle. One’s loin was the waist area, the area between the hips and ribs. So “girding up” was done every day… hitch your tunic up and tuck it in, which is only common sense. If one didn’t gird their loins, one would not have the freedom of movement needed to take long strides, or run, or work, or fight. That was the whole purpose of that belt around your hips… to remove the hindrances of those long, restrictive tunics worn by everyone in those days. This very common practice turned into a sort of metaphor, an idiom used by everyone to say: prepare for action, get ready to move, do what you need to do in readiness for work and movement. The only time when one’s girdle was loosened was if that person was lazy, or apathetic, or was sleeping. An ill-prepared mind like that certainly does not have the freedom of movement needed to run the race of faith, labor for the Lord, or engage in spiritual warfare.

Gird Your Mind. Since men don’t wear tunics or girdle-belts these days, of course, this metaphor for readiness and preparation is often spoken in phrases like, Time to roll up your sleeves! Get your thinking caps on! Fasten your seatbelts! Get your rear in gear! Keep your eyes peeled! Get ready to rumble! Be on your toes! Get your head into the game! Get your game face on! Focus! So if St. Peter were speaking to us today, he might have said, “Roll up the sleeves of your mind and get yourself mentally prepared!” “Put on your thinking cap and snap out of your stupor!” “Fasten your mental seatbelt because something challenging is coming your way!” “Get your mind’s rear in gear and get yourself ready!” Get your thought-life ready to rumble!” “Be on your mental toes!” “Get your head into the game and focus!” “Keep your intellectual eyes peeled and ready to do some serious thinking!”