Jesus Was a Threat...or Was He?

Jesus was described as a threat to the Roman government in Matthew more than any other Gospel.

THE BEGINNING CHAPTERS

In the beginning chapters, wise men came from the East to seek out the one who was born King of the Jews. This so bothered Herod that he sent to kill Jesus and because he didn't know where to find Jesus he had an entire city of young boys killed (probably a dozen or so kids). This story drew the reader back to the infancy of Moses thus comparing Jesus to Moses who was also a threat to the government of Egypt.

The threat Moses posed was not the typical overthrow of the government threat, but rather the threat was that he was simply born in a generation designated to be destroyed. Moses just happened to be a part of a large group that threatened the leaders of Egypt. Pharaoh was threatened by the sheer growth of the Jewish people and was afraid they would become too numerous for them to handle, so to protect his own government and his own people he demanded that the Jewish slaves would throw their baby boys into the Nile river to die. It was one of those babies who was discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh and was rescued, who was named Moses. Moses' feeble attempt to use force to rescue his people was a failure that sent him into the desert to live.

When Moses did return to Egypt he helped the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt and took them into the desert to become a nation.

When Jesus was born, the wise men called him the "King of the Jews." They thought he was a political king as did Herod who heard the wise men asking for the whereabouts of "the King of the Jews." For this he was considered a threat to the throne. But was Jesus really a threat? So far my studies suggest that Jesus was not a direct threat to Rome in any way; and if he was, the NT writers did not include that information in their Gospels. If he was a threat at all, it was indirect at best, in that Jesus promised people a better kingdom; one that came from God; one that turned the world upside down, giving power to the powerless and poor, and demoting the rich and powerful.

THE LAST CHAPTERS

The last chapters in Matthew record the passion narrative where the leaders of Israel and Rome send Jesus to a cross to die, even though there was no testimony found against him.

The fact that Matthew starts and finishes the story of Jesus in the halls of Roman and Jewish officials; the fact that these leaders were threatened by Jesus at the beginning and at the end of his life, tells us that he was viewed as a threat by the leaders of both Rome and Israel. And because Matthew begins and ends with this same threat, we the readers must see that everything Jesus said and did was threatening to the powers of this world.

So what is the big threat? The threat was another kingdom that does not come out of this world, a kingdom where the meek will inherit the earth, and the poor in spirit will be made rich.