The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

The Priests Test Jesus

But the priests were determined to test him, and soon the chance came. They tried three times, and each time Jesus baffled them.

The first test came when they said to him, ‘You preach, you heal, you cast out devils – now, by whose authority do you do these things? Who gave you permission to go about stirring up excitement like this?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘if you’ll give me an answer to this question: did John’s authority to baptise come from heaven, or from earth?’

They didn’t know how to answer him. They withdrew a little way and discussed it. ‘If we say it came from heaven,’ they said, ‘he’ll say, “In that case, why didn’t you believe in it?” But if we say it was of human origin, the crowd will be angry with us. John’s a great prophet as far as they’re concerned.’

So they had to tell him, ‘We find it hard to decide. We can’t answer you.’

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to do without an answer from me.’

The next test they put him to concerned that perennial difficulty, taxes.

They said, ‘Teacher, you’re an honest man, we can all see that. No one doubts your sincerity or your impartiality; you show no favours, and you don’t try to ingratiate yourself with anyone. So we’re sure you’ll give us a truthful answer when we ask you: is it lawful to pay taxes?’

They meant lawful according to the law of Moses, and they hoped they would trick him into saying something that would get him into trouble with the Romans.

But he said, ‘Show me one of those coins you pay taxes with.’

Someone handed him a coin, and he looked at it and said, ‘There’s a picture on here. Whose picture is this? What’s the name underneath it?’

‘It’s Caesar’s, of course,’ they said.

‘Well, there’s your answer. If this is Caesar’s, give it back to him. Give God the things that are God’s.’

The third time they tried to trap him involved a capital offence. The scribes and the Pharisees happened to be dealing with the case of a woman who was caught committing adultery. They thought that they could force Jesus into calling for her to be stoned, which was the punishment authorised by their law, and hoped that this would cause trouble for him.

They found him near the temple wall. The Pharisees and scribes took the woman out and stood her in front of him, and said, ‘Teacher, this woman has committed adultery – she was caught in the act! Moses commands us to stone such a woman to death. What do you say? Should we do it?’

Jesus was sitting on a rock, leaning down and writing with his finger in the dust. He took no notice of them.

‘Teacher, what should we do?’ they said again. ‘Should we stone her, as Moses says?’

He still said nothing, and went on writing in the dust.

‘We don’t know what to do!’ they went on. ‘You can tell us. We’re sure you can find a solution. Should she be stoned? What do you think?’ Jesus looked up and brushed the dirt off his hands.

‘If there’s one of you who has never committed a sin, he can throw the first stone,’ he said. Then he bent down again and wrote some more. One by one the scribes and the Pharisees went away, muttering. Jesus was left alone with the woman.

Finally he stood up and said, ‘Where have they gone? Has no one condemned you, after all?’

‘No, sir, no one,’ she said.

‘Well, you’d better go too, then,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to condemn you. But don’t sin any more.’

Christ heard about this from the disciple who was his informant. As soon as he was told about it, he hurried to the spot to see what it was that Jesus had written in the dust. The wind had blown his words away, and there was nothing to see on the ground, but nearby someone had daubed the words KING JESUS on the temple wall in mud. It had dried in the sunlight, and Christ brushed it off quickly in case it got his brother into trouble.