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A few months ago, we began exploring what “following Christ” looks like as we look over his shoulder during the last three years of his ministry. If you recall, Jesus’ ministry was inaugurated with three temptations by Satan in the wilderness (click HERE to review). Even those with little bible knowledge are familiar with this temptation story, but surprisingly, very few are familiar with Jesus’ second set of three (peirádzo-tempt, trap, examine) (Matthew 22:18) by (pagideúo-find fault, catch in error, cause harm) (v.15). Nearly the same word, and I will suggest, the same Source.

What most people miss, is that the religious “authorities” (èxousias) are not the Good guys who mean well. Scripture reveals that their “authority” is actually Satan’s and it is Satan who gave it to them (Luke 4:6). The Bible reveals that the Kingdom of God (Heaven) is here now, and religion is not in line with it. When I make a biblically accurate application to our modern age, people get very offended, and claim I’m persecuting the Church. I am not. I am teaching the scripture with the highest fidelity to the hermeneutical process. As we keep following Christ through this part of the Easter story, test me and see if these claims are not substantiated.

The rest of chapter 22 (v.15-46), has three institutional authorities each trying to trap Jesus, followed by Jesus questioning them. This whole time, Jesus has been in the temple teaching people, and it sets up chapter 23 which leaves no doubt as to Jesus’ relationship to religion. Each of you can read the text for yourself, in this post, I’m going to focus on the nuances which most readers will miss.

1. The first tempters are the Pharisees and the Herodians. Pharisees are the “law experts” and the most religiously devout. The Herodians are politically conservative who supported the big Government of Herod and Rome’s rule and power. While the Pharisees wanted to be free of Rome, the Herodians were the Jews who found political and economic power by aligning themselves with Rome. The fact that both of these groups collaborated to catch Jesus in his words reveals that the powers of “Church and State” are conspiring against their own Messiah, which they cannot recognize.
2. These authorities employ flattery to Jesus calling him “the truth” and “one who teaches the way of God truthfully.” If they believed that, they wouldn’t be tempting him. Now let’s compare the similarities to Satan’s temptation so that we can all see Satan working within these earthly authorities.
   • They focus on identity (you are true…if you are the son of God).
   • Based on this identity, they are trying to trip him up to see if he would (bow) to Roman tax rules, and if not, they could use Roman law to punish him.
   • Jesus uses identity (Caesar’s ‘icon’ and ‘inscription’) and separates God’s authority from earthly authority, whereas these groups elected to bow entirely to Caesar and not God.
   • Their test was to see if Jesus was paying tribute to Caesar, he showed they were not paying tribute to God. Money goes to Caesar, not God. Religion hates that.
3. The second group to tempt Jesus are the Sadducees. These were the politically liberal aristocrats, the highest on the social level. These were well educated and dismissed supernatural events much like a modern scientific mind would do.
   • These cultural elites question Jesus in a mocking way, just like modern atheists dismiss the claims of people of faith.
   • They create a hypothetical scenario with the goal of debunking the resurrection and thus disqualifying Jesus as the “resurrection and the life” and making him into a false prophet.
   • Jesus, just as he did with Satan, points them to the scripture and although these were supposed to be the most learned, Jesus reveals they don’t know either the scripture nor the power of God. In other words, Jesus is disqualifying them from being a spokespeople for God. They look and sound godly, but are very ungodly and evil.
   • They begin their test by pointing to Moses, and as a result, Jesus uses Moses to reveal they don’t know what they are talking about.
   • While the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, Jesus reveals that people, all of the fathers of Judaism, are alive and well, not dead.
4. The last test of Jesus is the Pharisees taking another shot. They also test Jesus and his knowledge of scripture. The question of the greatest commandment isn’t so much about the 1st of the ten, but likely an existing argument among the experts in the law.
   • Jesus’ answer about loving God and others accesses the heart of the Law, which essentially underscores the best of Judaism, and that if a person gets this one commandment, they get all the commandments. If they miss this one, they don’t get any of them.
   • And that’s precisely his point, they didn’t get the love of God, and thus their authority is an evil, unloving, sham. Essentially, the religious mind is as far away from God as a person can be.

Following their three tests, Jesus, just as he did with Satan, turns the tables on them and asks them about the scripture, specifically about the promised Messiah of Hebrew scripture.

“Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” (Matthew 22: 41-42)

These religious leaders all knew that the Messiah would descend from David. It’s not clear if they knew Jesus had a direct lineage to David, but Jesus’ question goes deeper, opening up a timeless portal through which he would challenge their view of him.

Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1 (a Psalm of David) which is a clear Messianic Psalm. Jesus knows this is Psalm testifies about himself, but knows the “law experts” will not be able to make sense of how David can call the Messiah Lord if he is also a descendent. Jesus is essentially saying, “I was there in David when he wrote this of me.”

With that the religious were done and they left him. Now we can clearly capture the subtext of why Religion and State conspired to kill Jesus. Do you see how this is integral to the Easter story? Can you see why religion never teaches it? Is it possible the spirits who were at work in these religious mind are also still at work in the minds of modern religious people? If so, then how can Easter be an invitation into religion? It can’t be if it’s’ true to scripture. Easter is the invitation to follow Christ out from our religious mind and out from these exousias.

I will go on to prove from the Scripture the claim which I have made earlier saying: “Jesus is divorcing religion.” Chapter 23 reveals Jesus’ true feelings about religion, and if we are to be true Christ followers, then our relationship would likely be similar. How could Jesus have such disdain for institutional religion and then set out to re-establish it? Clearly that was not his mission. We should never have erected an institutional religion named after his office. Furthermore, Jesus himself will lay out for his disciples in chapter 24 exactly what will happen to religion within their lifetime when he tells them about the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple by Rome in AD. 70.

Again, all of this is in the Easter story. So then, how can Easter be about converting to a religion, or making proselytes? Our reflection must be on how the resurrection is to be understood given that Jesus and his Kingdom is divorced from religion?

The resurrection is not codifying a religion, or else Jesus would have aligned himself with religious power. The resurrection is the transformation of objects into subjects. When we begin to see the life of Christ in and as every particle within our lives, or when we begin to experience God as a subject to subject sharing existence… then the resurrection has come to us. Resurrection arrives when Christ arises within our purview, and that means death doesn’t make us a corpse (object), it frees us to continue existing in God (subject). If the resurrection (life of God) is only after we die, then could any of us possess the life of God now? Jesus reveals in this passage that though we all have the life of God within us, we have not all been resurrected to it, and many of us live in the dead, objective, religious captivity.

That’s what Jesus meant when he said: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,” (John 11:25)