Whether he made this particular requirement or not, Jesus certainly attached great importance to his own mission and person. The Christian preoccupation with titles (did he think that he was the Messiah, Son of God, heavenly Son of Man, son of David, or king?) obscures the issue. Jesus sometimes called himself the Son of Man, though perhaps not meaning the heavenly Son of Man, and according to two passages he indirectly accepted the epithets Messiah (or Christ) and Son of God (Matthew 16:16; Mark 14:61–62). In both cases, however, the parallel passages (Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20; 22:67–70; Matthew 26:63–64) are less strongly affirmative. In any case, Jesus apparently did not make an issue of titles. He called people to follow him and to devote themselves entirely to God, not to accord him a particular appellation. If he was preoccupied with titles, the evidence is so scant that it cannot be known what those titles meant to him or others. If, however, this uncertain evidence is overlooked, a clearer picture of his self-conception emerges: Jesus thought that he was God’s last emissary, that he and his disciples would rule in the coming kingdom, and that people who accepted his message would be included in it. He may also have believed that inclusion in the kingdom would be granted to those who loved their neighbours and were meek and lowly of heart. The relation of Jesus’ teaching to the Jewish law
Jewish law is the focus of many passages in the Gospels. According to one set, especially prominent in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), Jesus admonished his followers to observe the law unwaveringly (Matthew 5:17–48). According to another set, he did not adhere strictly to the law himself and even transgressed current opinions about some aspects of it, especially the Sabbath (e.g., Mark 3:1–5). It is conceivable that both were true, that he was extremely strict about marriage and divorce (Matthew 5:31–32; Mark 10:2–12) but less stringent about the Sabbath. The study of Jesus and the law is, like any other study of law, highly technical. In general, the legal disputes in the Gospels fall within the parameters of those of 1st-century Judaism. Some opposed minor healing on the Sabbath (such as Jesus is depicted as performing), but others permitted it. Similarly, the Sadducees regarded the Pharisees’ observance of the Sabbath as too lax. There also were many disagreements in 1st-century Judaism about purity. While some Jews washed their hands before eating (Mark 7:5), others did not; however, this conflict was not nearly as serious as that between the Shammaites and the Hillelites (the two main parties within Pharisaism) over menstrual purity. It is noteworthy that Jesus did not oppose the purity laws. On the contrary, according to Mark 1:40–44, he accepted the Mosaic laws on the purification of lepers (Leviticus 14).
In one statement in the Gospels, however, Jesus apparently opposed Jewish law as universally understood. Jews agreed not to eat carnivores, rodents, insects, and weasels, as well as pork and shellfish (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14), and the last two prohibitions set them apart from other people. According to Mark 7:19, Jesus “declared all foods clean.” If he did so, Jesus directly opposed the law of God as given to Moses. This seems to be only Mark’s inference, however, and is not in the parallel passage in Matthew 15. More importantly, Peter seems to have first learned of this after Jesus’ death, by means of a heavenly revelation (Acts 10:9–16). Perhaps Jesus did not, then, directly oppose any aspect of the sacred law.
He probably did, however, have legal disputes in which he defended himself by quoting scriptural precedent, which implies that he did not set himself against the law (Mark 2:23–28). His willingness to make his own decisions regarding the law was probably viewed with suspicion. Ordinarily, legal debates were between competing camps or schools, and individuals who decided how to observe laws were deemed troublemakers. That is, Jesus was autonomous; he interpreted the law according to his own rules and decided how to defend himself when criticized. He was by no means the only person in ancient Judaism who struck out on his own, acting in accord with his own perception of God’s will, and so he was not uniquely troubling in this respect, but such behaviour might nevertheless be suspicious. Ethics
Along with his teachings on the kingdom and the law, Jesus advocated ethical purity. He demanded complete devotion to God, putting it ahead of devotion to self and even to family (Mark 3:31–35; Matthew 10:35–37), and taught that people should give up everything in order to obtain what was most precious (Matthew 13:44–46). According to Matthew 5:21–26 and 5:27–30, Jesus also held that observance of the law should be not only external but internaclass="underline" hatred and lust, as well as murder and adultery, are wrong. The Jesus of Matthew in particular is a moral perfectionist (5:17–48). This fits quite well with the proclamation of the eschatological kingdom of God because Jesus believed, as fellow moral perfectionist Paul did, that divine intervention was near at hand, and therefore people had to be “blameless” for only a short time (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The difficulty with perfectionism in a continuing society is evident in later traditions regarding divorce. Paul quoted Jesus’ prohibition of it but then proceeded to make an exception—that if a Christian was married to an unbeliever, and the unbeliever wished a divorce, the Christian should agree to it—which he explicitly said was his own opinion, not the Lord’s (1 Corinthians 7:10–16). Similarly, Matthew depicts the disciples as responding to Jesus’ prohibition by proposing that if divorce is impossible it is better to avoid marriage (Matthew 19:10). The impossibility of being perfect during a full lifetime leads some modern interpreters to propose that Jesus intended these admonitions to be only an ideal, not a requirement. It is more likely, however, that Jesus the eschatological prophet regarded perfection as quite possible during the short period before the arrival of the Son of Man. Miracles
A prophet and teacher of ethics, Jesus was also a healer and miracle worker. In the 1st century, healers and miracle workers were fairly well known, though not precisely common, and were not considered to be superhuman beings. Jesus himself granted that others were capable of performing miracles, such as exorcisms, regardless of whether they followed him (Matthew 12:27; Mark 9:38–41; 6:7). Thus, the significance of this very important aspect of his life is frequently misunderstood. In Jesus’ time, it was accepted that people could heal and perform nature miracles, such as causing rain. The question was, by what power, or spirit, they did so. Some of Jesus’ opponents accused him of casting out demons by the prince of demons (Mark 3:19–22; Matthew 12:24; Luke 11:15). He countered that he did so by the spirit of God (Matthew 12:28; Luke 11:20). Obviously, many people disagreed, but this was the issue in Jesus’ lifetime—not whether he, like a few others, could perform miracles, but by what power he did so. In his own day, miracles were proof neither of divinity nor of messiahship, and, at most, they might be used to validate an individual’s message or way of life. Controversy and danger in Galilee Crowds and autonomy