By Marvin Maniraguha
Jesus Christ was prophesied about by the Old Testament prophets, that He would come and be a Messiah and Saviour of the people.
The Jews are actually adamant that Jesus did not come in the flesh because they expected something spectacular since they had seen the power of God and miracles.
1 Corinthians 1:22-24 says: “The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God.”
The Scripture shows how the Jews seek a sign, they want to believe after seeing. That means Jesus had to appear in a spectacular fashion for them to believe that He was indeed the Son of God. None among the prophets of God knew the time Jesus would come.
What they knew was where He would be born; that is why when Herod asked the chief priests where Christ would be born, they told him in Bethlehem of Judea.
The nature of His birth
At the time of the birth of Jesus, Israel was under Roman rule and most of the governors were Romans, who had established systems to take over Israel territories and affairs.
Herod, the king of Judea, was shaken after the Three Wise Men came and told him that they had seen a star of a King, who had just been born (Matthew 2:2).
He was troubled about the news and gave an order to execute all male children, two years and below in the vicinity of Bethlehem, hoping Jesus would be killed, too.
When Herod died, Mary and Joseph came back from Egypt where they had hidden baby Jesus. Jesus was raised by noble parents and Israel did not understand that He was the Messiah the prophets talked about in their writings.
He was born in a manger, which was one of the strangest things to happen, a place where animals were reared. No one would have a slight idea that a king could be born in such a place.
Everything that surrounded His life appeared strange to common undiscerning men.
Ignorance of religious leaders
The religious leaders at the time thought they were infallible in the understanding of the law and the precepts of God.
They were sufficiently schooled and had every merit concerning the matters of religion, and they could not stand any heresies from anyone because they carried a zealousness towards the knowledge of God.
What they did not know is that a new dispensation was at hand, God was ushering in a new covenant which would be based on the blood of the Son of God.
That people no longer had to slaughter animals for sacrifice unto God to purge their consciences. God had planned that in the new covenant.
The famous life of Jesus
The people on the streets and in towns Jesus passed started to follow Him because of the good teachings and miracles He performed.
This did not get on well with the religious establishment, He was accused many times for doing miracles on Sabbath days, which was prohibited in the Law of Moses.
Jealous and anger started to manifest among the people who did not believe in Him.
They started to conspire to see to it that they arrest and accuse Him of being blasphemous because they claimed He called Himself the Son of God.
They looked for a way of arresting Him, but it was not easy because He had a lot of followers that had fallen in love with His teachings.
These teachings were so unconventional and many people were presumably defecting from synagogues to follow Him.
Jesus was quickly becoming famous and there were moments where He came face to face with some of these religious leaders trying to ask Him tricky questions, just to find a way of accusing Him of misleading people and consequently causing Him to face the law.
Ultimately in the life of Jesus on the Earth, everything He did amounted to hostility, hate, malice, intrigue and betrayal.
Disguised blessing
The death and judgment was indeed unfair, but for the Christian faith it was a blessing in disguise because in His death, men received life. Without His death there would be no eternal life.
In the eyes of a common man, the judgment was really unfair because no fault was found in Him, but because of hate, malice and jealousy.
He was put to death just to get rid of Him, but He rose from the dead three days later.
