dangerous rebel

Jesus.

If you or I just pause and think about that name for a second.








Words and actions like love, grace, forgiveness, teaching, obedience, example, miracles, sacrifice all come to mind.

What about "dangerous rebel?" Probably not.

But if you look in the book of John, you see the crowds confused and stunned. Religious leaders were convinced he was completely out of his mind. They wanted to arrest him, and I doubt that killing him wasn't far from their minds.

If you look at the compound title, "dangerous rebel," it's not hard to conclude that Jesus was in fact that: a rebel who was dangerous.

He was a rebel because He taught and lived completely upside down compared to the religious leaders and the society they created.

What made Him dangerous was that through this rebellion, He had followers, He had influence. The real danger wasn't necessarily Him (although in hindsight, I'm sure the religious would think otherwise), but rather the uprising He was creating. The uprising could be described with words used at the beginning of this blog: love, grace, forgiveness, teaching, obedience, example, miracles, sacrifice.

What made Him a rebel was the fact that He went against the religious flow. He died for it. He rose again to defeat it.

So the question now becomes this: At what point do you go from rebel to righteous?

It's as soon as perception is changed. Jesus changed perception with His life and death on the cross.

It was then that He went from being the black sheep to being the Shepherd.

-NW