Questions by the Jewish Rulers 

On Monday evening, April 3, 30 CE, a council was held by the Jewish rulers, who were confounded as to how to arrest Jesus and bring him to trial. His appeal among the people was so strong that they feared taking him into custody. So they decided to launch an attack on him that they hoped would discredit him in the eyes of the people. These rulers, Sanhedrin, scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, were united in this effort and planned to be ready the next morning with several groups of their most competent men who would confront Jesus with what they thought were difficult questions. Their hope was that they would outsmart the Master and embarrass or diminish him in front of the Passover crowds.

On Tuesday morning, April 4, 30 CE, some hours before the Master was to deliver his final temple discourse, he had just arrived at the temple to begin his teaching for the day. According to plan, a group of students who had rehearsed beforehand approached Jesus and questioned him. They first acknowledged his righteousness, his devotion to truth, and his allegiance to God alone. Then they said: "We are only students, and we would know the truth about a matter which troubles us; our difficulty is this: Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar? Shall we give or shall we not give?"

Jesus was fully aware of their hypocrisy and unsavory motives. He asked them to give him a tribute coin – a denarius, which was the standard silver coin of the Roman empire and was also used to pay taxes. When they handed him the coin, he asked them to tell him whose image and inscription was on it, and they answered: "Caesar's." Jesus then said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render to God the things that are God's."

This unexpected reply from Jesus caused the group of young scribes to withdraw. The people enjoyed their awkward discomfort, and even the youths were surprised at the wisdom of the Master’s reply.

The rulers behind this question aimed to trap Jesus in a controversial debate on civil authority. Both Pilate and Herod were in Jerusalem at the time, and Jesus' enemies reasoned that if he dared to answer "No" to the payment of taxes to Caesar, they could immediately report him to the Roman authorities for rebellion against the government. On the other hand, if he answered "Yes," they knew it would deeply offend the national pride of his Jewish audience, which would turn the crowd against him.

It was a well-known ruling of the Sanhedrin, made for the guidance of the Jews dispersed among the gentile nations, that the "right of coinage carried with it the right to levy taxes." So, In his wise reply, Jesus did not evade the question. He simply answered their question with a double reply, effectively defeating their attempt to trap him. They had no answer to his wise response.

Jesus once again prepared to speak to the temple crowds, but before he could get started, a group of Sadducees approached him, trying once more to catch the Master in a public misstep. They presented him with a hypothetical situation in which a man with six brothers died childless. They cited the teachings of Moses that said if the married man should die without producing children, his brother should marry the widow and have children with her in place of the dead brother. In this imagined scenario, each of the remaining brothers married the same childless wife, and each of them also died, leaving no offspring. Finally, the woman died, too. They asked Jesus: "In the resurrection, whose wife will she be since all seven of these brothers had her?"

Jesus and everyone else in the crowd knew that this was an insincere question; the possibility of such a scenario was highly improbable, and even among the Jews, this was essentially a non-issue. But Jesus nevertheless respectfully answered their hostile question. In his reply, he gave these Sadducees a lesson in the realities of the resurrection of mortal beings. He told them they did not understand either the power of God or the Scriptures. While people on earth can marry, they fail to grasp that those who are resurrected after death into the worlds beyond neither marry nor are given in marriage. "Those who experience the resurrection from the dead are more like the angels of heaven, and they never die. These resurrected ones are eternally the sons of God; they are the children of light resurrected into the progress of eternal life. Along with Moses, do I declare that my Father is not the God of the dead but of the living. In him, you all do live, reproduce, and possess your mortal existence."

At this, the Sadducees withdrew, but not before even some of the Pharisees openly agreed with what Jesus had said, to the displeasure of the Sadducees. And the people again marveled at the Master’s wisdom.

Things were not going well for the Sadducees; they had thought about asking a question about angels but thought better when they saw what had happened to the others. It had been the plan of the united group of Jesus’ enemies to keep Jesus busy all day long with their made-up questions. They had hoped to discredit Jesus, subject him to ridicule, and keep him from doing any teaching. But they were not ready to quit yet.

A group of Pharisees then approached Jesus, and the group leader said, "Master, I am a lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opinion, is the greatest commandment?"

Jesus answered the lawyer: "There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment." He continued by saying: "And the second commandment is like this first; indeed, it springs directly therefrom, and it is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Upon hearing this, the lawyer had no choice but to agree. He answered Jesus: "Of a truth, Master, you have well said that God is one and there is none beside him; and that to love him with all the heart, understanding, and strength, and also to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, is the first and great commandment; and we are agreed that this great commandment is much more to be regarded than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Jesus looked at the Pharisee and said: "My friend, I perceive that you are not far from the kingdom of God." In fact, he was not far from the kingdom; that very night, he went to the Gethsemane camp and was baptized by a disciple of Abner.

Others from the group of enemies were in the wings, waiting their turn to confront Jesus with harassing questions. However, no more public questions were forthcoming, either because the exchange with Jesus and the lawyer touched their hearts or because they decided they did not want to be humiliated like the others.

By now, it was nearly noon, and when Jesus saw no one else was volunteering questions, he decided to put aside his teaching plans for the time being and ask a question of the Pharisees and their associates. Jesus asked: "I would like to ask you a question. What do you think of the Deliverer? That is, whose son is he?"

A scribe among the rulers replied: "The Messiah is the son of David."

This question had been the subject of debate even among his followers. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah but wondered whether Jesus was truly the son of David. Jesus cited Psalm 110:1, in which David says: "The Lord said to my lord, sit on my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." Jesus asked the scribe: "If David calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?"

This passage from Psalms challenges the common assumption of the Messiah’s lineage, showing that if David calls the Messiah 'Lord,' it refutes the idea that the Messiah could be his son.

The scribes, Sadducees, Pharisees, priests, and other rulers offered no answer to this question; in fact, they stopped asking any further questions of Jesus and stopped trying to undermine him with the people. But after Jesus’ death, they tried to change how the Psalm was interpreted, making "Lord" refer to Abraham instead of the Messiah. Some others set aside the belief that it was David who had authored this Messianic Psalm.

Through all of these exchanges, even though the Sadducees and the Pharisees enjoyed seeing each other silenced by the Master while remaining united in their efforts to stop Jesus, the common people heard Jesus gladly.