Jesus - Unique in Loyalty to God's Political System

In this small series of posts (starting here), I am attempting to show the uniqueness of Jesus as borne out in Albert Nolan's book, Jesus Before Christianity. In his study of Jesus and how he lived His life as a Jewish man in the midst of the religious and political systems of his day, Nolan shows that Jesus was a highly political figure in that he was unswerving in his loyalty to God's kingdom, refusing to live according to the values of worldly systems (money, prestige, power). Surrounded by adherents of a variety of religious and political parties, Jesus was loyal to one kingdom only - God's kingdom - and this made him a dangerous revolutionary:

"Jesus' social mixing with sinners in the name of God and his confidence that they had God's approval while the virtuous did not were the 'violation' of all that God and religion and virtue and justice had ever meant. But then Jesus was not busy with a religious revival; he was busy with a revolution - a revolution in religion, in politics and in everything else.

"It would have been impossible for the 'men' of Jesus' time to have thought of him as an eminently religious man who steered clear of politics and revolution. They would have seen him as a blasphemously irreligious man who under the cloak of religion was undermining all the values upon which religion, politics, economics and society were based. He was a dangerous and subtly subversive revolutionary.

"Jesus disapproved of Roman oppression just as much as any Jew did, albeit for different reasons. He disapproved of their way of 'making their authority felt' and their way of 'lording it over their subjects.' But he envisaged changing this by changing Israel so that Israel could present the Romans with a living example of the values and ideals of the 'kingdom'...

"However, Jesus did eventually feel that it would be necessary to confront those Jews who collaborated with Rome: the chief priests and elders, the leaders of the people, who belonged to the party of the Sadducees. Up till now Jesus had criticized the 'men of religion', especially the scribes and Pharisees; now he must confront the 'men of affairs', the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Not so much because they collaborated with Rome but because they exploited the poor...(it was this confrontation) which brought him to a violent death."

Do what You need to do, Spirit of God, to sever the loyalties that we Your church have with worldly political systems. Give us fresh leadership that understands the seductiveness of worldly systems, be they religious or political, and put in us the unswerving loyalty that Jesus had to God's kingdom.