Dave Andrews

In the second phase of his nonviolent jihad for love and justice Jesus not only consistently denounced the oppression of the powerless by the powerful, he also actively advocated liberation of disempowered groups of people through the empowerment of the Spirit. Jesus attacked the key religious leaders of the day, as ‘lovers of money’ (Luke 16:14–15), who would maintain a façade of sanctity, by saying long prayers in public, but would ‘devour widows’ houses’. When he saw a widow ‘put everything – all she had to live on’ – into the collection box, Jesus condemned the temple for extorting the last coin from the kind of person it was set up to protect (Mark 12:38–44). Jesus broke the monopoly on forgiveness that the temple had developed through the sacrificial system it controlled. He did this by baptising people in the Spirit and giving them the authority to forgive sins. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ and ‘if you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.’ (John 20:22–23).

Dave Andrews p125-6 The Jihad Of Jesus http://bit.ly/1CedNDX