What does Jesus mean when He speaks of those who came before Him? If we consider the purely historical aspect, the answer is more or less clear: obviously He is speaking of the numerous claimants to messiahship who appeared in Judea then almost every day — appeared in order to...
What does Jesus mean when He speaks of those who came before Him? If we consider the purely historical aspect, the answer is more or less clear: obviously He is speaking of the numerous claimants to messiahship who appeared in Judea then almost every day — appeared in order, in Jesus’ words, “to steal, kill, and destroy.” For all of them ended their preaching with a call to uprising, to a messianic war, a call that was almost always heard, and the consequences were not slow in coming: the Roman army suppressed all such movements harshly and mercilessly. Jesus, however, speaks of Himself as the Shepherd who cares for the sheep and does not want to destroy them needlessly, for He brought into the world the Kingdom, for the establishment of which no uprising is needed.
But this is only one side of the question. For when Jesus speaks of false shepherds, He is also addressing the Pharisees; it is they whom He calls blind, and He tells them that if they acknowledged their blindness, they would not bear sin upon themselves. Yet the Pharisees as a whole, unlike the Zealots, for example, were by no means supporters of holy war, though, of course, they awaited the Messiah no less. Of what, then, does Jesus accuse them? They certainly could not be accused of neglecting pastoral care: in this respect the Pharisaic teachers and rabbis were very zealous. But toward what was their zeal directed? First of all, and unsurprisingly, toward the religious education of their flock.
But religion in itself does not yet guarantee a full spiritual life. It can be either a help or an obstacle on the way into the Kingdom; if one makes it an end in itself, the consequences for spiritual life can be very sad. And the Pharisees were always inclined toward such absolutizing, although, of course, as always in such cases, much depended on concrete people. Unfortunately, however, there were many such mentors who were ready to sacrifice a person for the sake of religious norms and rules, and Jesus’ words applied to them in full measure.
Of course, many of those who were supposed to lead people along the spiritual path were objectively not ready for it. In that case a simple acknowledgment of their unreadiness would have been enough to remove responsibility from themselves: after all, no one would expect guidance from someone who had admitted this. But, as usual, very few were ready for such an acknowledgment. Who wants to sign his own pastoral incompetence?
And then the shepherds turned into those very false shepherds of whom Jesus spoke. And they bore sin upon themselves: for falsehood is always sin, and false shepherding is a double sin. Here the matter concerns the way of righteousness and the way into the Kingdom, and therefore salvation — something with which one must not play.
