Jesus Christ’s Authority as a Liberator

Religious Studies: OCR A Level, topic 3.4.3

Jesus’ role as liberator of the marginalised and the poor is seen through his challenges to political and religious authority.

For many Christians, Jesus’ challenge to the political and religious authorities of this time presents him as a liberator.
Jesus was especially critical of the religious authorities, and in particular, the Pharisees.
He was also critical of the values and behaviours of the society in which he lived.

In the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman (Mark 5:24-34), Jesus liberates a woman from an illness that blighted her life for 12 years.
But, as a menstruating woman, she would have also been viewed as impure and shunned under Mosaic law.
In healing her, Jesus liberates her from both the illness and the marginalisation she faced.
Jesus praises the woman's faith and speaks directly to her.
In doing so, he is challenging Mosaic law and those in the crowd to alter their treatment of such an ‘outcast’.

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus challenges conventional thinking in a number of ways.
Jesus’ Jewish audience would know that touching a dead body renders someone ‘impure’.
Jesus challenges this excuse for the priest and the Levite not stopping to help the man ‘left half-dead’.

Jesus’ criticises religious law for taking precedence over compassion.
- By doing this, he aims to liberate his audience from this legalistic approach.
By praising the actions of the Samaritan, Jesus reinforces the pre-eminence of compassion in the law.
He also challenges (and so liberates) the audience’s suspicion of the Samaritan.

We see another example of Jesus being a liberator in the story of Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-49).
Here, Jesus liberates the woman from her sins through forgiveness.
He challenges the Pharisee for his attitude to this marginalised woman.
He does this through his critique on the Pharisee's behaviour and praising of the woman's behaviour.

Another example of Jesus as a liberator is his entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple (Matthew 21:1-13).
Jesus arrives on a donkey and not a horse, liberating the crowd from their expectations of him as a kingly liberator.
This suggests that Jesus was not going to be who they expected.
Then, by heading to the temple and turning over the tables, he indicates his main focus is the religious authorities.
Here, he is again liberating the people from their expectation that he would free them from Roman occupation.

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