What the Religious Leaders Knew

Every time I read the Gospels, I'm struck by the religious leaders' refusal to believe even in the face of all the evidence that Jesus was the Son of God. They witnessed His miracles. They saw Him raise the dead. In fact, they knew that He Himself rose from the grave. In Matthew 28, after the resurrection, the guards "went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened." Their response was to call a meeting and come up with a plan to cover up the resurrection. 

They knew. If anything should have convinced them that Jesus was who He said He was, it should have been this. He rose from the dead. But instead, they bribed the guards to lie and say the disciples stole His body. But the religious leaders knew what really happened. They knew Jesus was alive.

The same hardheartedness was true of Herod when Jesus was born. He knew Jesus was the Messiah, yet he tried to have Him killed. Otherwise, he would not have called all the teachers of the law together to find out where the Messiah was to be born. Herod knew. He knew the child the wise men were seeking was born to be the savior of the world, and yet, he tried to murder him. 

Knowledge and belief are two different things. 

Knowledge is mental assent that a set of facts are true. Belief is a change in behavior based on that knowledge. It wasn't knowledge that made the disciples follow Jesus. It was belief.

"But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). 

If our belief doesn't change how we live, then it isn't belief. It's mere knowledge, and knowledge alone doesn't make us children of God. It wasn't just knowing that He was the Messiah that made the disciples follow Jesus. It was belief that made them leave their lives behind to follow Him.