Actually, Jesus Wasn't Tolerant
- Tanner Hnidey
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
A few ignorant pundits proclaim that Jesus Christ was tolerant. They’re wrong, and we can prove it, but not in the way that people probably expect.
The surest guarantee of Christ’s intolerance is not His furious rout of the Temple (Matt 21:12-13). Neither is it His sharp rebuke of Herod “the fox" (Luke 13:32) or His calling the Pharisees “children of the Devil” (Matt 13:19).
No doubt, those are certainly proofs of Christ’s righteous intolerance, but they are not the supreme proof of it.
Rather, the surest proof that Christ is intolerant is the fact that Christ exists at all, or, more specifically, that He exists as a man.
It is abundantly obvious that if Christ were a tolerant figure, which He’s not, He would’ve never come to Earth. That is what we’re told in John 3:16–17.
Everyone knows (or should know) John 3:16. It says:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life
But the second half of the passage, which most people do not know, is just as important. It says:
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
The point here is that the God of the Universe was so intolerant of sin that He willingly left His perfect paradise to suffer on Earth and die for our forgiveness.
He was, and is, so intolerant of death, disease, evil, and corruption, that He chose to veil His glory, mature in poverty and obscurity, and preach a salvation He consummated at His passion.
The truth is that if Christ were truly tolerant, He wouldn’t have done anything about our miserable position.
Instead, He would’ve remained in Heaven, enjoying the luxury of perfection in the Garden of God. He would’ve let us continue our plunge into self–destruction, dismissing our cruel disobedience with the wave of an indifferent hand.
But of course, Christ didn’t do that. He did the complete opposite. Our Lord came to our broken world, not to be served by men, but to serve man.
And this service wasn’t a slice of cake.
It was suffering.
Christ came to Earth because He cared for us, and He did so with such a powerful heartbreak that He even went to the cross. Indeed, there is no greater proof of His intolerance of sin than this, for the consequence of intolerance is not hatred, as some erroneously claim, but love. Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the article, please consider supporting Tanner Hnidey's work here! https://www.tannerhnidey.com/support
Many of us realize that Charlie's death woke up so many people to what is going on in this corrupt world and brought so many people to Jesus.