When Jesus Said "NO"

When Jesus Said NO - PDF Attached

(Excerpted from, When Jesus Said “NO”, by Rev. George Niederauer)

Jesus Christ was not alternately “yes” and “no”, He was never anything but “yes.”  So wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 1:19).  If it is true that Jesus was always “yes”, does that mean that we must be prepared to answer “yes” to every demand, every request, and every situation no matter what?  Must a person feel selfish or lazy or inadequate with each “no” she or he says?  Is the alternative to self-destruct on work or to “O.D.” on “yes”?

Jesus did say “no”, and not only to Satan three times in the desert.  Jesus said “no” or its equivalent when a “yes” did not fit in with His “yes” to the Father.  The instances are many.  

First of all, Jesus said “no” to ordinary human requests:

• Let me bury my father before I follow you --- NO (Mt.8);

• Tell my sister to help me with the housework --- NO (Lk.10);

• Tell my brother to be fair with me about our inheritance --- NO (Lk.10);

• Stay in our town a little longer --- NO (Lk.4);

• (to the cured Gerasene demoniac) let me follow you --- NO (Mk.5);

Close, loving friends, with apparently the strongest personal claims on him, also asked favors:

• Give my sons a special privileged place next to you --- NO (Mk.10);

• Stop talking about your death like that --- NO (Mk.8);

• Tell us when the last things will occur --- NO (Acts 1);

• Call down fire from heaven to destroy those towns that reject you --- NO (Lk.9)

Also, there were the demands of the crowds:

• Work a sign for us right here and now --- NO (Mt. 12);

• Do here in your own town the things we have heard you did in Capernaum --- NO (Lk.4);

• Give us again today the bread you gave us yesterday --- NO (Jn.6).

Finally, Jesus received many common-sense, law-and-order, respectable-citizen kinds of requests:

• Send the crowd away, they’re getting hungry --- NO (Lk.9);

• Keep this crowd quiet --- NO (Lk.19);

• Make your followers fast like those of John the Baptizer --- NO (Mk.2);

• Surely you have some answer to these accusations against you --- NO (Mk.15).