Jesus’ whole point in teaching was to grind through layers upon layers of hypocrisy and pride until we could see ourselves through the eyes of a holy God: we are all miserable wretches who sin as constantly as they breathe. Jesus did not come to spread good cheer and love and warm fuzzies. This is why it is obnoxious for Christians to go around describing Jesus as some gracious, loving Guy. If that’s really how you perceive Him, you need to reread the Gospels. Jesus was intentionally harsh, rude, and vicious with His speeches. He had to be in order to get through to us. If we had lived in His time, we would have thought we were doing alright, just like the rest of His followers did. Only by coming within range of Jesus’ verbal grenades would we have been provoked into reevaluating our own righteousness.

No one enjoys receiving constructive criticism. Jesus’ criticism would have been ten times harder to swallow because He threw all diplomacy out the window and just slapped people across the face with the crisis of their terrible sin. He purposely made mountains out of molehills to wake people up to the reality that our holy God finds all forms of sin equally offensive. To God, one sharp word is as awful as coldblooded murder, and His punishment for it will be the same. Just like Christians today, the people in Jesus’ time were living by a human definition of sin, labeling the fun sins (like lust, gossip and lying) as far less of a problem than the more rare crimes of murder. Jesus was trying to show them that ALL sins were equally horrible in the eyes of a holy God.