Thanks for your reply and I understand your position, but don't see it as sufficient reason to change my thinking about Jesus in this sense.
When the disciples in the new Testament continued to preach the gospel when they had been told to stop by the civil authorities, they were not rebelling against the civil authorities, they were obeying God. And this is evident by the fact that when the civil authorities came to arrest them, they did not try to kill the guards or to lead an insurrection against them. And this part is important: in all other ways, they obeyed the civil authorities.
This is important to me because I see a time coming when government authorities may well try and persecute us in the same way. We must obey God in all things (which seems to me why they didn't try to kill authorities or lead insurrections) but without the courage to rebel against such false authority (only when neccessary to obey God) it seems to me that we would end up meekly submitting to sin (as in, the diciples would have stopped preaching when they were told to if they had not had the courage to rebel to follow God).
The only reason why I think Jesus' examples are any different is that he had and exercised actual authority.
Do we not have His same authority if we are 'In Christ'? Obviously we are not God in the flesh, but if we are in Christ and obeying and submitting to Him.... I don't see the difference.
The Pharisees come and say that Jesus and his disciples are performing work which is a violation of the laws of the Sabbath, but Jesus confronts them with the actual law of God as opposed to their teachings on it in the Talmud. He tells them that according to their interpretation of the Law, the priests profane the Sabbath always, yet they do not condemn them. He points them to David, who clearly "broke" the ceremonial law by eating the shewbread, something God struck Uzziah down with leprosy for, and yet they would not condemn David. And I understand that it seems like Jesus is rebelling, but here is where it's important that he is not. When Jesus is brought before Caiphas, the Pharisees could not bring a single accusation against him, not even their own twisted version of the law, but had to bring a false testimony against him.
This is exactly what I'm talking about - exactly what I indentify with as 'rebellion' against the perverted law of man. As I understand the Bible we are to obey the laws of the land, unless the laws of the land would have us disobey God, like in your example about the diciples.
Please understand, I'm not saying that your identification with Christ is wrong or anything like that, or that you should stop being a keeper at home or any such thing. What I am saying is that the word rebel brings with it the tendency to rebel and that if you misidentify Christ as a rebel, it will be very easy for you to end up rebelling against any practice of the church that you don't like and treating your sisters in Christ with hostility as opposed to obeying God in all things (which in some situations will mean submitting to the church).
What church? A true functioning body of believers? Maybe if I was part of a church I would understand this more....
I'm just trying to understand if I truly do need to repent of my view of Jesus. I don't think so yet, but from the answers to these questions I may learn different.
