Bible Synapse
If Jesus told his followers not to fear those who kill the body, why did he keep away from Judea because he might be killed?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Be not afraid of them that kill the body”; fear God instead.
And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.
Jesus stays in Galilee “because the Jews sought to kill him”.
After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.
“My time is not yet come”; later he goes up to the feast privately.
Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come. When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
When the time comes, “he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem”.
And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,
The objection
Jesus told his friends, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body.” Yet John says he would not go about in Judea “because the Jews sought to kill him”. That looks like the very fear he told others not to have.
The answer
Avoiding needless danger is not the same as fearing death. In Luke 12 Jesus warns against the fear that makes a disciple deny him; the next verses speak of confessing or denying him before men (12:8–9). He never told his followers to walk into danger before their work was done. He told them, “when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another” (Matthew 10:23).
John gives the reason for Jesus’ caution: “My time is not yet come” (John 7:6). His death had an appointed hour, and he would not let his enemies bring it forward. When the hour drew near he went knowingly towards it. He returned to Judea though his disciples warned that the Jews had tried to stone him (John 11:7–8), he “stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), and he foretold his death there (Matthew 20:18–19). Of his life he said, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18).
From the classic commentators
not that he was afraid to die, but his time was not come; and he had work to do for the glory of God, and the good of men; and therefore it was both just and prudent to withdraw and preserve his lifeJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on John 7:1 (1746–1763)
To play false with one's convictions to save one's life, may fail of its end after all, for God can inflict a violent death in some other and equally formidable way.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary, on Luke 12:5 (1871)