Why did the leading clergy of the day detest him and why were they opposed to him? Because first of all, they had a hatred of living faith. They didn't mind ‘dead religion’, ‘dead faith’. That's what they engaged in. Endless ceremonies, endless rites and ceremonies, parading about in their garments and their robes, going through the motions, reading the Scriptures without understanding them, living double lives. Their religion wasn't alive. They didn't have a conscious, felt union with God. They didn't know him and prove him. They didn't have answers to their prayers. They didn't love him and interact with him. It wasn't a living faith, a living religion. For some of those Jews it was; we read about them, in both Testaments. But the majority were just kind of religious Jewish nationalists and nominal worshipers. They didn't have living faith. Christ came preaching living faith. He preached to the people that if they repented of their sin and believed in the mercy of God and sought him for a living salvation, he would bring their souls to life and they would know him. They would be, as we say, converted and they would walk with him and have heaven and life and understanding, and joy and peace. But they didn't want that. They hated that. ‘You're telling us we are not authentic children of Abraham’, they would say, and they detested him for preaching the need for a real relationship with God, living faith.