Jesus’s words and works caused division amongst the people. Not necessarily a division based on anger against the other person or the other side, but division based on whether a person believed what they were hearing and seeing from Jesus, or not. The division was primarily centered around whether or not the person believed that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God or they did not.

We see a particularly poignant example of this after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. John tells us that there were some who believed and others, particularly those who were the religious rulers over the Jews at that time, who did not.

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

John 11:45-48

Jesus came to fulfill the promises that God had made to the patriarchs, Paul would later write. These promises started in the time of Abraham as God told Abraham that he would bless Abraham so that he would be a blessing to all nations. In other words, through this people, through those that God would choose and call his people, the Israelites, he would accomplish his plan such that they would be the people through whom God would come into the world, make himself known to all people, and die for all people, so that his kingdom would be established and those who would put their faith in him would be ransomed, purchased out of the kingdom of darkness, allowing all that believe to come into the kingdom of God.

Yet the Jewish leaders had power. They were in control, at least in their own minds, over the future of the Jewish people. They were the spiritual leaders of the nation of Israel, even if the Romans were the conquering force of their time. In reality, they had very little power or influence, but the little that they had, they wanted to hold onto and not lose.

Jesus, however, had come to earth as God in the flesh, and he was working to fulfill God’s plan, the plan that God had announced to Abraham centuries before. He was doing a new work, at least a new work from the perspective of the Jewish leaders. From God’s perspective, Jesus was simply completing the plan that God had announced many time centuries before.

The Jewish leaders believed that they themselves were the chosen people, the only chosen people, God’s people, and they were the leaders of this people. So, because they believed that they were the chosen people and because they believed that they were leading, they focused on their own plan instead of God’s plan. What was their plan? To make their own plan. To go their own way. To do their own thing.

They could plainly see, and even said so amongst themselves, that Jesus was performing miracles that only God could do. They saw that he was performing signs and wonders as God demonstrated his power and authority on the earth. Jesus had authority over sin. He had authority over death. And yet, these leaders remained in their unbelief because they had their own plan. They did not understand God’s larger plan and they did not care because they were simply working according to their own plan.

This leads us, of course, to a question that we must ask ourselves: Am I living according to the greater plan of God? Do I understand what he is doing and have I found my place within his plan? Or am I denying his plan and substituting my own in place of what God is doing?

For so many years, I asked God what he wanted me to do with my life. “How can I serve you?”, I asked, but instead of understanding the story that God is telling, I sought answers from my own self, from my own mind and heart. I listened to the voices that said that we can find the answers from within, that we should do those things about which we are passionate. I was lured by the message of living by my own perspective, while at the same time asking God what he wanted me to do.

I learned that those two perspectives are incompatible. God has his plan and I have mine, and they are not the same. One brings glory to God and the other brings glory to me, so I learned that I cannot ask God what he wants me to do and really only listen to myself.

I believe that is what the Jewish leaders were doing, and that is the same perspective that we often take today as we live out our lives.

So we must choose. Will I live my life based on God’s perspective, based on his plan? His mission? Or will I live for my own? Will I seek to understand what God is doing and place myself in the midst of his plan and his will, or will I prefer instead to listen to myself and desire those things that I want? These are critical questions for our lives and lead us to specific actions related to the answers that we give to these questions. In the end, this is the difference, regardless of whether you call yourself a Christian, a believer, or otherwise, between belief and unbelief.