Why did it cause such an uproar when Jesus sat at the table with tax collectors? Why was the Samaritan woman astonished that Jesus spoke with her? Why was Paul's declaration that in Christ there is "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" so earth-shattering? Because in that world, the gulf between people of different ranks was immeasurably deep. Only when you understand the social hierarchies of biblical times can you feel the full explosive force of the gospel — it did not uphold the existing order; it overturned the very foundation of who deserves to be treated with dignity.
Speaker: Pastor Bond · Scripture: 加3:28;路15:1-2;约4:9;雅2:1-9;太9:10-13
Written for every brother and sister who wants to understand what Jesus actually overturned. Only when you see the walls of hierarchy that defined that era can you feel the explosive power of the gospel.
Our world today still has its inequalities, but at least the idea that "all people are equal" is now widely accepted. In the world of biblical times, things were entirely different. Hierarchy was simply the natural order of things. Romans regarded slaves as less than fully human. Jews considered Gentiles ritually unclean. Greek philosophers held that women were by nature less rational than men. These were not the prejudices of a fringe minority — they were the default assumptions of an entire civilization.
Against that backdrop, Paul wrote these words: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28)
In the world of that day, those words landed like a bomb.
Jewish society operated according to a layered system of religious identity, radiating outward from the Temple.
The High Priest stood at the very apex of the pyramid — the only person permitted to enter the Most Holy Place, the representative of the entire nation before God. The office passed through the hereditary Zadokite family, but by the Hasmonean and Roman periods it had become thoroughly politicized, with rulers appointing and removing High Priests at will. Annas and Caiaphas in the New Testament were effectively instruments of Roman authority.
Ordinary priests (כֹּהֵן, kohen) were descendants of Aaron, responsible for the sacrificial worship of the Temple. They served in rotation according to twenty-four "divisions" (Luke 1:5 records that Zechariah belonged to the division of Abijah). When not on Temple duty, priests returned to their home towns and often worked in farming or a trade alongside their religious role.
Levites (members of the tribe of Levi outside the priestly families) assisted the priests, handling the Temple's music, gatekeeping, and maintenance. Their status was below that of priests but above that of ordinary Israelites.
In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus deliberately has a priest and then a Levite pass by the wounded man (Luke 10:31–32) — the two figures of highest religious standing in the entire system, and neither one stops to help. The audience would have felt the sting of that irony keenly.
The majority of Jewish people were farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, or small traders. They formed the backbone of society, were obligated to tithe to the Levites and priests, and made the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the three great festivals.
In Jewish society, genealogy mattered enormously. Being able to demonstrate pure Israelite lineage was the foundation of social standing. Those whose ancestry was in question — descendants of converts, families who had intermarried with Gentiles after the return from exile — occupied a lower rung on the social ladder.
Some people, though Jewish, were pushed to the edges of mainstream society:
Tax collectors — Jews who collected taxes on behalf of Rome — were regarded as traitors to their own people. They were permitted to collect above the Roman-mandated rate and pocket the difference, which made corruption endemic. In the Gospels, "tax collector" is virtually synonymous with "sinner." When the Pharisees complained that Jesus was eating "with tax collectors and sinners" (Matt 9:11), they were accusing him of choosing companions who violated every standard of respectable society. Jesus' reply was stunning: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matt 9:13)
Shepherds — Although the Bible is full of beautiful shepherd imagery (Psalm 23, John 10), shepherds in Jesus' day occupied a genuinely low social position. Their work kept them in the fields continuously, making it impossible to observe the Sabbath or the purity rituals. Rabbinic courts considered them unreliable witnesses. God's choice to announce the birth of the Messiah first to shepherds (Luke 2:8–20) was, by the standards of that society, a startling and deliberate reversal.
People with disabilities and illness — The blind, the lame, and those with skin diseases suffered not only physically but were excluded from normal social and religious life. Those with serious skin diseases were required to live outside the city and cry out "Unclean! Unclean!" whenever anyone approached (Lev 13:45–46). When Jesus reached out and touched the man with leprosy (Mark 1:41) — in a culture where touching an unclean person made you unclean as well — that single gesture dismantled the entire system of separation.
The position of women in biblical-era Jewish society was complex and, in some ways, contradictory.
On one hand, the Old Testament affirms the dignity of women: Genesis declares that both male and female are made in the image of God (Gen 1:27), Proverbs 31 celebrates a woman of noble character, Deborah served as a judge over Israel (Judges 4–5), and the story of Ruth is a song of loyalty and redemption.
On the other hand, by the time of Jesus, rabbinic tradition had placed significant restrictions on women. Women could not testify in court, were not encouraged to study the Torah, and were seated separately in the synagogue. Some rabbis went so far as to say that "teaching a daughter Torah is like teaching her indecency" (a view attributed to one rabbi in Mishnah Sotah 3:4, though it was contested). The daily morning prayers included a blessing in which Jewish men thanked God for "not having made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman."
Against this background, Jesus' behavior was remarkable:
The Roman Empire was built on slavery. Estimates suggest that roughly 15–20% of the empire's total population were enslaved — and in Italy itself the proportion may have been higher. Slaves had no legal personhood; they were the property of their owners, and could be bought, sold, punished, or even killed.
Jewish law took a considerably more humane approach to slavery than Roman law:
These protections applied primarily to Hebrew slaves, however. The situation of Gentile slaves was considerably harsher.
A number of believers in the early church were enslaved. In the letter to Philemon, Paul intercedes for the runaway slave Onesimus, asking his master Philemon to receive him back "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave — as a dear brother." (Philem 16) Paul did not call directly for the abolition of slavery — in the political climate of his day, that would have been tantamount to calling for revolution — but he planted a seed: in Christ, master and slave are brothers. That seed eventually grew into the towering tree of the abolitionist movement.
Of all the social barriers in the ancient world, the gulf between Jews and Gentiles (גּוֹיִם, goyim) was the deepest.
Devout Jews did not eat at the same table as Gentiles (Gal 2:12), did not enter a Gentile's house (John 18:28), and avoided physical contact as much as possible. In Herod's Temple, a stone barrier called the soreg bore inscriptions in Greek and Latin warning: "No foreigner is to enter within the balustrade and forecourt around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death which will follow." Fragments of this warning inscription have been recovered by archaeologists.
Ephesians 2:14 says that Christ "broke down the middle wall of partition" — Paul was almost certainly alluding to this very real, physical wall in the Temple.
Acts 10 records a defining moment: Peter, in Joppa, saw a vision of a great sheet descending from heaven, filled with all kinds of animals considered unclean, and heard a voice say, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat!" Peter refused three times, and each time the voice replied, "What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean." (Acts 10:15) Immediately afterward, messengers from the Gentile Cornelius arrived — and Peter finally understood: "God is no respecter of persons." (Acts 10:34)
This was one of the most difficult breakthroughs in the early church. Jewish believers had to accept that Gentiles could become God's people directly, without passing through the Jewish rites of initiation such as circumcision. For people whose entire identity was built on that boundary, it was a profound shock. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) made its landmark decision precisely on this question.
When you hold all of these barriers together — priests above commoners, men above women, free above slave, Jew above Gentile, clean above unclean — you begin to feel just how earth-shattering Jesus' actions were:
And then he spoke the words that define his entire movement: "Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondservant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matt 20:26–28)
The gospel is not a warm layer of sentiment painted over the old hierarchy. It redefines from the ground up what it means to be "great" or "small," "honored" or "lowly" — in the Kingdom of God, the greatest is the one who serves, and the most honored is the one who washes feet.
This is why the gospel took root first among slaves, the poor, and the marginalized. Not because it promised an earthly reversal of fortune, but because it proclaimed a truth: in God's eyes, you were never less than anyone else.
💬 After reading this article, if you have any thoughts or questions, you are warmly welcome to ask Pastor Bond:
- "Why was it such a big deal for Jesus to eat with tax collectors?"
- "Just how shocking was it to say 'neither slave nor free' in that world?"
- "Do I carry any hidden sense of hierarchy in the way I look at people?"