To condemn, oppose, and defy the current order is not necessarily the same as, or even a stage toward, urging its reformation.  Jesus certainly condemned, opposed, and defied the ruling authorities of his day.  But he did not propose (or support) an agenda to reform the system.  He believed God would destroy both the system and those who ran and supported it.  He would then set up a new order.  He didn’t need either urging or assistance.

Roughly speaking there were two sets of ruling authorities in Jesus’s time and place, what we today would differentiate as “political” and “religious.”  The differentiation would have made little sense to Jesus or to anyone else in the Roman world.  Romans, Jews, and everyone else saw these two realms (that since the Enlightenment have been differentiated) as closely intertwined and interdependent.  There were not even words in Greek, Latin, or Aramaic that clearly designated what we today call

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