Why Did Jesus Ask So Many Questions?

It’s often been observed that the Gospels record Jesus being asked 183 questions and yet directly answering only a handful. In contrast, Jesus himself asked 307 questions. Even allowing for some duplication of events across the Gospels and some variations in how questions are counted, those are astonishing statistics.

Let’s start with those questions he didn’t answer. I think most of us would assume that the divine Son would have answered the questions posed to him, at least the ‘asked in good faith’ ones. Surely it would seem rude not to. We wouldn’t think much of a church pastor who ignored people’s questions!

In one sense Jesus did answer questions that people had, insofar as helping them to understand God was integral to his teaching. But mostly it didn’t take the form of Q&A, at least according to what we see in the Gospels (not all conversations were recorded, of course). We do see some exceptions, such as the post-resurrection conversation with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, which involved an exchange of questions that led to Jesus “explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24).   

Some of those unanswered questions arose in the context of religious leaders trying to ‘catch him out’—trick questions, in other words, trying to get Jesus to incriminate himself. Hence, wisdom said not to answer in those instances, or—as Jesus often did—answering the question with a question.   

But what about the significant number of times that Jesus asked questions of other people? Normally we ask questions to acquire information that we don’t have—to learn things that we don’t know. Does this suggest there were things that Jesus genuinely didn’t know?

Many Christians would be uncomfortable thinking that might be the case—it would diminish him in their eyes, making him ‘less than fully God.’ After all, God knows everything, so surely Jesus did, at least when he chose to (runs the logic). Although the implication that Jesus tapped into omniscience every so often is an awkward one to substantiate.

But am I the only one who senses that many Christians credit Jesus with greater knowledge about any number of things beyond his contemporaries’—in other words, granting him at least some level of omniscience on the grounds of his divinity?   

It’s an understandable assumption when we look at him from the ‘Jesus was God’ angle, but it struggles to hold water.

Firstly, it undermines the incarnate Jesus being made like us—indeed, having to be made like us ‘in every way’, as Hebrews 2:17 tells us (qualified only by Hebrews 4:15 ‘except for sin’)—which involved laying aside (literally, ‘emptying himself’ of) those divine attributes that would have been incompatible with being fully human (Philippians 2:7). Giving him an ‘unfair advantage’ over us in how we have to live our human lives.

Secondly, to attribute partial (but not complete) omniscience to Jesus is a bit like being partially pregnant. It doesn’t work. I don’t think orthodox Christianity would recognise the idea of Jesus flicking an omniscience on/off switch when needed.   

What probably lies behind these slightly confused notions is a tendency to mistake the work of the Holy Spirit—what the Apostle Paul would later describe as the spiritual gift of a ‘word of knowledge’—for an intrinsic feature of Jesus’ divinity.

Jesus was uniquely well-attuned to the Holy Spirit, in a human way. The word ‘perfect’ is not one I like to use very often, because its meaning is too influenced by neo-Platonic thinking, but we could certainly say that in his humanity Jesus had the perfect relationship with the Father through the Holy Spirit. Being richly immersed in the presence of the Holy Spirit brought with it the fullness of the Spirit, the gifting of the Spirit, and of course, the fruit of the Spirit, and yet—in my reading of the Gospels—Jesus was never ‘weird’ about it. In everything that Jesus did, and everything he was, he was both ‘naturally spiritual’ and ‘spiritually natural’.

But back to the questions—and in particular, why Jesus asked so many while answering so few. It’s well-known that questions enhance our learning far better than simply receiving downloaded information. Relatively little of Jesus’ teaching was delivered in that way—as ‘didactic’ teaching, through propositional truth statements. Most of his teaching was delivered via parables—a form of short story with an underlying moral teaching that was not self-evident on the surface; it had to be discerned.

Parables not only invited questions but could scarcely avoid leading to them. They were typically left open-ended. Jesus himself often failed to explain them.

One of the purposes of a parable was to go away and talk about it as a group—argue about it, speculate about it, try to figure out what it was ‘saying’. Matthew 9:13: “Go and learn what this means …”

Parables were also by nature subversive, so people’s starting assumptions would often be upended. They were more provocations than illustrations. If a parable didn’t leave you with questions … if it seemed too ‘obvious’ … if nothing at all seemed ‘odd’ about it … chances were you were reading it wrong. And I don’t just mean the story on the surface (which was never what the parable was teaching about). The story was a neutral vehicle that solely served to carry the real teaching, which lurked below and behind. First rule for understanding any parable? The surface ingredients are never the teaching!

Classic example: The Parable of Abraham, Lazarus, and the (unnamed) Rich Man is not teaching about the nature of hell, especially not the evangelical version. The story is set somewhere called Hades, which is simply where it was popularly assumed dead people go (Hades was ‘the place of the dead’)—a kind of ‘holding bay’ pending their eternal destiny. Jesus is not affirming that popular understanding; he’s just situating the story there. It was no more teaching about the nature of heaven or hell than if a preacher began an illustration with “St. Peter was standing at the Pearly Gates, when …” The teaching in that parable was that how each of us behaves in this life—especially towards others—has a direct impact on the afterlife.

There were really two categories of questions that Jesus asked—or perhaps we should say two categories of people he questioned: the ‘ordinary’ people and the religious leaders. In the latter category, Jesus was usually speaking to people who already thought they knew all the answers (as religious people often do!). Hence his questions to them served to subtly (or not so subtly) undermine their assumptions.  

Perhaps the main reason Jesus asked so many questions was not to acquire information but because questions invite participation. They generate conversations, and they make people think.

Hearing their answers helped Jesus to engage relationally. We see this on occasions where an answer to Jesus’ question would already have been self-evident to him. Such as asking the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” in Mark 10:51.

Contrast the difference between Jesus simply stating, “I am the Messiah”, rather than asking the question, “Who do people say I am?”—followed by, “And who do you say that I am?” Far more powerful; causing people to think and to articulate it in their own words.

If there is an overarching theme to Jesus’ teaching that is reflected in this use of questions, it’s that he wanted to change people’s perceptions: their ‘lens’ and their ‘framework’ for thinking about God and the things of God. His teaching plan was not so much about delivering information as reorienting people’s thinking. Same ingredients (for example, Torah) but reimagined and reprioritised compared to their religious leaders’ prevailing framework.   

Except on the relatively rare occasions that questions are rhetorical, they resist closure. They invite a continuing dialogue. They create an environment where learning can take place in which participants can learn for themselves. The teaching is ‘caught’ as much as ‘taught’. It is more likely to be owned and remembered.

It’s perhaps unfortunate that the teaching model in most church settings, most of the time—and much as I like doing it—is primarily didactic, through sermons, in church services. This is why home groups and other similar in-person gatherings are so important.   

It’s easy to assume that good teaching is about giving good answers. Jesus seems to have thought it was more about asking good questions. Assuming, of course, we’re in a church environment that welcomes them!