A protestant protests the direction and teaching of the Church, of the Body of Christ, and tells the Church what it should be doing by publicly chastising the Church, and seeking to gain public (popular) agreement. Then begins to re-invent an assembly that acts out a new proposal of what the church should be.
Peter was the first to almost become a protestant, when he ran to the front of the group, standing in Jesus way, and told Jesus that he must not go to Jerusalem to be crucified. He wanted Jesus to be the Messiah in a different way than Jesus intended.
But, successfully, Jesus called for Peter to “get back
behind me… whoever wants to follow
behind me [rather than define some different path in protest] must take up his cross…”
Then, sadly, Judas wanted a different path for the mission of the Messiah - so he sought to end the path defined by the Body of Christ (Jesus himself), and handed him over to the authorities.
(It was actually the “rich young man” who ran away naked - you remember how Jesus looking at him loved him, and told him how to enter the Kingdom, so in mourning he went off to sell all the treasures he had, to give to the poor so that he could come and follow Jesus. And in the garden he had only the shirt on his back, which left him naked when it too was ripped off. But then in the tomb on Sunday morning he sat with a new shining robe, announcing the resurrection.)
John Martin
