...how did Jesus remain so calm and collected and gracious with people being so mean to him?
Hi Cherie, He always did the very thing that He commands us to do, which is summed up in this single verse:
Matthew 7
12 However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Just to be clear, this commandment has nothing whatsoever to do with the way that we are 'actually' being treated by others. IOW, as Christians, we are supposed to 'always' treat others with respect, patience, kindness and love,
regardless of how they are choosing to treat us at the time.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
~Deut
p.s. -
Matthew 7:12 is an interesting verse, isn't it, because the second half of the verse tells us that whenever we choose to obey the 1st half of v12, it's the equivalent of obeying the entire OT (at least on the horizontal plane of existence, that is, IOW, where our relationships to others are concerned).
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails.
.