Mark 12:35-40
Let it be noticed that Jesus judged men, not as groups but as individuals. He would not condemn a man because that man was affiliated with a group which ordinarily opposed Jesus, if the man's own attitude was right and his motives pure. Perhaps it was because Jesus did not desire his fervent approval of an individual scribe to be construed by the onlookers as an approval of the scribes in general that he went on as he did.

Immediately after the inquirer had left him, Jesus began to rebuke the scribes in two connections. First, they insisted that the messiah would be a second David, an earthly potentate, a temporal king (Mark 12:35). From the Old Testament, Jesus argued this was not the divine intent at all (Mark 12:36). The promised Messiah would, positionally, not be David's sone and successor in the temporal sense but David's Lord, and would be exalted to the right hand of God.

Jesus had still further criticism for the scribes in general. They liked to proclaim their intellectual superiority by parading in their official teacher's robe; they were haughty. Furthermore, they took pleasure in receiving the homage of the crowds as they walked through the streets; they were vain. Again, they were always looking after their own interests and seeking the chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets (Mark 12:39); they were proud. Again, they did not hesitate to extract money from the poor (widows); they were unprincipled. And finally, they prayed long prayers just to make an impression on the people; they were hypocritical.

The indictment was scathing. It would seem that Jesus deliberately invited the antagonism of the scribes; but his criticism was only the truth, and a word which they had long needed to hear.