It can be argued that Jesus was too far ahead, spiritually speaking, of those who crucified him. His notes were too high for their ears, and all they could hear was how he challenged them (and to their minds, threatened them) with his radical way of relating to the Law and to God.
Always, what you see depends on your perspective, which depends on your own spiritual development. To the rigid mind stuck in Stage 2 Jesus was a threat. And because people tend to use the stability of Stage 2 to cover their own inner sense of chaos (rage, shame, etc.) they will tend to project their Stage 2 thinking without realizing they are actually protecting themselves.
Jesus (and any authentic, advanced spiritual teacher) knew that growth demands inner transformation and not mere external performance. He knew that describing divinity as a universal Love which embraces all people would fall upon deaf ears and, furthermore, would be a threat to respectable people trying to perform their way into God's graces.
It is important to note that these stages describe spiritual development, in contrast with religious development (involving dogma, public gatherings, and belief per say). "Spiritual" in this sense means the array of psychological and emotive processes - essentially a level of awareness - which is not strictly religious and may not even involve a belief in God per se, but which involves humankind's deepest and most sacred aspirations.
It should be added that this growth process is not a progression from bad to good. There are good, sincere, and authentic people in Stage 2 and there are wonderful people who would never hurt a fly who get trapped in the chaos and addiction of Stage 1.
Still, there is a real danger of getting stuck at any one stage, thereby stunting or stopping the process of full maturation. You cannot be truly good, for example, if your motivation for doing good is fear that God will punish you (as it often the case in Stage 2). That may be your first catalyst, but it must not be your last. Ideally, one progresses to doing good for its own sake, for the sake of others, and out of a flowing, compassionate awareness of the oneness and interdependence of all.
However, it can be extremely challenging to grow into Stage 4. It is not unusual for some measure of suffering, struggle and loss to be catalysts that motivate many (if not most) of us into growth beyond self-centeredness and attachment to our current perspective. The great spiritual teachers, after all, have always taught that it takes loss to become fully human, which is to say fully spiritual. One can imagine a caterpillar (who will soon be dissolving inside a chrysalis) looking up at a butterfly and saying: "You'll never get me up in one of those things!"
Entering into a new level of being his involves a type of death - a dissolving of naivete, and a letting go of who you previously thought you were. Jesus said that in becoming mature, we must "lose our life" to gain it.
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