He was killed every time people failed to hear that their closed system needed opening. And ultimately, he was killed when they failed to see that the new thing they had rejected was to become the cornerstone of a new reality. The change Jesus brings about is something foundational, solid. That change that was Jesus turns out to be something you can count on. This is the paradox of conversion.
Spiritual growth is the overturning of a dead equilibrium.
If we seek only the fixed point of equilibrium, we've looked in the wrong place and in the wrong way for what we yearn for. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Any reading of the map of human spiritual growth, or of emotional growth, for that matter, shows us moving through several stages. There's the purely instinctual and selfish period in infancy when we're the center of the universe. There's the formal stage of childhood when we like to be told what's what and to repeat it often.