updated 5mo ago
How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
When in Luke the rich young ruler asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (18:18, NRSV), he isn’t asking how to go to heaven when he dies.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
But when it comes to interpretation and meaning, those same “conservatives” are regularly to be found on exactly the same page as Bultmann, reading most of the stories in the gospels as signposts toward the cross and the faith of the early church.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
Suppose this is what it looks like when Israel’s God returns at last? Suppose this isn’t a story about a man going about “proving that he’s God,” but about God coming back in person to rescue his people?
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
Here is the point: “You didn’t know the moment when God was visiting you.”
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
Again and again, he will come to surprise, comfort, and commission his puzzled and anxious followers through the opening of the scriptures and the breaking of the bread.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
The underlying reason is that the wrong questions have been asked, by “liberals” and “radicals,” by “conservatives” and “orthodox” alike. Questions have been asked of the gospels that they were not written to answer; and the questions the gospels were addressing—questions as much political as theological—have been ignored. It is time for a fresh lo
... See morefrom How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
Jesus announced and inaugurated a vision of God’s kingdom that he was constantly redefining, through actions and parables, and that would be inaugurated by his own vindication. The importance of Daniel 7, of the exaltation and vindication of the “one like a son of man,” cannot be over-stressed here—and
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
If Jesus came either to teach or to model a perfect way of life, hoping that people would then obey him and copy him, we would have to conclude that he was a striking failure.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
the suffering of Jesus’s followers is actually, like Jesus’s own suffering, not just the inevitable accompaniment to the accomplishing of the divine purpose, but actually itself part of the means by which that purpose is to be fulfilled.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright
For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel altogether.
from How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels by N. T. Wright