Sublime

The fulfillment of Israel’s story in the story of the Messiah is the foundational charter of the church.

We have fitted them into the framework of ideas and beliefs that we have acquired from other sources. I want in this book to allow them, as far as I can, to speak for themselves. Not everyone will like the result.

Israel’s hope was conceived in relation to land, family, Torah and Temple; Jesus subverted the common interpretation of these, and offered his own fresh and positive alternatives.

Rather, I shall now suggest that he was announcing a prophetic message after the manner of ‘oracular’ prophets, and that he was inaugurating a renewal movement after the manner of ‘leadership’ prophets. He was, in fact, to this extent very like John the Baptist, only more so.

Once we get the goal right (the new creation, not just “heaven”) and the human problem properly diagnosed (idolatry and the corruption of vocation, not just “sin”), the larger biblical vision of Jesus’s death begins to come into view.

Whether we believe in Jesus, whether we approve of his teaching, let alone whether we like the look of the movement that still claims to follow him,

Thatis precisely not what 2:17-20 is saying. The boast is "Well, but I am the solution to this Problem."