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Jesus

Book Review: Simply Jesus

10JANby 

IM Book Review
Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters
by N.T. Wright, HarperOne

• • •

“It is time, I believe, to recognize not only who Jesus was in his own day, despite his contemporaries’ failure to recognize him, but also who he is, and will be, for our own.”

N.T. Wright has given us a riveting vision of who Jesus is and what he came to do in his recent book, Simply Jesus. Along with Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel (heavily influenced by Wright’s studies), this book has invigorated and expanded my understanding of the Gospel in the context of the Biblical Story and the culture in which Jesus lived.

In the preface, Wright shares that his personal interest in Jesus grows out of both his Christian faith and his vocation as a historian. The result is his attempt to write about Jesus and be faithful to the complexity of the historical data while at the same time speaking “simply” in a way that will make a real difference in the lives of those who are seeking to follow him.

Simply Jesus is written in three parts.

  • In Part One, Wright introduces us to the major questions about Jesus that we must answer.
  • In Part Two, he tries to explain as simply as possible what Jesus’ public career was all about, what he was trying to accomplish, and how he went about it. Key to this section is Wright’s attempt to help readers see things from a first-century Jewish point of view.
  • Part Three, one long chapter, seeks to answer, “What does this all mean for us now?”

Through it all, Wright’s passion comes through:

“Perhaps even ‘his own people’ — this time not the Jewish people of the first century, but the would-be Christian people of the Western world — have not been ready to recognize Jesus himself. We want a ‘religious’ leader, not a king! We want someone to save our souls, not rule our world! Or, if we want a king, someone to take charge of our world, what we want is someone to implement the policies we already embrace, just as Jesus contemporaries did. But if Christians don’t get Jesus right, what chance is there that other people will bother much with him?”

 

N.T. Wright begins his presentation of Jesus with a section on the “Perfect Storm” of controversy that mention of Jesus conjures up in today’s world. On one hand, you have the conservative, classic Western Christian myth about Jesus, and on the other, the liberal/skeptical myth. The third element of the storm “is the sheer historical complexity of speaking about Jesus,”which has often been ignored, causing people in a variety of times and places to read the evidence according to their own cultural settings, thus making for themselves a “Jesus” in their own image.

Instead, he asserts, we must step out of our own stormy weather for a moment and re-enter the “Perfect Storm” Jesus himself faced in his own world. There was a Romanelement to that storm, ruled by Augustus Caesar. Hailed as “the Son of God,” his reign was presented to the world as “good news” of “peace” for all people. There was also a Jewish storm. The Israelites found themselves in a chapter in their long story where they (once again) languished in“Exile.” Even though they lived in the Promised Land, they did so under Roman oppression. Alongside this depressing reality, they also clung to a long tradition of hope that one day, when the last great world empire had done its worst, a new “Exodus” would occur to usher in the Messianic Age of true justice and peace. The third element of the first century “Perfect Storm” was the rise of revolutionary movements, which sensed that the world was at the turning of the ages, when God himself would come and establish his rule in the world.

Into this “Perfect Storm” Jesus came, announcing, “The time has come! The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15, NIV).

One of the most helpful contributions of Simply Jesus is Wright’s focus on the Exodus as a paradigm for Israel’s hope. In the minds of those who looked for God’s ultimate deliverance, there were seven aspects to the Exodus theme that embodied their hope:

  • The Exodus hope was about a wicked tyrant who had enslaved God’s people.
  • The Exodus hope was about a God-chosen leader, raised up to set God’s people free.
  • The Exodus hope was about God exercising divine judgment and winning a great victory over the evil ruler.
  • The Exodus hope was about God rescuing his people by an act of special grace and mercy.
  • The Exodus hope was about God’s people entering into a marriage covenant with God.
  • The Exodus hope was about was about God being with his people, dwelling in their midst, as in the Tabernacle or Temple.
  • The Exodus hope was about fulfilling the ancient promises to Abraham.

As Wright says, “there was a well-recognized set of expectations for a ‘king of the Jews,’ with roots extending all the way back to the Exodus.” Jesus, through his public ministry, was announcing that the ultimate Exodus was at hand. He, their King, had arrived to set them free. God had come to rule on earth as in heaven. In Jesus, God was accomplishing his great victory over all the powers that had held God’s people in captivity. God was becoming King!

In the meaty second part of Simply Jesus, N.T. Wright shows how Jesus announced this and then pointed to it by his words and actions in his public ministry. He talks about how Jesus explained what was happening through curious stories and illustrations called “parables.” Wright has a helpful discussion about how Jesus’ teaching — for example, about divorce (Matt. 19) — was not just ethical instruction, but always pointed to new realities of inner transformation and the establishment of justice and peace in the Kingdom.

In an insightful chapter, Wright compares Jesus with several other “God-chosen leaders” before and after him who raised the hopes of Israel that the time of God’s rule was arriving. Not only did they fit the mold of Exodus expectations we’ve outlined above, but they also set a pattern for a “two-stage” establishment of the Kingdom hope. The Kingdom, in some sense, is bothpresent and future. It arrives with the King and is demonstrated as a present reality, but must also be settled in the future by a great, imminent event.

That event would involve a climactic battle against the powers that rule and hold God’s people captive. Not just against Rome or another national or military power, but against the dark powers themselves, against the satan, God’s ultimate enemy. It would also involve cleansing and reestablishing the Temple so that God might dwell among his people once more.

On this theme, N.T. Wright gives some of his best and most perceptive writing. In the chapter called, “Space, Time, and Matter,” he shows how, in Jesus, God’s space and human space come together (Temple), God’s time and human time meet (Sabbath), and the present age and the age to come merge (New Creation). The time is fulfilled. The Temple is reinterpreted as Jesus himself — the place where God and humans meet. The New Creation is breaking into this world of sin, evil, and death. God has come to rule on earth as in heaven.

This raises questions, however. What will bring this divine moment of time to its consummation? If Jesus is the Temple, where God meets with humans, what of the existing Temple? If New Creation is breaking into the world, what about the powerful forces of evil that still trouble the world? What climactic event will prove decisive?

The Cross.

Somehow, Jesus’s death was seen by Jesus himself, and then by those who told and ultimately wrote his story, as the ultimate means by which God’s kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven. It was the ultimate Exodus event through which the tyrant was defeated, God’s people were set free and given their fresh vocation, and God’s presence was established in their midst in a completely new way for which the Temple itself was just an advance pointer.

N.T. Wright does not stop at this point to discuss theories of the atonement, but it is clear that the underlying emphasis he sets forth as primary is that of Christus Victor – God’s triumph over the powers that hold humankind in bondage under their rule. Furthermore, it is only by maintaining a connection with the Resurrection (by which Jesus becomes the prototype of the New Creation), the Ascension (by which Jesus is enthroned and takes charge), and theOutpouring of the Spirit that we can appreciate the full picture of victory that the Cross paints.

The Spirit-empowered Church is now the community that heralds the message, “Jesus is King!”As others have noted, this carries with it a counter message: “And ____________ is not!” The message of the Church is that Jesus is in charge; through him God has come to rule on earth as it is in heaven. And just as Jesus was the new Temple wherein God dwelt, so now the Church exists as a set of outposts of that new Temple in the world, filled with the Spirit, proclaiming, embodying, and living the good news.

At this point, we must be careful, and Wright wisely warns us that being on the side of triumph is not the same as being triumphalistic. For the “kingship” that Jesus brought is a different kind of kingship. And so he says, “The methods of kingdom work are in accordance with the message of Jesus as king; that is, they involve suffering, misunderstanding, violence, execution,” etc. Jesus won his victory through suffering. We do the same, until the day that he reappears, heaven and earth are joined irrevocably as one, and every creature bows to proclaim him King.

What does this mean for us today, to say that Jesus is King? N.T. Wright concludes Simply Jesus with a thoughtful discussion about how God extends his rule in the world through the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus who make worship their central priority and display a new way of being human to the world.

Get this book. Read it again and again. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the real Jesus, the Jesus who is King, the One who came not just to make a nice warm place for me in heaven, but who came to change the world by being a King unlike any other.

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