“As a Jew, Jesus’ approach to lie was essentially Hebraic. Nowhere to we find him speculating on the nature of being, or abstracting “essential” truths from historical events. He makes no philosophical formulas or introduces no abstracted ideas of God. His religion was relational and not philosophical. His “ethic”, if he had one at all in the way we mean it, was action oriented and always pointed to concrete situations. He found God in the world, not apart from it. There is no hint of the dualism that later plagued Christendom throughout the ages. His way is the way of wisdom – an early, life-affirming wisdom that people could relate to.

In terms of his discipleship ethic, he called for followers not just believers. It wasn’t good enough to confess that he was “very God of very God”; he called people to an active trust in his rather dangerous promises (Matt 8:18-22). In fact he sent people away on precisely this basis. He nowhere asks us to commit to a creed but calls us to trust in God and what he is doing. In his teaching, he used common relational metaphors, for example, Father-Son, to express his relationship with God, and other daily metaphors (sheep, gates, houses and so-on) to express other great truths of faith. He constantly used subversive parables that reflected ordinary life to confer profound spiritual meaning. His teaching style was definitely non-academic: he discipled his followers into a lifestyle (called the Way) rather than send them to an academy to learn about God divorced from the context of life and mission.

His love of life was infectious. His form of holiness was not the alienating for so often associated with religious types. It was thoroughly redemptive. We have often pondered what kind of holiness was present in Jesus that ordinary people – broken, sinful, marginalized people – loved to hang around him. They didn’t feel condemned by Him. Sadly, these same types don’t ordinarily like to hang around church people today. What’s the difference? Jesus was even accused by religious types of being a bit of a drunkard and a glutton and of fraternizing with all the wrong kinds of people. He was certainly not afraid of pleasure but oriented it towards God. His is an all of life religion, with no separation of the private and the public. He should be the church’s hero, the one we all aspire to become life. Instead we have so emphasized his divinity over his humanity that Jesus seems otherworldly, nonhuman, inaccessible.”

The Shaping of Things to Come” by Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch. (Strand Publishing, Erina, NSW 2003 Pages 106-107 )