Summary Notes on Ch. 3 N.T. Wright
The Mission and Message of Jesus
1. Jesus was a first-century Jewish prophet. We know more perhaps about this time in history than most other times. This knowledge helps us put the mission and message of Jesus in a context. It was a context of imperial rule by Rome, and a context of insurrection. Politics and religion were not separated then as now. "Jesus seems to have drawn not merely upon the current revolutionary ideology, but on the idea of the "gospel," the good news, which traces the kingdom theme back to the prophets, and particularly to Isaiah." This meant a return from exile, defeat of evil and the return of YHWH.
2. Jesus told people this kingdom was not what they expected.
Jesus invited people to repent and believe the gospel. "Give up your agenda and follow mine."
Jesus made a welcome. He invited all and sundry - breaking the rules of exclusion and class.
Jesus issued a timeless challenge, to live as a covenant people, a way of forgiveness and jubilee, and to carry this to all people in the world.
Jesus warned of dire consequence for all if the summons was ignored.
Jesus agenda led him into a clash with others.
3. Jesus "believed he was Israel's Messiah, the one through whom the true God would accomplish His decisive purpose." This is rather different than the political agenda of the many other messiahs of the time. Jesus must be understood Wright says as "the head of a movement through which, he believed, the long-awaited kingdom was dawning. All the signs are that he regarded his own work not simply as pointing forward to this kingdom, but actually as inaugurating it: his actions only make sense if he believed that through them the kingdom was in some sense present, not simply future."
4. Jesus believed himself called to take on the real enemy, evil itself. "... a suprapersonal, supranational power." What relevance has this today he asks. Little as a wisdom teacher, no matter how facinating, but much if Jesus' death did accomplish the real defeat of the evil that had infected ... the world ... and this was ... good news.
notes by jmct
October 15, 2000