The Challenge of Jesus: A New Paradigm?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He created mankind. And He saw that it was good. But something happened. Man chose to disobey God. Instead of becoming good stewards, we turned against God, turned against each other. So God chose Israel so that through it, the world would be redeemed. They would be an example of what it means to be the people of God. But time and again, Israel failed to be the light of the world that was its call. Because of the sins of Israel, God punished them by allowing them to be taken into exile. From then on the Jews have looked forward to the day when they would return from exile. They looked forward to the day when their identity as the people of God would be restored, with their own king, as in the days of old when David ruled over them, not some foreign ruler of a pagan nation; when the glory of God would return to the Temple and Jerusalem to dwell there forever; when God will vindicate Israel and judge the whole earth. They waited and waited, but even after they returned from exile physically, most of the Jews still felt that the exile had not ended. They were still under foreign rule. God’s glory has yet to return to Zion. So they continued to wait, as one ‘messiah’ after another turned up to fight against the Greeks and Romans only to die and be deemed failures.

Jesus then comes into the story, as a prophet proclaiming the Kingdom of God. This is the good news - that the exile is at its end, not just for Israel, but for the whole world, ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The Kingdom of God will come, not just in Jerusalem, but on the whole Earth as it is in Heaven, and it is already at hand. God’s justice and sovereignty will rule over the Earth. God will finally put the world to right after all the evil that has occured. Jesus not only announced the Kingdom of God, but accomplished it, not through the Herodian way of compromise; not through the violent way of the Zealots, nor the sectarian way of the Essenes. The way of Jesus was the way of the suffering servant, the way of sacrificial love. Through His death and resurrection, God would make all things new. The resurrection of Jesus marked the beginning of new creation. He is the messiah, the Son of God! His twelve disciples would be the new Israel, the people of God.

The Church is on a mission, not to tell others about how to get to Heaven, but to tell them how Heaven will come to Earth. The Church, is called to proclaim the good news of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and of the Kingdom of God. Not only that, but as the people of God empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Church has been called to be participants together with God in implementing the Kingdom of God right here on Earth by following in the way of Jesus – the way of servanthood, love, sacrifice, not through conquering crusades. We are to be used by God for good works by which His will is done on earth in every area and discipline (social action, arts, politics, engineering, economics, environmental conservation etc) until the day when His Kingdom fully comes in the creation of the new Heaven and Earth, when all creation will be saved, not just individual souls. And one day, we will be raised to life again as Jesus was raised to life, with new bodies, to spend eternity with God and others as well in the new Heaven and Earth.

Could this be a new way of looking at Jesus and the Church?

If you are to shape your world in following Christ it isn’t enough to say that being a professional or an academic is about high moral standards, using every opportunity to talk to people about Jesus, praying for or with your students, being fair in your marking and assessment, and honest in your speaking. You are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile, and humbly and boldly to act symbolically in ways which declare that the powers have been defeated, that the Kingdom has come in Jesus, that the new way of being human has been unveiled; and to be prepared to tell the story which explains what these symbols are all about. When Paul spoke of the gospel he wasn’t talking primarily about a system of salvation, but about the announcement, in symbol and word, that Jesus is the true Lord of the world, the true light of the world. ~ N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus