| |
A Resource by Mark D. Roberts |
|
What Was the Message of Jesus?
by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts March 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Mark D. Roberts
Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.
My Various Writings on Jesus
The Birth of Jesus: Hype or History?
Was Jesus Divine? The Early Christian Understanding
Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
Was Jesus Married? A Careful Look at the Real Evidence
What Was the Message of Jesus?
How Can We Know Anything about the Real Jesus?
What Languages Did Jesus Speak and Why Does It Matter?
Recovering the Scandal of the Cross?
The Passion of the Christ: An In-Depth Review
Book -- Jesus Revealed: Know Him Better to Love Him Better
Part 1: Introduction
Posted at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 6, 2004
With The Passion of the Christ so much in our minds these days, I had planned to do some blogging on the question: Why was Jesus crucified? But as I pondered this question, I realized that my answer would only make sense in light of a prior answer to another question: What was Jesus' actual message? So I'll get to the reason for Jesus' crucifixion in a while. But first I need to lay a foundation for that reason by dealing with Jesus' message. This isn't quite so easy as it might at first seem. Yet the effort to grasp Jesus' actual message pays rich dividends, because it makes sense, not only of his life and ministry, but of his death and resurrection.
| If you were to ask the average person what Jesus' preached - even the average Christian - you'd no doubt hear something about love: "Jesus taught about love. He said we should all love each other." This perception of Jesus' teaching isn't wrong, let me hasten to add. Jesus did talk quite a bit about love. In fact he said that loving God is the greatest commandment and loving our neighbors is the runner up (Mark 12:29-31). So, to be sure, love figured prominently in the message of Jesus. |
 |
But love was not the core of his proclamation. And, to be sure, his preaching about love didn't get Jesus crucified. Neither the Romans nor the Jewish authorities would have been particularly bothered by a Jewish prophet who ran around telling people to love God and people. Quite a few Jews would have been distressed over the thought of having to love their enemies, however. But the Romans - the obvious enemies -- wouldn't have crucified someone whose main crime was telling Jews to love them and turn the other cheek! The core of Jesus' message must have been more contentious, indeed, more scandalous, than a call to love.
 |
It's common for people to reduce the message of Jesus to something all too simple and, I might add, all too similar to the biases of whoever is doing the reducing. You'll see this in many of the contemporary "scholarly" attempts to summarize the message of Jesus. The infamous Jesus Seminar, by the time it stones Jesus to death with its red, pink, gray, and black beads, ends up with a sage who speaks in esoteric riddles, hardly someone who would be put to death as a threat to Roman order in Judea. |
Whatever Jesus preached, it got people excited. Even the demons were riled up. And Jesus' message angered most of the religious leaders he encountered. In the end, it got him killed on a Roman cross. So what exactly was this inspiring, challenging, goading, and apparently subversive message of Jesus all about?
I'll begin to answer this question in my next post.
Part 2: What Was the Core of Jesus' Preaching?
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, 2004
In my last post I began a multi-part series seeking to answer the question: What was the message of Jesus? I mentioned that many people would answer this question by saying something about love, because we rightly associate Jesus' teaching with love. But, as it turns out, love is not the core of his message, though it is close. What Jesus actually proclaimed, first and foremost, was not that we should love, but something else.
| We find a succinct summary of this "something else" in the first description of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of Mark: "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news'" (Mark 1:14-15). Here, in a nutshell, is the message of Jesus: the kingdom of God has come near. |
|
| The Plain of Gennesaret, where Jesus began his ministry. Copyright © BiblePlaces.com |
The phrase "kingdom of God" appears 53 times in the New Testament gospels, almost always on the lips of Jesus. The synonymous phrase, "kingdom of heaven," appears 32 times in the Gospel of Matthew. Throughout the accounts of Jesus' ministry, he is always talking about the kingdom of God. Many of his parables explain something about this kingdom: it is like mustard seed, a treasure, a merchant looking for pearls, and a king who gave a banquet (Matt 13:44-47; 22:2). Jesus even defines his purpose in light of the kingdom: "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose" (Luke 4:43).
Given the centrality of the kingdom of God to the preaching, and, as we'll see, the actions of Jesus, it's strange that many Christians are relatively unfamiliar with what this phrase means. But if we want to understand the message of Jesus, not to mention his whole ministry, including his death and resurrection, then we must grapple with what he says about the kingdom of God. Gordon Fee, one of the wisest of New Testament scholars, once said in a lecture on Jesus: "You cannot know anything about Jesus, anything, if you miss the kingdom of God . . . . You are zero on Jesus if you don't understand this term. I'm sorry to say it that strongly, but this is the great failure of evangelical Christianity. We have had Jesus without the kingdom of God, and therefore have literally done Jesus in."*
If you've read this far, I'm assuming that you don't want to be zero on Jesus, and that you don't want to do him in, either. Neither do I. So we must work together to figure out what Jesus meant when he said "the kingdom of God has come near." For this was, indeed, the core of his message.
I plan to structure the rest of this blog series around basic questions having to do with the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus. These questions will include:
· What is the kingdom of God?
· How did Jesus proclaim the message of the kingdom?
· Where is the kingdom of God?
· When is the kingdom of God coming?
· What will life in the kingdom of God be like?
· Who will bring the kingdom of God?
· How is the kingdom of God coming?
| Answering these questions could very well fill a big, fat book. But my intent is to offer relatively bite-sized answers. If you're looking for more depth, I highly recommend the writings of N. T. Wright. He has written, not one, but three big, fat books on Jesus - and they are outstanding. But, if you're not ready to take on over 2000 pages of in-depth scholarship, then I'd also highly recommend Wright's more accessible overview in his book, The Challenge of Jesus. If you read only one book on Jesus, this is it. (Well, okay, I guess I'd like you to read my book too!) |
|
In my next post I'll take on the question: How did Jesus proclaim the message of the kingdom?
__________
*Gordon Fee, "Jesus: Early Ministry/Kingdom of God," lecture delivered at Regent College. Tape Series 2235E, Pt. 1. Copyright © Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Part 3: What is the Kingdom of God?
Part 3 of the series: "What Was the Message of Jesus?"
Posted at 10:35 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, 2004
In my last post in the series, "What Was the Message of Jesus?", I explained that the core of Jesus' preaching was the good news of the kingdom of God. This is summarized succinctly in Mark 1:15, where Jesus proclaims, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." Of course this summary leads to an obvious follow-up question: What is the kingdom of God? What is it that, according to Jesus, has drawn near?
The kingdom of God has been equated with all sorts of things in the last two millennia. Some have claimed that it is heaven, and that Jesus was saying, in so many words, "Now you can go to heaven when you die." Others have understood "the kingdom of God" as referring to the Church. From their perspective, Jesus announced the beginning of the age of the Church. Still others have seen the kingdom of God as a world infused by divine justice. They have taken Jesus' announcement as a call to social action. In recent times, New Agers have reduced the kingdom of God to inner awareness of one's divinity. Like the ancient Gnostics, they understand the good news of the kingdom to mean "You are divine."
None of these renditions of the kingdom of God hits a historical home run, although the first three are in the ballpark, at least. But all of them fail to take seriously both what Jesus actually says about the kingdom of God, and what his fellow Jews, especially the Old Testament prophets, had been saying about the kingdom for centuries.
Before we analyze Jesus' use of the phrase "the kingdom of God," we need to pay close attention to his use of the word "kingdom." When we try to understand Jesus' message of the kingdom, we easily stumble over a language gap. In everyday English, "kingdom" means a place where a king reigns. The Kingdom of Jordan, for example, is the place where King Abdullah II rules. But when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he did not think in terms of locality, but authority. |
|
King Abdullah II, with Jordan in the background. |
In the New Testament gospels, Jesus uses the Greek phrase he basileia tou theou, "the kingdom of God." The word basileia could sometimes refer to a locale over which a king ruled, but it's primary meaning in the first-century was "reign, rule, authority, sovereignty." (The same was true of the Aramaic term, malku, the word actually spoken by Jesus.) We see this meaning clearly in one of Jesus' parables. He speaks of a nobleman who "went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return" (Luke 19:12, NIV; the NRSV reads "to get royal power for himself"). The Greek of this verse reads, literally, "he went to a distant country to receive a basileia for himself." He didn't go to get a new region over which to rule, but rather to get new and greater authority over the place he lived.
We see this same meaning in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Psalm 145, for example, we read:
All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD,
and all your faithful shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
[malkuth in Hebrew; basileia in Greek],
and tell of your power (10-11).
Here God's kingdom is parallel, not to the place over which God reigns, but to his divine power. God's faithful praise his sovereignty here, not the place over which God is sovereign.
| So when Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God has come near, he doesn't mean that a place is approaching like the giant comet in the movie Deep Impact, but that God's own royal authority and power have come on the scene. "God's reign is at hand. God's power is being unleashed," Jesus says. "Turn your life around and put your trust in this good news." |
|
Of course Jesus' announcement of God's reign didn't come in a vacuum. It was both consistent with and a fulfillment of a central theme in the Hebrew prophets. In my next post I'll examine how these prophets spoke of the kingdom of God, and how this prepared the way for the message and ministry of Jesus.
Part 4 : What is the Kingdom of God? (cont)
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 11, 2004
In yesterday's post I began to clarify the core message of Jesus: "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15). Our word "kingdom," it turns out, misses the precise sense of Jesus' own language. What he proclaimed was not the approach of a place where God rules (our typical sense of "kingdom"), but rather the dawning of God's kingly authority on earth. Thus when we read the phrase "kingdom of God" in the gospels, we need to think in terms of God's reign, rule, authority, or sovereignty. This, according to Jesus, is what has come near.
In his proclamation of the reign of God, Jesus echoes the language and hopes of the Hebrew prophets. I have known this for over 20 years, but it was strongly impressed upon me three years ago as I was writing my book, Jesus Revealed. In preparation for this project, I re-read the Hebrew prophets, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi. Time and again I ran into the language of God's kingdom as the Lord promised that, someday, he would return to rule over his people.
Consider, for example, the following passage from Zephaniah, who prophesied in the latter half of the seventh century B.C.: |
|
|
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel! . . .
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you,
he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; . . .
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love; . . .
I will deal with all your oppressors
at that time.
And I will save the lame
and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise
and renown in all the earth.
At that time I will bring you home,
at the time when I gather you;
for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth,
when I restore your fortunes
before your eyes, says the LORD. (Zeph 3:14-20, emphasis added)
According to this prophecy, at the right time the LORD himself will be the "king of Israel." In this role he will give victory to his people, removing their oppressors, gathering their scattered exiles, and restoring their fortunes.
Consider one other passage from the Hebrew prophets, this one from Isaiah:
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
the return of the LORD to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the LORD has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The LORD has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God. (Isaiah 52:7-10, emphasis added)
In this prophecy, God's reign includes peace, the return of the LORD to Jerusalem, joyful singing, comfort and redemption for Judah, and the impact of God's salvation upon the whole earth. The announcement of God's reign will be, indeed, "good news."
Now, with Zephaniah's and Isaiah's prophecies ringing in your ears, listen again to Mark's summary of Jesus' message: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15). The prophetic echoes are unmistakable. But there are differences too. Whereas the prophets looked ahead to an undetermined time in the future when God would return to rule over his people, Jesus says, "The time is now. The reign of God has now come near. So turn your life around and live in light of this truth."
Now that we've identified the core message of Jesus - the proclamation of the kingdom - and clarified the basic meaning of this proclamation, we should pursue a bit further the means by which Jesus delivered his message. Yes, upon occasion he stood up and said, simply, "The kingdom of God is at hand." But that was just the beginning. In my next post I will answer the question: How did Jesus proclaim the kingdom of God?
Part 5 : How Did Jesus Proclaim the Kingdom of God?
Posted at 11:30 p.m. on Friday, March 12, 2004
So far I've shown that the central message of Jesus was: "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15). This kingdom was not a place where God reigns, but rather the reign of God itself -- God's rule, authority, and power. The reign of God, Jesus says, is at hand.
But how does Jesus proclaim the kingdom of God? What are his means and methods?
Basic Statements of Fact. As we've already seen, at times Jesus simply and bluntly proclaims the presence of the kingdom without exceptional art or artifice. You can't get much simpler than "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15).
Explanations. Although the New Testament gospels never provide a thematic outline of Jesus' teaching - such as I'm providing in this blog series - at times Jesus does explain some features of the kingdom of God. In Mark 10:14-15, for example, he says:
"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."
Although we might debate what exactly Jesus means here, his point - that one must receive the kingdom in a childlike manner - gives us a bit more information about the kingdom of God. Notice that the kingdom is not something we create by our own efforts, but rather something we receive. Christians sometimes speak of God's kingdom as something we produce by our own efforts. This misses the biblical point, which emphasizes the agency of God as that which inaugurates God's own reign.
Parables. Some of Jesus' explanations of the kingdom take the form of parables, which at times seem more like riddles than clarifications. For example, at one point Jesus says,
"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade" (Mark 4:30-32).
|
|
Mustard plants in Southern California. Not the same variety as envisioned by Jesus. |
This parable, an animated simile, tells us about the kingdom of God by supplying a vivid picture of its paradoxical size. It begins as a tiny seed, but ends up as a giant plant. Whereas many Jews in the time of Jesus expected the reign of God to appear in its full grandeur, Jesus reveals that it begins as the smallest of seeds. The full extent of God's kingdom will only be revealed later.
Notice, once again, how Jesus' parable of the mustard seed coheres with Old Testament prophecy. Through Ezekiel God once said,
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind. (Ezek 17:22-23)
| Whereas Ezekiel spoke of a tiny cedar sprig that grew into a noble cedar in which birds would nest, Jesus used the mustard seed to make a similar point about God's kingdom. Though it begins humbly, in Jesus' own ministry, it will someday be gloriously large, a resting place for all creation. |
 |
|
To sum up what we've seen so far, Jesus announces the presence of God's reign through basic statements, explanations, and parables. Yet his words, as important as they may be, do not exhaust Jesus' means for proclaiming the kingdom. Alongside the words of Jesus we find his works, his actions that announced dramatically the coming of God's kingdom. To these actions I'll turn in my next post.
Part 6 : How Did Jesus Proclaim the Kingdom of God? (cont)
Posted at 10:10 p.m. on Saturday, March 13, 2004
In my last post I showed some of the ways Jesus used words to proclaim the kingdom of God. These included basic statements of fact, explanations, and parables. But Jesus "proclaimed" God's coming reign, not only in words, but also in works. These both illustrated the kingdom of God and demonstrated its presence. Without these works, Jesus' announcement of the kingdom would have fallen on deaf ears. People would have regarded him as a dreamer, perhaps as a deceiver or even a demoniac, but not as the divine envoy of the kingdom.
The works of Jesus that revealed the presence of the kingdom took various forms, including healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, and other symbolic gestures. Let me say a bit about each of these actions and their significance.
Healings. Throughout the gospels Jesus healed people of various diseases. His extraordinary popularity came, not simply from the authority of his preaching, but from his authority over human bodies. Yet healing was not an end in and of itself for those familiar with the Hebrew prophets. It was also a sign of the presence of God's reign on earth. In Isaiah 35, for example, God comes to save and redeem his people. In this context we find the following promise: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy" (Isa 35:5-6). The fact that these things were happening in the ministry of Jesus proved the presence of the kingdom. Jesus himself said this when he was asked by the disciples of John the Baptist whether he (Jesus) was the one through whom the kingdom was coming. Jesus said, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matt 11:4-5). In other words, "Because the healings promised in Isaiah are happening in my ministry, yes, I am the one through whom God's kingdom has come."
Exorcisms. One of the most peculiar aspects of the gospels for North American readers is Jesus' repeated expulsion of demons. Most of us simply aren't familiar or comfortable with such things, unlike so many contemporary believers in the Southern Hemisphere. But, whether we like it or not, exorcisms are central to the ministry of Jesus, and, according to Jesus himself, clear evidence of the presence of the kingdom. In Matthew 12, for example, some of the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons with demonic power. He answers them, first by citing the now classic line about a house divided against itself being certain to fall (Matt 12:25). Then he adds, "But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you" (Matt 12:28). Whatever we might think of Jesus' exorcisms, for him and his fellow first-century Jews they are a demonstration of the presence of God's reign.
| Nature Miracles. According to the gospels, Jesus multiplies food, walks on water, and stills the storm. Once again, these mighty works are associated with God's kingdom. In Psalm 89, for example, the Lord says, "I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: 'I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations'" (Ps 89:3-4). Then, only four verses later the Psalm continues, "O LORD God of hosts, who is as mighty as you, O LORD? Your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them" (Ps 89:8-9). So Jesus' power over nature suggests that God's promised kingdom has arrived and, indeed, that God himself is mysteriously present in the ministry of Jesus. |
|
Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" |
I recognize that for many people today the miracles of Jesus are harder to swallow than a camel. In some circles and among quite a few New Testament scholars the miracles of Jesus are not considered as historical events so much as symbolic legends. Yet if you take away the miraculous from the message of Jesus, you severely truncate his announcement of the kingdom and, at the same time, you are left with a Jesus whom most people would have ignored. Even many skeptical modern scholars, therefore, believe that Jesus must have been a "healer" of sorts, one who used psychosomatic cures and the power of suggestion to help people feel better. At this point I'm not prepared to mount a defense for the ge |
