By Christian / N. T. Wright
In the ninth chapter of N.T. Wright’s book How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, we now come to the central message of his book:
All four gospels are telling the story of how God became king in and through this story of Jesus of Nazareth.
The story Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell is the story of how God became king—in and through Jesus both in his public career and in his death.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
Since this is already episode 9 of this series, but only about half of the 300 pages have been covered, I will now be more brief. The English book is also available in German translation as a paperback.
Kingdom, Cross and Israel
earlier, offering the story of Jesus as the completion of the story of Israel, in what sense is it now complete? How has it been fulfilled? The answer seems to lie, for the gospel writers themselves, in the dark strand that emerges at various stages of the tradition of ancient Israel. As the psalms and prophets sharpen up their vision of how God’s kingdom is to come to the world, there emerges a strange and initially perplexing theme: Israel itself will have to enter that darkness.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
As evidence for this, N.T. Wright cites Psalm 22. And that both Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 quote the opening words of Psalm 22 as Jesus‘ words on the cross. This suffering is also found in Isaiah 52 and 53, which is followed by true triumph in 54 and 55.
When we see the story of Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel, we should not be surprised to discover that the suffering of Israel and of Israel’s supreme representative is to be understood as part of the longer and larger purposes of Israel’s God, in other words, the establishment of his world-wide healing sovereignty. Conversely, we should not be surprised to discover that when this God finally claims the nations as his own possession, rescuing them from their evil ways, the means by which he does it is through the suffering of his people – or, as in the story the gospels themselves are telling, the suffering of his people’s official, divinely appointed representative.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
Kingdom, Cross and God
N.T. Wright proves that God is the savior of his people with Isaiah 63 and Ezekiel 34. The reference is found especially in John 10 (but also Luke 15:3-7 for example). The way the story of Jesus is developed, it exactly reflects the return of the God of Israel. How is that to be understood?
To be sure, neither John nor any of the others makes the mistake one often encounters in popular parlance, of saying „Jesus is God“ without remainder. Jesus constantly refers to „the father“ both as distinct from himself and as bound with him in a tight bond of love and obedience. And the point to be made here for our present purposes is that in this central „incarnational“ passage we find the themes of cross and kingdom once more tightly interwoven. This reinforces the warning we gave earlier, that it is possible to state the doctrine of Jesus’s „divinity“ in such a way as to let it float loose from both kingdom and cross, but this is what the New Testament never does. The „God“ who has become human in Jesus is the God who, as he had always promised, was returning to claim his sovereignty over the whole world (note the „other sheep“ in John 10:16) and would do so by himself sharing the pain and suffering of his people, „laying down his life for the sheep.“
How can we even begin to understand this? Perhaps we should say that, with the hindsight the evangelists offer us, God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might himself alone rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
For further explanations and supporting documents, I would like to refer you to the book by N.T. Wright (there are quite a few pages, in fact…).
Kingdom, Cross and Church
The activity of Jesus is presented in the Gospels as it was by the earlier prophets: Israel must turn back and live according to its true calling. His followers were convinced that this renewal had indeed begun. “Israel had not been rejected. It has not been ‘replaced’. It has been transformed.” His first disciples did not understand this:
Part of the meaning of the kingdom, in the four Gospels, is precisely the fact that it bursts upon Jesus’s first followers as something so shocking as to be incomprehensible.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
It took his death, resurrection, ascension and the dramatic events of Pentecost. “The story of the gospel of Jesus, seen as the beginning of the renewed people of God, includes as a central element the lack of understanding, the failure and the rebellion of this people, until it is transformed by the resurrection into a new faith and inspired by the Spirit to new obedience.” It was not about abstract theology, but a pattern for their lives. And they were well aware that this pattern would also include suffering as a central and meaningful element: lack of understanding, their own suffering and perhaps even death.
N.T. Wright expands on this idea in the book with many more details..
Kingdom and Cross in Caesar’s World
From all that we examined in Chapter 7, it is clear that all four gospels regard the story of Jesus not only as the confrontation between God’s kingdom and Caesar’s kingdom, but as the victory of the former over the latter.
Jesus, after all, has come to Jerusalem and found the Temple no longer to be the place where heaven and earth do business, but the place where mammon and violence are reigning unchecked, colluding with Caesar’s rule. Jesus himself, the evangelists are saying, is now the place where heaven and earth come together, and the event in which this happens supremely is the crucifixion itself. The cross is to be the victory of the „son of man,“ the Messiah, over the monsters; the victory of God’s kingdom over the world’s kingdoms; the victory of God himself overall the powers, human and supra human, that have usurped God’s rule over the world. Theocracy, genuine Israel-style theocracy, will occur only when the other „lords“ have been overthrown.
Without the cross, the satanic rule remains in place. That is why the cross is, for all four gospels (and, as I have argued else where, for Jesus himself) the ultimate messianic task, the last battle. The evangelists do not suppose that the cross is a defeat, with the resurrection as the surprising overtime victory. The point of the resurrection is that it is the immediate result of the fact that the victory has already been won. Sin has been dealt with. The „accuser“ has nothing more to say. The creator can now launch his new creation.
N.T. Wright How God Became King, chapter 9
This, too, is explained in more detail, of course, so I would like to refer to the book itself.
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