We are presently involved in a study of N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Jesus, but I have chosen to pause, as he begins part 3, the final section and chapter of his book, and expand upon his personalized list of how folks, today, think about Jesus’ authority over the world. Is he King, or not? Putting the list succinctly, we have Andy, the skeptic, who claims Jesus is dead and rules nothing. Billy claims Jesus is alive, King of Heaven, but his rulership of the Earth is on hold, until he returns. Chris, on the other hand, claims Jesus is, indeed, King of Heaven and Earth even now, and we can see this in identifiable worldwide trends for a better world. Finally, we have Davie, who believes we need a new and fresh word from God, something outside the present world systems. Jesus is not of these systems, so we need to look outside them for a new and fresh perspective of Jesus’ works.
In this study I’ll be concerned only with the perspective of Andy, the skeptic. He claims that, if we are to take the words of scripture seriously, when Jesus becomes King, all of what is wrong with the world will be set right, vis-à-vis “the Gospel (would be) preached to the poor… the brokenhearted (would be) healed, the captives (would be) delivered, the blind (would be) given their sight, the bruised (would be) set at liberty, and the “acceptable year of the Lord (would be) announced” (Luke 4:18-19), and, by the way, Jesus is in agreement with Andy’s conclusion. If Jesus is King: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears!” (Luke 4:21). Therefore, if none of these things are true, Jesus is neither alive, today, nor is he relevant in our modern society.
From my point of view, each perspective in Dr. Wright’s list: Andy, Billy, Chris and Davie, are in varying degrees partially true, but each one of them miss the point in some respect, and this results in their drawing a wrong conclusion. For now, I intend to argue my point by exposing what is wrong with Andy’s perspective. He is correct in his logic: if Jesus is alive, today, he must be relevant in our modern society, if these things are, indeed, fulfilled in him. They are fulfilled and I hope to address this clearly in one of my studies of the other three perspectives.
Andy assumes that for the authority of Jesus to be real, he must make big changes, immediately, and across the board. This is the kind of thing Judas thought. He contended that the Messiah had to save Jerusalem from its enemies, and that translated to removing Rome as its oppressor. Judas wanted Jesus to act like he was the Messiah, vis-à-vis take the reins of government, and do the things the Messiah was supposed to do. In other words, he wanted Jesus to make war upon Rome and cast the Roman presence out of Jewish lands. How could he be the Savior of the people, if he didn’t fight for them and slay their enemies?
The problem with this perspective is that it is so literal, and it presumes to know how God should act. In fact, if God doesn’t act according to the design of Judas/Andy, then God cannot be God, and Jesus cannot be the Messiah. Jesus is dead, the cause is lost, and God has failed. Notice, human failure, vis-à-vis that of Judas/Andy, is not an option. They MUST be correct in their analysis, and, if things don’t transpire in the way they “think” they should, everyone else, including God, must be wrong, but from their own perspective, Judas’ and Andy’s analysis of the matter, cannot be wrong.
Most folks are able to see the arrogance of taking such a position, but, in reality, each position on Dr. Wright’s list takes the position that **I** cannot be wrong. None of the opinions on the list make allowances for mistakes on their part, vis-à-vis that they haven’t analyzed scripture/the will of God correctly.
Both Andy’s and Judas’ perspective is wrong, because they don’t take Jesus seriously. Jesus says, yes, he has come to save us, but not according to this world’s methods (John 18:36). Jesus’ method for change is opposite that of this world’s perspective (Matthew 20:25). Jesus’ methods do not include violence to change the world (Matthew 20:26-28). To be sure, violence will be used, but it will be used by this world against Jesus and his followers to prevent their influence from being effective (John 11:45-50; Acts 17:1-9).
Judas represents folks in the Church, whom Andy sees and takes, falsely, as representative of Jesus. Indeed, the Church will fail at times, and followers of Jesus will err through ignorance and/or arrogance (John 18:10), but this can be forgiven (Matthew 26:69-75; John 18:11) and corrected (John 21:15-19). However, Judas’ perspective goes directly against Jesus, and Judas refuses to be corrected (Matthew 26:25), until after the deed is done (Matthew 27:3-4). He represents the Church’s failures, which are capitalized on by Andy, the skeptic, because there is nothing like a Christian’s apparent failure to help shore up one’s argument against Jesus. Nevertheless, Jesus said he would build his Church upon the Rock of the truth about his Messianic authority (Matthew 16:18), and he added that the gates of death itself, wouldn’t prevail against it. In other words, there would be times, when the Church would seem to have utterly failed and was all but dead as far as it’s influence in this world is concerned. Nevertheless, the spark of life still within would become brighter, until the Church would once again be powerful in the hands of the Lord. Just as the Church’s failures are famously embedded in history, so, too, its resurrection in the hands of the Lord has repeatedly shown itself to be so, throughout Christian history.
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