Category Archives: Blogging Through a Book

Simply Jesus: Why did Jesus have to die?

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It has been awhile since I posted on my readings through Simply Jesus. Part of that has been the fact that life has been full of other activities. And part of that is because in this chapter Wright addresses an incredibly important question (which I wanted to take time to explore).

Why did the Messiah have to die?

Wright spends much of chapter 13 exploring how God surprised everyone in combining the roles of Messiah, servant, and returning God into the same person – Jesus.

This combination was a small step exegetically, but a giant leap theologically … Nobody, so far as we know, had dreamed of combining these ideas in this way before.

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Jesus’s vocation to be Israel’s Messiah and his vocation to suffer and die belong intimately together.

Wright then explains that the reason Jesus had to die was to defeat the true enemy – Continue reading →

Simply Jesus: Where Space, Time, and Matter collide

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The star cluster Pismis 24 Stephen Hawking in his book – A Brief History of Time describes the quest to understand the universe we live in:

And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in. … if we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.

Throughout the book Hawking describes general relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory, trying to help those of us who are not uber-physicists get a handle on how the universe works.

But Wright reminds us that the way space, time, and matter are viewed and studied today are very different than how first century Jewish people would have understood them and how they fit within them. Their worldview would center on their covenant relationship with God. Continue reading →

Simply Jesus: Why other messiahs failed

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In chapters 6-10 Wright has been focusing on the what question. What did Jesus say and do? What were the miracles and stories intended to communicate? The answer in a nutshell is:

God’s kingdom, God’s sovereign and saving rule, really is breaking in, on earth as in heaven.

Wright looks at the teachings of Jesus (chapter 8) and makes several observations.

  • Jesus’ stories remind his hearers that the promises of the OT are coming true now, just not in the ways they expected. (storms #2 and #3 in Wright’s Perfect Storm illustration)
  • Jesus’ stories confronted the existing “forces in power”.
  • Jesus’ stories challenged his hearers. Telling them that when God becomes king, laws are not enforced more strictly but hearts are transformed and people are remade from the inside out.

Together the miracles and stories tell us that the kingdom of God and the renewal of all things is both a present and a future reality. Continue reading →