"Jesus, in all of His fullness, is the good news." Frank Viola

I'm always recommending Frank Viola's book. Once someone pushed back by saying Frank Viola was heretical and sending me the link to one of those watchdog websites where the guy goes on and on about all the heretics out there. I had to scroll about a mile to get to mention of Viola and I don't even remember now what it said, but the episode sticks in my mind because Viola seems so dang sound to me. He's just very Jesus-centric. If you haven't listened to his Epic Jesus podcast, you should do so. You'll se what I mean. But I wanted to mention a recent interview over at the blog called illuminate. The blogger is Jamal Jivanjee. There's good stuff over there. Anyway, back to the interview. Jamal starts out with the following comment.

The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ and Jesus Christ is the personification of good news. Simply put, He is the gospel! In the New Testament, Paul & the apostles would proclaim the actual person of Jesus Christ. This was much more than a message containing some propositional truths about Christ and a few things He did. I’m convinced that all of our problems are rooted in a small vision of Jesus Christ. Simply put, the church is in desperate need of a large and stunning view of Jesus Christ! This view of Jesus Christ is rarely presented, however.

I love that. This is the gist of what has been guiding me for a long time now. I'm sorry if it sounds simplistic and unworthy of a post-doctoral degree in theology, but what we need is more Jesus. Jesus is big and strange and category busting and inconvenient to one and all.

 I like Frank's definition of the Gospel, and his definition of the Kingdom. They're helpful. My guiding principle as I journal through the Gospel of Mark is very close to what Frank is talking about. Jesus and the Kingdom and the Good News are in many ways interchangeable. Jesus is the good news, and Jesus is the the Kingdom. These statements of equivalence may require qualification, but they are nevertheless essentially true.

 Read the interview for some insightful explication of this idea and others. I kind it difficult to snip a characteristic quotation from this wide-ranging interview, but here's a try:

If you examine everywhere the term “gospel” is used throughout the New Testament, you will discover that it’s always bound up with the Person of Jesus (His work is united with His Person. While people regularly separate His work from His Person, you can’t separate His Person from His work. The same is true with His teachings). In His preaching and teaching, Jesus consistently pointed to Himself. In fact, the early church regarded the four gospels to be “the gospel.” And what do those four gospels present? They present Jesus: His life, His story, His teaching, His work. Read the four gospels carefully sometime and count the number of times that Jesus speaks about Himself. You will have no doubts that His message—His gospel—was Himself. (I’m thrilled that some evangelical scholars are writing about this now.) Paul, Peter, John, et al. preached the same gospel as did Jesus. Their message was also Christ.

If we start with Jesus and keep the focus there, we will not get all bent out of shape by secondary things. And my point is, everything else is secondary.

"When death dies, all things live."

The Gospel is not our own personal happiness plan.

I love this interview with Scot McKnight. I haven't read McKnight's new book yet, but it's next on my list. I think he's put his finger on one of our key problems. Some snips from the interview:

The point is this is a story about Jesus and we’ve made it into our personal happiness plan. It’s like when we root for our favorite sports team. When I watch the Bears, I root for the Bears because I want them to do well, not because of something I will get out of it. To me some people watch the Bears only to see if their players are going to score fantasy points so their teams can win. That is what I think we have become. We have become fantasy Christians. We see ourselves vested in certain elements so that when those elements do well we feel good. We don’t care about what’s going on in the pages of the Bible except to the degree that it satisfies what we want to get out of the Bible.

The Triumph of the Lamb

I notice that Stephen Altrogge at The Blazing Center has been reading Dennis Johnson's book on The Revelation, The Triumph of the Lamb. I mention this only because Triumph is one of the best Biblical commentaries I've ever read. If you want to study The Revelation, you should read Triumph of the Lamb. That's all.

Would you let Jesus be who he is?

Suppose for a moment that in a flash of insight you discovered that all your motives for ministry were essentially ego-centric, or suppose that last night you got drunk and committed adultery, or suppose that you failed ot respond to a cry for help and the person committed suicide. What would you do? Would guilt, self-condemnation, and self-hatred consume you, or would you jump into the water and swim a hundred yards at breakneck speed toward Jesus (Jn 21.7)? Haunted by feelings of unworthiness, would you allow the darkness to overcome you or would you let Jesus be who He is – a Savior of boundless compassion and infinite patience, a Lover who keeps no score of our wrongs? (128-129)

From Brennan Manning's Abba's Child. HT: Matt Tebbe. You should really read the whole post. Really.

Simply Jesus

I've started reading N. T. Wright's Simply Jesus.  I'm into the third chapter, and loving it.

You know, it's really kind of interesting how many books are being written with the avowed purpose of refocusing on Jesus, correcting a trend, in other words, toward focusing on other things and relegating Jesus Christ to the periphery.

There was Jared Wilson's book, You're Jesus is too Safe, and Frank Viola and Len Sweet's The Jesus Manifesto, and more recently Tullian Tchividjian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything.  I'm sure there have been others, but taken together they represent a distinct trend.  Almost a movement!

Speaking of books, the next in my queue is The King Jesus Gospel, by Scot McKnight.  It's been my personal project to read the NT for a deeper understanding of what is meant by that term, "the Gospel."  McKnight has been investigating that same matter, and his conclusion is that we've been so focused on one aspect of the Gospel (individual salvation) that we have done the broader picture is a distinct disservice.

Now back to the matter of re-focusing on Jesus. I think that Jesus is the good news; he embodies it. So you can't go far wrong concerning the Gospel--and you won't over-simplify it--if you begin with Jesus and keep the focus there.

So anyway, back to Simply Jesus.  Here's a clip from the introduction:

Jesus—the Jesus we might discover if we really looked, is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we had ever imagined. We have successfully managed to hide behind other questions and to avoid the huge, world-shaking challenge of Jesus’s central claim and achievement. It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself.

That's good stuff.  I've been struck, in my reading of the Gospels, at how absolutely strange Jesus often seems.  Sure, he's fully human and all that, but he talks like no man has ever talked.  He says things like, "How long am I to bear with this faithless generation?" Those are the words of a man who has come from elsewhere, is a stranger in this world, and is eager to get back home.  Nobody is a stranger in this world like Jesus was.

Well, he was different, this Jesus.  And I'm thankful for this movement to re-focus on the Jesus going on in the church today, and it's something I want to be a part of. It's the most exciting thing going. Either the church is about the indwelling Jesus (for real) or it is nothing more than playing the religious community game.

Epic Jesus

I just read Frank Viola's Epic Jesus.  You can get the podcast here, and/or read the brief book (which I purchased here).

The book is brief and should be read in a single sitting.  It's powerful.  It's really a summation of the gospel in all its glory, and a nice answer to those who think the gospel is simply the news that Jesus died for our sins.  It is that, of course, but that fact is embedded in a greater story, and that story is good news from start to finish.

Here's a sample: