Quotes About Jesus

Therefore, when Paul proclaimed the eschatological meaning of Jesus' death, resurrection, and exaltation, he was proclaiming all that Jesus' life, deeds, and words had meant, and far more. His relative silence about Jesus reflects neither historical nor theological disinterest in Jesus, but only the actual situation in the unfolding of redemptive history. All that Jesus in history had meant was included, and enlarged, in the preaching of the exalted one.

Jesus' sonship postulates a relationship that is independent of any historical experience that seems to involve "a community of nature between the Father and the Son."39

Jesus' rebuff of Satan meant in effect that he would not forsake the role of the Servant of God. "Jesus is the Son of God not as a miracle-worker, but in the obedient fulfillment of his task — precisely his task of suffering."19

The church is but the result of the coming of God's Kingdom into the world by the mission of Jesus Christ.

Cullmann contrasts the deaths of Socrates and Jesus, pointing out that Socrates died impassively and heroically, while Jesus cried out in real fear of death.

The "things that are above" represent the realm of God that has already invaded human history in the person and mission of Jesus and brought to human beings43 the new realm of life.

New Testament theology therefore does not consist merely of the teachings of the several strata of the New Testament. It consists primarily of the recital of what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth.

Since the days of John6 something new has been happening, creating a new situation, with the result that, "great as John was, the least in the dawning Kingdom was greater; not in personal achievement and worth but by God's gift he, unlike John, was in the Kingdom."7 The contrast is not between John and other people but between the old age of the prophets and the new age of the Kingdom that had begun with Jesus' ministry.8

Dalman recognized that the Kingdom in Jesus' teaching could be "a good which admits of being striven for, of being bestowed, of being possessed, and of being accepted.

These two dimensions of life — present and future — are inseparably associated in Jesus' discourse about his relationship to the Father.

This "gospel" was the very presence of Jesus himself, and the joy and fellowship that he brought to the poor.

Furthermore, unless Jesus had some interpretation for his own death, it is difficult to explain how the theology of atonement arose in the early church. Long ago, Schweitzer criticized Wrede's nonmessianic theory on the grounds that resurrection would never constitute Jesus as Messiah in the mind of the church,5 and the validity of this criticism still stands.

No more could belief in Jesus' resurrection have caused the church to attribute atoning value to his death. The source of a theology of Jesus' death must go back to Jesus himself.

However, certain distinctive Christian elements are evident, the first of which is "the apostles' teaching" or didach?. This included the meaning of the life, death, and exaltation of Jesus, his enthronement as messianic King and Lord inaugurating the messianic age of blessing, and the future eschatological consummation.

Our central thesis is that the Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among human beings, and that this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver people from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God's reign.

This is a bit of "realized eschatology." The disciples will experience ("see") in all Jesus' work the union with God that is his and his alone. Thus the Son of Man is the "gate of heaven," the place of the presence of God's grace on earth, the tent of God among human beings.22

However, the word translated "begotten" comes from genos, meaning "kind" or "sort," not from genna?, "to beget." At the least, John means to say that Jesus is the only one of his class.

The kerygma of Paul is essentially the same as that of Jesus, namely, that in the person and mission of Jesus God has visited human beings to bring them the messianic salvation.

The tabernacle with its priests was a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. The real has come to people in the historical life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. History has become the medium of the eternal. There is nothing ephemeral or transitory about Jesus' life and work. The Christ-event was history with an eternal significance. What Jesus did, he did once for all (ephapax, 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).

Thus more explicitly and more emphatically than the other New Testament writers does St. John declare the divinity of Jesus Christ as eternal Son of God and at the same time the distinction between the Son and the Father."46

Mark's Gospel is not the story of Jesus alone, but of Jesus and his disciples. If Mark's main theological emphasis is on Christology, a vital subplot is the analysis of what it means to follow Jesus. This theme is explored through a portrayal of Jesus' first disciples in their privilege and in their failures, in their experience of being with Jesus, and especially in the teaching he gave them.

we need to accept and welcome the fact that the church has not been given a single "authorized biography" of Jesus but four canonical Gospels, related and yet different, as complementary witnesses to the truth about Jesus. To do justice to such a revelation, it is important that we listen to each witness individually as well as to all together.

Thus Luke has depicted a transfer of the mission from Jesus to the church, by means of the sequence of events linking his two books: resurrection, post-resurrection teaching, ascension (twice mentioned, and clearly important to Luke),84 and so to Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit now present in the church takes up the mission that Jesus "began" (Acts 1:1).

In short, the earliest Christianity did not consist of a new doctrine about God nor of a new hope of immortality nor even of new theological insights about the nature of salvation. It consisted of the recital of a great event, of a mighty act of God: the raising of Christ from the dead. Any new theological emphases are the inevitable meanings of this redemptive act of God in raising the crucified Jesus from the dead.