For my current devotional reading, I am studying The New Testament and Its World by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. It is a thick, textbook-like tome, and their interpretation of Jesus in his world is meant to bend evangelical world views and smugness, I think, that we know everything about Jesus we need to. He (I assume this is Wright because of the style) closes this chapter (11, "The Death of the Messiah," p. 261) this way:
Granted all this, it is worth highlighting how this might shape our own understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. When we speak of 'following Jesus,' we are talking about the crucified Messiah. His death was not simply the messy event that enables our sins to be forgiven and which can thereafter conveniently be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God, the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the One in whose image we are made, and hence about our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives an service the living God is made known. And when therefore we speak of shaping our world, we do not--we dare not--simple treat the cross as the thing that saves us 'personally,' but which can be discarded when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world. In undertaking that task, the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped from start to finish.
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