This is a short excerpt from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom. Wipf and Stock, 2014. All rights reserved.
Too often we read the gospels against an empty backdrop. As modern readers we tend to be very illiterate of the Old Testament. We are also largely unaware of features of first-century Judaic eschatology (and ecclesiology and apocalyptic) that greatly influence how we interpret Jesus’ life and ministry (as well as death and resurrection) in its cultural-historical context. This is why we tend to miss so much of what the gospels are telling us about Jesus; because these elements are pieces of the larger backdrop to the story. When we have these things in place, we can see all sorts of additional dimensions to the Gospels that go otherwise overlooked.
Put another way, our tendency is to read the gospels in a rather loose fashion. What I mean by that is that we see the story of Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection, as pearls strung on a single thread, like chunks, segments, or episodes that have a rather loose connection or correspondence. This isn’t the case. Each piece of the gospel accounts, each episode, each story, each act, each discourse is carefully linked to together to declare one single and comprehensive message. Once again, we can’t see this when we are missing the right backdrop. When we have the proper context in order, however, we are able to see that the single objective of all four gospels is to present Jesus as the Davidic King (Messiah) who is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s World Renewal Plan to launch God’s reign on earth once again. The Gospels are ultimately about how God became King through in Jesus by usurping the reign of sin and death and launching the Kingdom of God.
Not only this, but also with the greater landscape set as the background against which we can read the gospels, we can now understand where Paul was coming from. When we consider all of these various dimensions of Jewish eschatology we begin to enter into Paul’s interpretive context not only for understanding Christology, eschatology, ecclesiology, and soteriology, but understanding how they all fit together. Most importantly for this context, we can also begin to see with fresh perspective what sanctification means for Paul.
