Jesus Read online

  JESUS

  © 2012 Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Leonard Sweet is published in association with the literary agency of Mark Sweeney & Associates, Bonita Springs, Florida 34135. Frank Viola is published in association with the literary agency of Daniel Literary Group, Nashville, Tennessee 37215.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Other Scripture quotations are taken from the following versions: Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT) © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, (NIV). © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the 1984 edition. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. English Standard Version (ESV). © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. New American Standard Bible® (NASB), © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission. New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV). © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. Common English Bible (CEB). © 2011 Common English Bible, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801. All rights reserved. James Moffatt Translation (MOFFATT). © 1922, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1935 HarperCollins San Francisco. © 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954 James A. R. Moffatt. King James Version (KJV). Public domain. American Standard Version (ASV). Public domain. Young’s Literal Translation (YLT). Public domain. Amplified® Bible (AMP), © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. God’s Word Translation (GW). © 1995 by God’s Word to the Nations. Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group. World English Bible (WEB). Public domain. New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Message (MSG) by Eugene H. Peterson. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sweet, Leonard I.

  Jesus: a theography / Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

  ISBN 978-0-8499-4702-5 (trade paper)

  1. Jesus Christ—Biography. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Viola, Frank. II. Title.

  BT301.3.S89 2012

  232—dc23

  2012023804

  12 13 14 15 16 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

  Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

  To T. Austin-Sparks,

  a choice servant of God whose ability to expound and exalt Jesus

  Christ from Genesis to Revelation was without peer.

  —Frank Viola

  To E. Stanley Jones,

  a lover of The Story and a writer for all times and climes.

  —Leonard Sweet

  Contents

  Introduction: The Jesus Story

  1. Christ Before Time

  2. Christ in Creation: The Macro Version

  3. Christ in Creation: The Micro Version

  4. Jesus’ Birth and Boyhood

  5. Jesus’ Missing Years

  6. Jesus’ Preparation for Ministry

  7. Jesus’ Baptism and Temptation

  8. Jesus Chooses His Disciples

  9. Jesus’ Mission Statement

  10. Jesus: Healer and Miracle-Worker

  11. Jesus: Teacher and Preacher

  12. The Human Jesus

  13. Jesus’ Trial and Crucifixion

  14. The Atonement and the Harrowing of Hell

  15. The Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost

  16. The Return of the King

  Conclusion: The Jesus Spirit

  Appendix: Post-Apostolic Witnesses

  Notes

  About the Authors

  INTRODUCTION

  .......................................................................................

  The Jesus Story

  ACCORDING TO ESTIMATES, APPROXIMATELY 1.25 BILLION CHRISTIANS live in the world today. Many, if not most, have become overly familiar with their Bibles. The same can be said about how they view the Lord Jesus Christ.

  A daring statement, you say? Perhaps. How can the two of us think that Christianity has become overfamiliar with the most influential person who ever lived, the most important person who ever walked planet Earth?

  As you read this book, we hope you will come to the same conclusion. Better still, when you finish, we expect you will encounter the Scriptures in a fresh way. And as a result, you will encounter your Lord anew as well.

  Let’s face it. The Bible is often viewed as a disjointed array of stories, events, laws, propositions, truths, ethical statements, and moral lessons.

  But as we will demonstrate in this book, the sixty-six books of the Bible are woven together by a single storyline. One of the best ways to look at the twenty-seven books of the New Testament may be to see them as a commentary on the Old Testament. The entire Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, are unified by a common narrative. And once our eyes are opened to see that narrative, everything in both Testaments gels into a coherent, understandable, and amazing story.

  And what is that story? Well, it’s not enough to call it “salvation history” as many people do.1

  No. It’s the story of Jesus Christ.2

  The end product of biblical Christianity is a person—not a book, not a building, not a set of principles or a system of ethics—but one person in two natures (divine/human) with four ministries (prophet/priest/king/sage) and four biographies (the Gospels). But those four biographies don’t tell the whole story. Every bit of Scripture is part of the same great story of that one person and that one story’s plotline of creation, revelation, redemption, and consummation.

  TOWARD A NEW KIND OF BIOGRAPHY

  Writing about Jesus is like matrimony: not to be entered into unprepared or lightly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in awe of God. Not to mention that over the last fifty years, there have been countless books telling, retelling, and reconstructing the life of Jesus of Nazareth.3 In fact, there are more biographies of Jesus than of any other human—one hundred thousand biographies in English alone.4

  So why this book?

  First, this isn’t a biography. It’s a theography. Even if you argue that a biography of Jesus is possible, which is hotly debated among scholars today,5 we are telling the story of God’s interactions, intersections, and interventions with humanity through the life of Jesus. We are less concerned with every fact and detail of Jesus’ life than we are about the narratives, metapho
rs, signs, and symbols that reveal pictures of God’s touching of humanity through the person and identity of Jesus. In each major scene in the Jesus story, we try to provide “snapshots”—organic freeze-frames and visual markers of Jesus in living color and surround sound to be experienced, breathed, and lived by our readers.

  This book lifts up the epic story of Jesus as the single, ascertainable truth that triumphs over all other contingent truths. In other words, human identity is bound up with the story of an individual and the story of a community. In a world that tries to snatch an identity off the racks of an Armani store, or from the marble floor of a BMW showroom, we believe that humanity was created to find its identity in a relationship with God. The story of Jesus as found in the Bible shows us how to do that. Neither of us wants to bend the world to see things through our eyes. But we do want to entice the world to see things through Jesus’ eyes.

  Virtually every biography of Jesus begins with the nativity account in Bethlehem.6 The Jesus theography you hold in your hands begins the story of Jesus at “the beginning.”7

  FROM ETERNITY PAST TO THE SECOND COMING

  According to Scripture, the Jesus story doesn’t begin in Bethlehem or Nazareth. It begins in eternity past, when the Word (Jesus in His preincarnate state) “was with God, and . . . was God.”8 So we will tell the Jesus story, not “from the womb to the tomb,” but from eternity past (as the preexistent Son) to His second coming (as the postresurrected, risen Lord).9

  In addition, we will rehearse the story of Jesus—the greatest story ever told—by following the plotline that stretches from Genesis to Revelation. And we will demonstrate that all the Scriptures are held together by a single narrative: the story of Jesus Christ.10

  The name Jesus refers to the incarnate Christ who had a human nature. As such, the name Jesus doesn’t appear in Genesis or elsewhere in the Old Testament. But that doesn’t mean He wasn’t present as the preexistent Son through whom, by whom, and to whom all things were created.11 So in this book, we will use the terms Jesus, Christ, and Son of God interchangeably in a nontechnical way.12 They all refer to the same person.

  As far as we know, there is no biography of Jesus that tells His story from Genesis to Revelation. If this is correct, one may ask, “Why hasn’t a book like this been written before?” The reason is simple. Biographies of Jesus have generally been written by those trying to investigate the historical Jesus. In general, such people aren’t interested in looking at Jesus in the entire biblical canon. On the flip side, those interested in tracing the biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation are typically disinterested in historical Jesus studies. So these two approaches have yet to converge.13

  That’s where this book comes in. It brings together historical Jesus studies with a survey of the entire biblical canon.14 In so doing, it seeks to reclaim the Jesus-shaped narrative of Scripture.15

  THE CORE NARRATIVE

  In many Christians’ minds, the Old and New Testaments are two separate entities. Melito (second century) and Tertullian (third century) were the first to call the two halves of the Bible the Old Testament and New Testament.16 However, the Old Testament and the New Testament belong to the same inspired canon. Thus they are organically united. To underscore this unity, we will be calling the Old Testament the First Testament and the New Testament the Second Testament throughout this book.

  In our experience and observation, countless evangelical, postevangelical, Reformed, charismatic, and mainline Christians are not aware that the main subject of the entire First Testament is Jesus Christ. But consider what Jesus Himself said about the Scriptures: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!”17

  It is for this reason that statements such as “according to the prophets,” “as it is written,” “according to the Scriptures,” “that the Scripture might be fulfilled,” and “in all the Scriptures” are peppered throughout the entire Second Testament. What is more, the Second Testament authors consistently interpreted the First Testament writings in the light of Christ.18

  Many believe that the Second Testament writers simply used parts of the First Testament as proof texts to show that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah of Israel and Lord of the world. But this is not the case.19

  The Second Testament writers consistently quoted or cited large sections of the First Testament, using them to unfold the Jesus story.20 But that’s not all. The Second Testament authors used the same First Testament texts independently of one another. And they interpreted them in exactly the same way, often citing the texts in the same order.21

  This fact alone demonstrates that the Second Testament authors shared a common method of interpreting the First Testament. The questions emerge, then: Where did they find this method of interpretation? What was their common source?

  The answer is that Jesus Himself was the common source.22

  JESUS REVEALED THROUGH THE SCRIPTURES

  The Gospels tell us that Jesus took His followers through the Scriptures and gave them a divinely inspired hermeneutic (method of interpretation) by which to understand the First Testament. In turn, the Lord’s original disciples passed this interpretative key to those whom they influenced (this would include people such as Mark, Paul, and Luke).

  Luke suggested this in his gospel when he rehearsed Jesus’ encounter with two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

  Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.23

  Note the words “all the Scriptures.” This includes the First Testament—Genesis through Malachi. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”24 Luke went on to say that Jesus opened the Scriptures to His disciples: “Now He said to them, ’These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”25

  In this passage, Jesus unveils Himself through the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: (1) the law of Moses (the Torah); (2) the Prophets (the Nevi’im); and (3) the Psalms, which represent the Writings (the Ketuvim). These three sections make up the Tanakh—the rabbinic name for the Hebrew Bible.26 The way the Second Testament authors quoted the First Testament forms a pattern—a shared hermeneutic for understanding the First Testament.

  It is easy to see, then, that the source of this common hermeneutic was Jesus Himself. Jesus taught His disciples how to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, and this is reflected throughout the Second Testament.27

  Jesus’ use of the First Testament text was revolutionary for His time. As R. T. France points out, Jesus “applied the Old Testament in a way that was quite unparalleled. The essence of his new application was that he saw the fulfillment of the predictions and foreshadowings of the Old Testament in himself and his work.”28 The early Christian church “was founded on this distinctive and revolutionary use of the Old Testament”29—a usage that was handed down to the apostles by Jesus Himself. Jesus clearly said that He was the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew Bible (represented by the Torah, the Writings, and the Prophets).30

  If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.31

  Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.32

  Consider this question with these texts in mind: If you were to ask Jesus what the Scriptures were about, what would His answer be?33

  R. T. France comments, “Jesus saw his mission as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures; not just of those which predicted a coming redeemer, but of the whole sweep of Old Testament ideas.”34 In this regard, Jesus not only completes the First Testament story; He fulfills it. But fulfilling doesn’t happen only in view of the accomplishment of its promises. As you will discover in this boo
k, Jesus actually embodies the First Testament. He “fills full” the ancient Text.35

  In a word, Jesus is the thread that holds all Scripture together. He is the prism that breaks forth its multifaceted colors. He is the lens that puts all of it into focus, the switch that sheds light on its dimly lit quarters, and the key that unlocks its meaning and richness.36

  We agree with a long tradition of theologians who do not view the Scriptures as a storehouse of propositions on every imaginable subject but instead discover the place from which the Spirit of God makes Christ known.37 Or as Protestant Reformer Martin Luther has put in epigrammatic fashion: “Scripture is the cradle in which Christ lies.”38 Scot McKnight puts it in more current form: “We have to become a People of the Story . . . we need to immerse ourselves even more into the Story of Jesus. The gospel is that the Story of Israel comes to its definitive completeness in the Story of Jesus, and this means we have to become People of the Story-that-is-complete-in-Jesus.”39

  Our desire is to tell that story.

  READING SCRIPTURE AS A WHOLE

  Given what we have established so far, the approach we are taking to the Scriptures is both holistic as well as reductionist. It is reductionist in that we are drawing from the best findings of modern historical research.40 Yet it’s holistic in that we are bringing the First Testament stories, events, and accounts into the core narrative of Jesus—just as the Second Testament writers did when they interpreted the First Testament.41 We are searching for the story the Gospels tell about Jesus in the story found in the First Testament.

  The Bible didn’t emerge out of a vacuum. It is a historical but also metaphorical and narrative story of truth written within history. Thus, history matters in our interpretation of the biblical text. At the same time, the Bible is a collection of writings that are tied together by a common theme. Therefore, the interweaving of both Testaments also matters in our interpretation of the biblical text.