A Theology of the New Testament

The presence of the messianic salvation is also seen in Jesus' miracles of healing, for which the Greek word meaning "to save" is used. The presence of the Kingdom of God in Jesus meant deliverance from hemorrhage (Mk 5:34), blindness (Mk 10:52), demon possession (Lk 8:36), and even death itself (Mk 5:23). Jesus claimed that these deliverances were evidences of the presence of the messianic salvation (Mt 11:4-5). They were pledges of the life of the eschatological Kingdom that will finally mean immortality for the body. The Kingdom of God is concerned not only with people’s souls but with the salvation of the whole person.

Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God is the announcement by word and deed that God is acting and manifesting dynamically his redemptive will in history. God is seeking out sinners; he is inviting them to enter into the messianic blessing; he is demanding of them a favorable response to his gracious offer. God has again spoken. A new prophet has appeared, indeed one who is more than a prophet, one who bring to people the very blessings he promises.

The mission of Jesus brought not a new teaching but a new event. It brought to people an actual foretaste of the eschatological salvation. Jesus did not promise the forgiveness of sins; he bestowed it. He did not simple assure people of the future fellowship of the Kingdom; he invited them into fellowship with himself as the bearer of the Kingdom. He did not merely promise them vindication in the day of judgment; he bestowed upon them the status of a present righteousness. He not only taught an eschatological deliverance from physical evil; he went about demonstrating the redeeming power of the Kingdom, delivering people from sickness and even death.

The miracles of healing, important as they were, were not an end in themselves. They did not constitute the highest good of the messianic salvation. This fact is illustrated by the arrangement of the phrases in Matthew 11:4-5. Greater than deliverance of the blind and the lame, the lepers and the deaf, even than raising of the dead, was the preaching of the good news to the poor. This “gospel” was the very presence of Jesus himself, and the joy and fellowship that he brought to the poor.

Thus while the ground of justification is the death of Christ, the means by which justification becomes efficacious to the individual is faith.29 Justification is a gift bestowed to be received by faith (Rom. 3:24, 25). Faith means acceptance of this work of God in Christ, complete reliance upon it, and an utter abandonment of one’s own works as the grounds of justification

Discipleship to Jesus was not like discipleship to a Jewish rabbi. The rabbis bound their disciples not to themselves but to the Torah; Jesus bound his disciples to himself. The rabbis offered something outside of themselves; Jesus offered himself alone.

However, the reason for Paul’s appeal to nature and conscience is not primarily to suggest that human beings have an intrinsic inner guide for correct ethical conduct. It is rather to assert that even those who do not have the revealed Law do have an inner sense of right and wrong, but have failed to be obedient to the light they have even as the Jews have failed to keep the Law.

That personal faith in Jesus Christ is constitutive of the church is clear from Romans 4, where Paul argues that the salvation wrought by Christ is effective only to those who, like Abraham, believe. Abraham was not accepted by God because of good works of religious rites (circumcision) but because he believed God. Circumcision was the sign or seal of the righteousness that he had by faith. Thus he is the father of all who believe apart from the rites of Judaism but who emulate the faith of Abraham (Rom. 4:1 If.).

While eternal life is eschatological, the central emphasis of the Fourth Gospel is not to show people the way of life in the Age to Come but to bring to them a present experience of this future life.

In such instances a person serves not only as a representative but is acting in the stead of the other. In such passages as 2 Corinthians 5:15, “He died for all,” and Galatians 3:13 where it is said that Christ became a curse on our behalf, the idea of substitution is demanded and “only violence to the context can get rid of it.

Furthermore, the idea that ordinary Christians have obtained a faith of equal standing with that of the apostles “in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (1:1) suits the idea of saving faith in Christ better than a correct theology. Such faith is not a human attainment but is the gift of God.

The gospel is, therefore, the proclamation of the historical fact and the redemptive meaning of the cross, which includes both present and future blessings.

The “love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:30) may well be translated, “love created by the Spirit” (see Col. 1:8).58 This love manifests itself primarily in its relationship to other people; it is patient, kind, good, trustworthy, gentle, and self-disciplined (Gal. 5:22-23).

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 local congregation is not part of the church; the universal church is not thought of as the sum and total of its parts; rather, the local congregation is the church in its local expression.

The local church is not part of the church but is the church in its local expression.

Conversion” is not the best word to describe Paul’s experience, since this term in our idiom carries a load of psychological baggage. Furthermore, Saul was not converted from disbelief to faith, from sinfulness to righteousness, from irreligion to religion, nor even from one religion to another, since he considered Christianity to be the true Judaism. He was converted from one understanding of righteousness to another — from his own righteousness of works to God’s righteousness by faith (Rom. 9:30ff.).

A closer examination of the passages in Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 5 leads to the inescapable conclusion that reconciliation is not primarily a change in humanity’s attitude toward God; it is, like justification, an objective event that is accomplished by God for humanity’s salvation.

It is obvious that there is no uniform pattern of government in Acts. The form of leadership was an historical development in which the apostles, elders, and the congregation shared.

However, certain distinctive Christian elements are evident, the first of which is “the apostles’ teaching” or didachē. 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.

The New Testament concept of the wrath of God is not to be understood as equivalent to the anger of pagan deities, which could be turned to goodwill by suitable offerings.32 Neither can it be reduced to a natural impersonal interaction of cause and effect.33 Rather, God’s wrath is the “implacable divine hostility to everything that is evil, and it is sheer folly to overlook it or try to explain it away.”34 In Paul, the wrath of God is not an emotion telling how God feels; it tells us rather how he acts toward sin — and sinners.35 “Wrath is God’s personal … reaction against sin.”36 Sin is no trivial matter, and the plight of human beings is one from which they cannot rescue themselves. Wrath expresses what God is doing and what he will do with sin.

Satan’s main objective is to frustrate the redemptive purposes of God, and at the end of the age the satanic power will become incarnate in a man of lawlessness who will endeavor by one last final effort to overthrow the work of God and to turn people to the worship of evil (2 Thess. 2:4-10). However, Satan’s doom is sure; God will crush him under the feet of the saints (Rom. 16:20).

Paul’s use of the Old Testament is not so much to seek a one-to-one equating of prophecy and fulfillment as to place the new redemptive events squarely in the stream of Old Testament redemptive history. This leads him to find in the Old Testament meanings that do not readily appear in the quotations in their Old Testament setting. Thus he can apply to the church quotations that in the Old Testament refer only to Israel (Rom. 9:25-26; cf. Hos. 2:23; 1:10). This cannot be labeled a manipulation or misuse of the Old Testament; rather, it illustrates something essential in Paul’s thought; that Jesus, even though crucified, is the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, and that the people of the Messiah are the true people of God, continuous with the Israel of the Old Testament. The church is in fact the true Israel of God.

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.

It is therefore the church’s duty to display in an evil age of self-seeking, pride, and animosity the life and fellowship of the Kingdom of God and of the Age to Come. This display of Kingdom life is an essential element in the witness of the church to the Kingdom of God.

The result, in Mark’s Gospel, is a balanced account of Jesus’ mission that in its turn forms the basis for a realistic assessment of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple. It is a theology in which rejection and triumph, humiliation and glory, meet in the new scale of values of the Kingdom of God.

Therefore when Christ said, “I am the truth” (14:6), he means that he is the full revelation and embodiment of the redemptive purpose of God. The coming of Christ is the disclosure of the faithfulness of God to his own character, of his continuing purpose to make his saving will known.

This missionary aspect is probably the most important single aspect of the story [of Pentecost] in Luke’s view.”109

But “it is almost universally agreed that the word justify (dikaioō) does not mean ‘make righteous.’”21 Rather, it designates the status — the relationship of righteousness.

We conclude that the “blood” in separation from the flesh does not mean life but death, life surrendered in sacrifice.18