Episode Details

Here’s the next chapter of the evangelistic book you’re helping me write. It’s a bit longer than the earlier chapters—more like 3000 words than 2000—so I’m sending it out in two chunks (starting with the first half this week).

The chapter is based on Point 4 of Two ways to live, which in the latest revised version says:

Because of his love, God sent his Son into the world: the man Jesus Christ.

Jesus always lived under God’s rule.

But Jesus took our punishment by dying in our place.

Massive ideas, all of them.

You’ll see that this week’s instalment basically discusses the first two of the statements.

As I’m always I’m keen to hear from you, with critiques, suggestions and ideas. Don’t hold back! In particular, because there is just SO much to say about who Jesus is, about his coming into the world, his life, his atoning death—I’m especially keen to hear about anything vital you think I’ve missed out so far, and whether anything I have included could be sacrificed if necessary.

You can read the text below, or listen via the audio player above, or you can also download a PDF of the chapter, which is easier for printing and for referring to specific lines and paragraphs.

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Chapter 4: The life and death of Jesus

The backdrop is in place. The supporting actors are in position. The lights go up, and now the main act begins. The central character of the Christian message steps onto the stage of history.

Jesus himself.

The background we’ve traced so far—of God as creator and ruler of all, of human rebellion against God, and God’s justice against us—all of this prepares us for Jesus’ arrival.

This is how the Bible itself is structured. The first half (the Old Testament) sets up the great problem of God and us and the world; the second half (the New Testament) tells us what God himself does to redeem the situation through Jesus.

However, it would be wrong to think that the Old Testament is only about the doom and gloom of the human problem. Also running through the Old Testament like a scarlet thread is the patience and kindness and love of God for flawed, rebellious humans like us. God chooses a particular nation—Israel, the descendants of Abraham—to be his own special people. Time and again in the Old Testament, God kindly and lovingly rescues his people from the consequences of their own actions. He delivers them from their enemies, and provides for them in multiple ways, even though they continue to be stubborn and rebellious towards him.

In fact, God repeatedly promises in the Old Testament that because of his love, he will one day step in personally to fix all the mess that has erupted and spread because of human rebellion against him. Sometimes God promises that he himself will come and bring mercy and salvation (for example in Isaiah 40). At other points, he promises that he will send his anointed king, or ‘Messiah’, to set people free and defeat evil and reign victorious over all.

(A little footnote here that will be important later on. In the Old Testament, the way someone was made king was by anointing them with oil. So the Hebrew word for ‘anointed one’ came to mean essentially ‘the king God had appointed’. That word was ‘Messiah’. The word ‘Christ’ in the New Testament is the Greek language version of that same word. So a ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ is a ‘king appointed by God’.)

Here’s what the prophet Isaiah predicted would happen when God sent his anointed Messiah to bring relief to his people:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me (i.e. made me a ‘Messiah-king’)

to bring good news to the poor;

he has se