Quotes about Messiah

The cross stands at the heart of John's kingdom theology, which in this stunning passage is revealed as the heart of John's redemption theology, the vision of the love of God revealed in saving action in the death of his Son, the Lamb, the Messiah.

This summary may be enough to alert us to the fact that, in Paul's presentation of salvation, the goal is for humans to share the "royal" and "priestly" ministry of the Messiah himself.

But for him the incarnate Son is also Israel's Messiah.

The very mention of crucifixion was taboo in polite Roman circles, since it was the lowest form of capital punishment, reserved for slaves and rebels. As for the Jews, the very idea of a crucified Messiah was scandalous. A crucified Messiah was a horrible parody of the kingdom-dreams that many were cherishing. It immediately implied that Israel's national hope was being radically redrawn downward.

Whoever heard of a crucified Messiah?

the gospels are consciously telling the story of how God's one-time action in Jesus the Messiah ushered in a new world order within which a new way of life was not only possible, but mandatory for Jesus's followers.

But if Jesus is raised from the dead, then the scriptures have reached their goal in him, and it's now time for the moment the psalmists and prophets longed to see, when the nations of the earth will bring their treasures in loyalty and obedience to God's anointed king, Israel's Messiah. The

Saul the zealot had expected a Messiah to defeat the pagan hordes. Paul the Apostle believed that the Messiah had defeated the dark powers that stood behind all evil.

The answer is that the kingdom of God has been launched 'on earth as in heaven', and that, by the Messiah and the spirit, the creator God has renewed the original image-bearing vocation.

Paul is not only urging and requesting but actually embodying what he elsewhere calls 'the ministry of reconciliation'. God was in the Messiah, reconciling the world to himself, he says in 2 Corinthians 5.19; now, we dare to say, God was in Paul reconciling Onesimus and Philemon.

If God's call to Abraham and the covenant that he made with him were designed to rescue the world from its plight, this purpose has now been accomplished in the Messiah, only more so: the Messiah has inaugurated the new creation, not simply a return to the original one.

Second, the means by which this goal is attained is precisely the "forgiveness of sins." If, as Paul implies in 2:15, the objection of Jews (or Jewish Messiah believers) to the inclusion of Gentiles is that they are "Gentile sinners," then this objection is overturned precisely because the Messiah "gave himself for our sins.