Significantly, John the Divine is the only New Testament writer uninhibitedly and without qualification to use the provocative title of ‘king’ for Christ. There are plenty of New Testament references to the Kingdom of God, or Christ as the King of the Jews, or the King of Israel; but those are not the same at all. The early Christians were scared of what the Roman authorities might think if they started calling Christ a king; after all, Jesus was crucified because he was said to have claimed to be just that, ‘King of the Jews’. So the rest of the New Testament seems almost to be avoiding the
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