Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God

by Timothy J. Keller

When you say, “I’ll serve, as long as I’m getting benefits from it,” that’s not actually serving people; it’s serving yourself through them.

A gospel is an announcement of something that has happened in history, something that’s been done for you that changes your status forever.

Because the gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it’s about being called to follow a King. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done—but someone with the power and authority to do what needs to be done, and then to offer it to you as good news.

If I perform, if I obey, I’m accepted. The gospel of Jesus is not only different from that but diametrically opposed to it: I’m fully accepted in Jesus Christ, and therefore I obey.

Imagine you’re falling off a cliff, and sticking out of the cliff is a branch that is strong enough to hold you, but you don’t know how strong it is. As you fall, you have just enough time to grab that branch. How much faith do you have to have in the branch for it to save you? Must you be totally sure that it can save you? No, of course not. You only have to have enough faith to grab the branch. That’s because it’s not the quality of your faith that saves you; it’s the object of your faith. It doesn’t matter how you feel about the branch; all that matters is the branch. And Jesus is the branch.

If God is really a loving God, why doesn’t he just forgive everybody? Why did Jesus have to go through suffering into death? Why did he have to be a ransom? Here’s the beginning of an answer: Jesus didn’t have to die despite God’s love; he had to die because of God’s love. And it had to be this way because all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice.

You’re not just becoming a nicer person or a more disciplined person or a more moral person. The life and character of Jesus—the King who ambles into Jerusalem on a donkey, then storms into the temple with the audacity to say “This is my house”—are being reproduced in you. You’re becoming a more complete person, the person you were designed to be. The person you were ransomed to be.

If you don’t believe in a God of wrath, you have no idea of your value. Here’s what I mean. A god without wrath has no need to go to the cross and suffer incredible agony and die in order to save you. Picture on the left a god who pays nothing in order to love you, and picture on the right the God of the Bible, who, because he’s angry at evil, must go to the cross, absorb the debt, pay the ransom, and suffer immense torment.