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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Brian Zahnd
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July 17, 2019 - December 15, 2020
If transformation is by the renewal of the mind and I have never changed my mind, then be assured I am actively resisting the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. Everyone who grows, changes.
People have never seen God until they see Jesus. Every other portrait of God, from whatever source, is subordinate to the revelation of God given to us in Jesus Christ.
Sometimes the Bible is like a Rorschach test: our interpretation of the text reveals more about ourselves than about God.
The Bible itself is not a perfect picture of God, but it does point us to the One who is.
Proverbs and Job have differing stories to tell. Proverbs says if you fear God and do what is right, good things will happen to you. And there’s truth in that. But Job says that’s not always the whole story
the Old Testament is a journey of discovery. The Bible doesn’t stand above the story it tells, but is fully enmeshed in it. The Bible itself is on the quest to discover the Word of God.
The wrath of God is a biblical metaphor we use to describe the very real consequences we suffer from trying to go through life against the grain of love. Canadian theologian Brad Jersak says, “The wrath of God is understood as divine consent to our own self-destructive defiance.”
they find it necessary to ignore the cognitive dissonance of deep moral contradictions.
John the Baptist was sent by God, but John was not God. John bore witness to the Word, but John was not the Word. John was inspired by God, but John was not God incarnate. This is how we should understand the relationship between the Bible and the revelation of God in Christ.
John the Baptist and the Bible play similar roles
The Old Testament is the inspired telling of the story of Israel coming to know their God. It’s a process. God doesn’t evolve, but Israel’s understanding of God obviously does.
The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God; Jesus is. Jesus is the only perfect theology. Perfect theology is not a system of theology; perfect theology is a person. Perfect theology is not found in abstract thought; perfect theology is found in the Incarnation. Perfect theology is not a book; perfect theology is the life that Jesus lived. What the Bible does infallibly and inerrantly is point us to Jesus, just like John the Baptist did.
Israel made certain assumptions about the nature of God, assumptions that now have to be abandoned in the light of Christ.
What is an enemy? An enemy is someone whose story you haven’t heard.
Instead of always seeing yourself as the cowboy, try being the Indian sometime.
Jesus is what the Law and Prophets were always trying to say but could never fully articulate.
God couldn’t say all he wanted to say in the form of a book, so he said it in the form of a human life.
At the beginning of his ministry Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”*5 What Moses and Elijah—the Law and the Prophets—had begun, Jesus would fulfill.
three memorial tabernacles on Tabor, treating Moses, Elijah, and Jesus as approximate equals. Peter’s implicit suggestion that the Old Testament be given roughly the same authority as Jesus is what I mean by a flat reading of the Bible.
‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’ And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.”
a Christian can’t cite Moses to silence Jesus.
Moses says this. Elijah does that. But Jesus says and does something completely new and different. And what does God say? Does God instruct us to find a healthy balance between Moses, Elijah, and Jesus? No! God says, “Listen to my Son!”
Jesus is greater than Moses. Jesus is greater than Elijah. Jesus is greater than the Bible.
Jesus shows us how to read the Bible and not be harmed by
the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
It’s not biblical manhood that men should aspire to but Christlike manhood. If we only speak of biblical manhood, who is our pattern? Abraham? Moses? David? Elijah? With their propensity for deceit, anger, adultery, and violence? No, Jesus alone is our model of redeemed manhood.
Today Moses and Elijah (the Law and the Prophets) do one thing: they point to Jesus!
Jesus is my sponsor for admission into the Old Testament.
The Bible is the written word of God that bears witness to the living Word of God. God did not become a book, but God did become a human being.
parts of it are now obsolete. Surely you admit this. Do you ever worry about violating the biblical prohibition found in Leviticus 19:19: “Nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials”? Of course not. You understand that part of the Bible to be obsolete
But nothing about the risen Christ is obsolete. Christ alone is the perfection of God.
A Biblicist reading of the Bible can be a clever way of hiding from the rule of Christ. The slavery issue is not settled by citing chapter and verse from the Bible. The slavery issue is settled by listening to the living word from the living Christ.
Jesus said it this way: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!”*23 If we see the Bible as an end in itself instead of an inspired witness pointing us to Jesus, it will become an idol.
The historical examples of this are nearly endless; crusaders, slaveholders, and Nazis have all proved themselves adept at bolstering their ideologies with images drawn from the Bible.
We may not always know what Jesus would do, but we can usually discern what Jesus would not do.
but Israel’s dynamic and ever-evolving understanding of God.
Amid the contradictory biblical messages on violence, we must always remember that Jesus is what God has to say.
with his fingers separated into a twosome and a threesome to command Christian faith in the two natures of Christ and the three persons of the Trinity.
The person, not the book, and the life, not the text, are decisive and constitutive for us.*36
The second of the Ten Commandments—“You shall not make for yourself an idol”*1—prevented Israel from claiming too much precision about their knowledge of God.
At the cross Jesus does not save us from God; at the cross Jesus reveals God as savior! When we look at the cross we don’t see what God does; we see who God is!
The sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimate gift of love offered to a world distorted by hate, where death is wielded as the supreme weapon. The sacrifice of Jesus is not a utilitarian payment to an offended deity bound to an economy of appeasement. The ugliness of the cross is found in human sin. The beauty of the cross is found in divine forgiveness.
The apostle Paul tells us that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.”
Jesus didn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us; Jesus died on the cross to change our minds about God!
The justice of God is not retributive; the justice of God is restorative.
So was the death of Jesus a sacrifice? Yes, the death of Jesus was indeed a sacrifice. But it was a sacrifice to end sacrificing, not a sacrifice to appease an angry and retributive god.
The cross is not what God does; the cross is who God is!
The cross is where God in Christ absorbs human sin and recycles it into forgiveness.
The crucifixion is not what God inflicts upon Jesus in order to forgive; the crucifixion is what God endures in Christ as he forgives.
But at the cross we find the death of the monster god. By this I mean it is at the cross of Christ that our wrong idea of God as a vengeful monster finally dies.
