The Jesus movement would turn itself into a kind of private spirituality, less concerned with the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven and more concerned with cultivating one’s own spiritual interiority. It would no longer be a movement based on messianic eschatology. It would become a “religion” that saw itself as different from “the Jewish religion,” a private religion that would no longer pose much of a threat to the principalities and powers, the rulers and authorities.
