Every now and then, a book comes along that rightfully lays claim to the feat of changing your life. And this one most certainly did. More specifically, it changed my devotional life, such that my bible reading experience has been richer ever since.

You see, I've been reading the Bible since before I even learned to read properly. So while I was very familiar with the facts of the gospel story by the time I'd read this book in 1997, I'd also grown into some very hardened preconceptions.

An example: when your first image of the Beatitudes (the first part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5) is through pop-up book images and the narration of a primary-school level Sunday School teacher, you tend not to have any sense of the provocative power behind Jesus' words. By painting the context of the listeners who first heard Jesus' words, you begin to understand why Jesus was so dangerous the priests of his time felt he had to be killed.

Yancey similarly re-enlightens you in every chapter of this book, from his portrayal of Christmas as a daring invasion of "enemy occupied territory" (Yancey quotes great Christian thinkers like Augustine, CS Lewis, and GK Chesterton a lot), to his portrayal of the second coming, to his chapter on the Church as the body of Christ, a reading of Yancey's book means picking up an idea of how action packed and full of resonance to modern life the Gospel books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) really are.

The benefits are greatest if you're already very familiar with the gospel story, though. This is a good book for beginners, but nothing beats reading the original texts first so you can get your own first impressions. If you haven't read the Gospel books through, do read through them before picking up this book. In fact, read those books before, after and while going through your copy of "The Jesus I Never Knew."

I started this review by saying this book changed my life. That's true, but indirectly so. It changed the way I see the story of the man they call Jesus, whom I acknowledge to be mankind's Messiah. Yancey's work here is like the work of an art restoration artist, brilliantly scraping away the dust and grime of modern misconceptions to show the original masterpiece.

I hope the result will make as big a difference in your life as it did mine.

RE de Leon
Agoo, La Union
5:50 PM January 2, 2011