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Kevin Williams on Kingdom of Heaven and Justification

The church has had its compulsory periods of history, and all of them have been ugly. If this is where McKnight’s heart is, and Jesus’ kingdom gospel is being twisted away from it’s biblical root and into a political one, “the social gospel, which seemed to link ‘kingdom’ with ‘liberal’ and ‘justice,’” then perhaps his warnings should be heeded. Perhaps this is a crisis.

One item worth noting: if McKnight’s supposition is true, then I appreciate his approach. Neither his text nor the video interviews give the impression of anger, annoyance, or of being wounded. His approach is rational, well thought-out, and welcoming. Too often, when the church feels threatened there are Bibles waving, volatile verbiage flying, and flared tempers. That is exactly the kind of controversy to be avoided in a doctrinal “crisis.”

But as quickly as McKnight brings up the idea of social justice and Jim Wallis he moves back to “the relationship of Jesus to Paul.”

If we fail to read Paul or Jesus or the Torah properly, we dilute what they are saying and disassociate them from the harmony God intended.

“What makes Paul tick at the level of language just doesn’t make Jesus tick. What makes Jesus tick in the kingdom doesn’t make Paul tick. We either have to let Jesus be Jesus, who barely talks about justification, and let Paul be Paul, who barely talks about kingdom, or we have to find another way. ”

McKnight then proceeds to discuss “The Gospel Way,” and a deeper foundation where the “disjunction between Jesus and Paul disappears.” Using 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 as his basis, he lets Paul do the work and allows the apostle to explain exactly what “the gospel” is: Christology.

I could go on, but it would be better for you the reader to discover McKnight’s full explanation, a reasoning that satiates most of my curiosity. Why most? Because I think the professor and I would disagree on what Jesus’ is saying in Matthew 5:17 about fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Even so, when it comes to McKnight’s bigger picture, I find it satisfactorily bridges Jesus and Paul.

Now for a little editorial indulgence: if Paul at any point in his life thought that his theology would preempt the Messiah’s, he would have been bitterly dismayed. It can never be an either/or approach. Otherwise, we risk creating a new dispensation within the New Testament. Has not enough damage already been caused by separating the newer and older testaments?

The relationship of Jesus to Paul: a very old crisis?

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and that cannot be argued. But he was the Word made flesh (John 1:14), the living embodiment of all that had been and all that will be. His life was an incarnate example of the Torah’s intent, an intent lost through ritual, imperfect human infection, and hard-heartedness.

Even Paul knew that the Torah is good if a man uses it lawfully (1 Timothy 1:8) and through his many epistles to the various communities of the redeemed, we find justification by faith, so that works are kept in a proper perspective, with an emphasis on exactly what the Torah and the Messiah emphasized: here is how to worship God Most High, and here is how to live appropriately in community. There need be no inconsistencies, though if we read the Torah, the Gospels, or Paul’s epistles in any other way, then we dilute them and disassociate their intrinsic and Divine harmony.

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Category: Biblical Studies, Summer 2011

About the Author: Kevin M. Williams, Litt.D., H.L.D. has served in Messianic ministries since 1987 and has written numerous articles and been a featured speaker at regional and international conferences on Messianic Judaism.

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