Sabbatum Excerpt: N.T. Wright on God’s Overflowing Divine Love in Jesus’ Death

And as we watch the events of Jesus’s final days unfold, we cannot simply look on and register them as an odd quirk of history. The claim being made in the stories of Jesus is that this was the perfect storm. This was where the hurricane of divine love met the cold might of empire and the overheated aspiration of Israel. Only when we reflect on that combination do we begin to understand the meaning of Jesus’s death. Only then might we begin to understand how it is that the true Son of God, the true High Priest, has indeed become king of the world. This is, of course, to run too far ahead of ourselves. If we are to approach that density of understanding, we must first grasp just how powerful, within the ancient scriptures, this theme of God’s sovereign, independent action really was.

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Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (p. 39). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.