He would fight the messianic battle--by losing it.

"Part of the Christian story (and for that matter, the Jewish and Muslim stories) is that human beings have been so seriously damaged by evil that what they need isn't simply better self-knowledge, or better social conditions, but help, and indeed rescue, from outside themselves.

God's plan to rescue the world from evil would be put into effect by doing its worst to the Servant--that is, to Jesus himself--and thereby exhausting its power.

God was about to act to bring in the kingdom, but in a way that none of Jesus's followers (despite his attempts to tell them) had anticipated. He would fight the messianic battle--by losing it.

The polarization between 'literal' and 'metaphorical' interpretation has become confused and confusing. People who find themselves getting trapped in it should take a deep breath, read some of the Bible's glorious metaphors, think about the concrete events that the writers were referring to, and begin again.

The church is the single, multiethnic family promised by the creator God to Abraham. It was brought into being through Israel's Messiah, Jesus; it was energized by God's Spirit; and it was called to bring the transformative news of God's rescuing justice to the whole creation . . . Many people today find it difficult to grasp this sense of corporate identity. We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to--especially when the family in question is so large, stretching across space and time. The church isn't simply a collection of isolated individuals, all following their own pathways of spiritual growth without much reference to one another . . . Private spiritual growth and ultimate salvation come rather as the byproducts of the main, central, overarching purpose for which God has called and is calling us. This purpose is clearly stated in various places in the New Testament: that through the church God will announce to the wider world that he is indeed its wise, loving, and just creator; that through Jesus he has defeated the powers that corrupt and enslave it; and that by his Spirit he is at work to heal and renew it. The church exists, in other words, for what we sometimes call 'mission': to announce to the world that Jesus is its Lord . . . Mission, in its widest as well as its more focused senses, is what the church is there for.

The new creation has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus, and God wants us to wake up now, in the present time, to the new reality . . . We are to live in the present darkness by the light of Christ, so that when the sun comes up at last we will be ready for it.

The fact that we can't ever earn God's favor by our own moral effort shouldn't blind us to the fact that the call to faith is also a call to obedience. It must be, because it declares that Jesus is the world's rightful Lord and Master"

-N.T. Wright