The Gospel according to Jesus

What is the Gospel According to Jesus?

Often we interpret Jesus through the lens of Paul.

some quotes.

Dallas Willard writes, "History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally."

he goes on...

"To the right, being a Christian is a matter of having your sins forgiven. To the left, you are Christian if you have a significant commitment to the elimination of social evils. A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face the judgement of God or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it."


Tony Jones speaking in Pittsburg earlier this month.

"And then back to Paul - evangelical Christians are in love with Paul and not Jesus. We've become Paulophilics and don't even realize we're reading Romans through a contemporary lens. Like the PENAL SUBSTITUTIONARY THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT - this whole idea that one thing can balance out something else like a transaction - it comes from a guy named Anselm and was developed during the same time the Magna Carta was. The whole concept that someone screwed up so someone must pay for it... laws are very important in our society - we're very litigious and we assume that there's an economy of sin, too... only the rest of the world doesn't see the Bible like we do."