Knowing Jesus thorough the Old Testament



Knowing Jesus thorough the Old Testament

Introduction

Jesus has figured centrally in the shaping of two thousand years of Western and, indeed, world history. The life of Jesus and beliefs about him are fundamental to Christianity, currently the largest religious tradition worldwide, with about 2 billion adherents. Islam also recognizes Jesus as an important prophet. Even beyond religious institutions, however, political, social, and business leaders have made wide-ranging appeals to Jesus as a source of authority for their own leadership. That the programs undertaken in the name of Jesus appear to be mutually incompatible—military campaigns versus pacifist nonviolence and corporate management versus humble presence with the poor—attests to the complexities of Jesus and leadership, even as a significant part of the world's population seeks to live as followers of Jesus. This paper knows Jesus within the context of Old Testament and reviews the book Knowing Jesus thorough the Old Testament, written by Christopher J. H. Wright in a concise and comprehensive way.

Discussion

From the Old Testament, we come to know that For many persons—and not only Christians—Jesus has served as a paradigm of a leader. Yet the historical limitations and the theological complexity surrounding Jesus together make it difficult to understand Jesus as a human leader. From Jesus' calling of his first disciples (Mark 1:16-20 and parallels), he directed his followers to heal and teach in his name. Yet the ideal of Jesus, fully divine as well as fully human, is unattainable. Leaders and theologians, in the past and in the present, have frequently lifted up his model of self-giving and strong regard for others, but few persons have been willing and able to exercise the kind of self-giving and other-serving leadership that Jesus exercises in the Gospels.

Notwithstanding the difficulties of reaching Jesus' ideal, theological understandings of Jesus Christ as the founder and head of the church have made him a paradigm for ecclesiastical leaders. The Christian Church as a whole, and local manifestations of the church, are understood theologically to be the body of Jesus Christ in the world. In many churches, certain of Jesus' attributes (such as maleness, celibacy) have been lifted up as requirements for church leaders, even as other features (language, ethnicity, height) have been regarded as less essential elements of Jesus and therefore of church leaders. Many church institutions and denominations who permit only men to be called as clergy invoke an argument about Jesus' maleness, while some have shifted their theology to allow men who are married or noncelibate to serve as clergy. Proponents of allowing qualified women to serve as clergy appeal, in contrast, to Jesus' actions in welcoming women into his own circle and into Galilean society. Debates over gender and church leadership continue to be shaped, on both sides, by such competing understandings of and appeals to Jesus.

The historian Jaroslav Pelikan (in Jesus through the Centuries, 1985) has shown that political as well as religious leaders across the ages have referred to some aspects of Jesus as leader (for ...