Jesus proclaimed God as having ultimate power over the final destiny of all creation. Yet he did not claim that God was the sole power in creation or that God intended to be such.
Jesus and Power
The reign of God that Jesus proclaimed was contested on several levels. Its fundamental conflict was with the power of evil. Jesus described this power as being overcome on a metaphysical or mythic level32 through the exorcisms and healings he and others did in his name, and through his message being preached to the poor. His healings, exorcisms, and table fellowship were signs that the reign of God was initially present and a source of hope that it would soon come in fullness. Yet Jesus did not present the reign of God as breaking or ending the power of people. In relation to other people, the coming of the reign of God occurred through their being won to it. Jesus called people to follow him but he had no direct power to force them to do so. He had to move people to seek to enter the reign of God that he proclaimed. The coming of the reign of God did not break the power of people who entered into it. It increased it.
In his healings and exorcisms, Jesus did things for people that they were not able to do for themselves. This was also true of his preaching and table fellowship. Here Jesus mediated God’s acceptance and grace to people in ways that they could not do for themselves. However, people could only enter the reign of God through the exercise of their own power and volition. The power revealed in his healing miracles and exorcisms is portrayed at times as subordinated, even dependent, upon his ability to win their hearts and minds. The inbreaking of the reign of God was happening not through people being subdued but through their power being enhanced and reoriented.33 The reign of God was coming through God empowering people and attracting them to it. As they entered it, it in turn empowered them.
This combination of power and powerlessness was reflected in Jesus’ relationships to the political and religious institutions of his day. The ability of Jesus to frame powerful sayings and draw large crowds made him a concern to Roman officials and Jewish religious and political authorities. At the same time he was vulnerable to critique and violence from these. He announced the coming of the reign of God in a powerful way, in part through his miracles and exorcisms, but he did so in a “defenceless form,”34 leaving people free to reject his message and himself.
Thus the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed was characterized by a strange mix of power and vulnerability, as was Jesus himself. While it broke into the present through healings and exorcisms and in teaching and preaching that many experienced as authoritative and compelling, it was without any direct means of enforcement. It was supposed to gain subjects non-violently.35 As a result, Jesus frequently appeared to be powerful in relation to metaphysical evil, yet vulnerable in relation to people. This vulnerability was most profoundly expressed in Jesus’ death on the cross.
The God Jesus Proclaimed
In proclaiming the coming of God’s reign, Jesus spoke of God. He shared central convictions of Second Temple Judaism that God is one, unique, radically transcendent, good, powerful, active, calls people to do justice, and had entered into a special covenant with Israel.36 God was the sovereign Creator, the giver of life and a source of hope in the face of death. Yet Jesus also described this transcendent God as compassionate and standing in a personal relationship to people, who were to speak to God with the familiarity and confidence of a trusting child speaking to a loving parent. The active and compassionate nature of God required that God be spoken of in anthropomorphisms. Jesus did speak of God as constant, ultimate, steadfast, certain, and trustworthy. But he also spoke of God in dynamic terms; as experiencing joy, as giving daily bread, as hearing and answering prayer. Jesus often used an image familiar to his listeners, that of “the well-to-do landowner and paterfamilias of rural Galilee,”37 to describe God as directly approachable, able to help and standing in a personal relationship to those presenting petitions.
There were significant tensions in Jesus’ proclamation of God. A first relates to the nature of the power associated with the reign of God, mentioned above. On the one hand, Jesus proclaimed God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and constantly present. Yet he also described people as having freedom in relation to God, and God as having desires and intentions that depended to some extent on human freedom for their fulfilment. While Jesus proclaimed God as having ultimate power, he did not proclaim God as having the only power, or as desiring to be the only one with power.
A second tension in Jesus’ proclamation was around God’s mercy and judgment. While Jesus spoke of God’s mercy and forgiveness, he did claim that those who spurned his message or who failed to show compassion for others would experience judgment. This reflects a tension running throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament between the moral demand of God for righteousness and the mercy of God which extends to sinners. This can be described as the tension between the moral and the transmoral dimensions of God.38 A fundamental affirmation of Second Temple Judaism shared by Jesus was that there is a moral dimension to God and human life. Jesus’ preaching of judgment for those who rejected his message emphasized this. Human choices can have a deep impact on God’s creation and make a difference to God. Yet in Jesus’ words and actions overall, the weight given to human choice and action was outweighed by God’s grace, which is able to create new beginnings for even the worst sinners. Though sinners deserve judgment, forgiveness and new life are made freely available to them. God’s love is transmoral in doing this in that it goes beyond what morality requires, without obviating it. According to Jesus’ teaching there is always a transmoral element to God’s love, in that God always gives people more than they deserve. God does not give because people are deserving, but because God is good and cares for all of God’s creation.39
In Jesus’ proclamation the moral and the transmoral aspects of God’s nature stand in tension but they have a common source. The goodness of God demands to be reflected in human conduct. This is the source of the moral demand of the law. Yet this goodness that demands moral action and so judges also reaches out to the fallen and the wicked to reconcile and redeem. It impels the endless searching for the morally lost that will not cease until they are found. Thus the goodness of God that gives rise to judgment when life is destroyed or injured also gives rise to God’s gracious initiative to save the lost. The standard of God’s judgment in Jesus’ preaching is God’s infinite goodness,40 which stands behind the coming of God’s reign and the hope of God’s graciousness for all. In proclaiming the threat of judgment for those who spurned his message of the coming of God’s reign, Jesus was expressing the significance and urgency of God’s gracious initiative present in his own person and work. To spurn God’s grace was in effect to sin against it, to injure oneself and others. If Jesus’ proclamation of judgment on those who do this is interpreted as expressing the significance of the grace arising from God’s goodness, God’s judgment remains ultimately subordinate to God’s love. Jesus proclaimed a God who judges by high standards, but a God whose infinite goodness is always a source of assurance and hope for those judged.
At the heart of Jesus’ proclamation was “the conviction that the eternal, distant, dominating and tremendous Creator is also and primarily a near and approachable God.”41 This nearness and approachableness took on a particular emphasis in Jesus’ preaching and activity, which was characterized by a constant turning towards and openness to the marginalized and oppressed.42 While Jesus’ message and work were directed to all of Israel and potentially beyond it, they were directed first to the poor and marginalized. In this way he proclaimed God