Simply Jesus

Simply Jesus is the title of a book by the world’s leading New Testament scholar, NT Wright. Simply Jesus? Can people in 2012 know Jesus? Is there anything ‘simply’ about Jesus? More than 2000 years have passed since Jesus walked the earth, performed miracles, died and rose again. Throughout the last 2000 years innumerable volumes have been written about him. There are scores of views of who Jesus is and what he was like.

Can we completely know who Jesus is and what he was like? We almost certainly can’t know ‘completely’, but we can become more accurately acquainted with who Jesus was, and what Jesus was like, than is often believed. Jesus is not just a person imagined by broken hearted people whose stories have been elaborated on through the centuries.

Jesus is a real historical figure who walked this earth. There are records of him, and maybe as important, there are historical records of the time that he lived in. These documents have greater reliability than any writings from antiquity.

People in our part of the world are familiar with the name of Jesus. They are often not familiar with the real person of Jesus. People use the name of Jesus but most of the time they are not referring to the actual Jesus. They are referring to a view of Jesus that is an amalgamation of the varying views that they’ve come into contact with.

People sometimes say ‘the legend has grown’ when they refer to a historical figure. It is true that often the ‘legend’ does grow. This is not true of Jesus! The legend that is conveyed and referred to has shrunk instead of grown. The real Jesus is so much grander than what is believed by those who are Jesus followers, and the real Jesus’ grandness is so far above what is believed by those who are not yet Jesus followers.

Do you want to understand simply Jesus? It is possible; it just takes some digging. Dig, Dig, Dig.