Jesus of Nazareth: The Fulfillment of the Father's Promise (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798898384999)

Jesus, a devout Jew, honored and adhered to the Torah and the writings of the prophets as his parents, Mary and Joseph, taught him during his youth. What is significant about Jesus's mission is not so much that Jesus replaced the law and the prophets but fulfilled them. How did Jesus do that? Contrary to the mentality of the Jewish religious leadership at the time who regarded Jesus as recalcitrant of the Torah, he remodified the understanding of the Torah by insisting it is not the letter of the law that saves, but the heart of the Torah is about one's exclusive love of God and love of neighbor. What Jesus challenged was not adherence to the Torah, but the unyielding demands of the ancient human traditions derived from the Torah, numbering some 613 commandments. For Jesus, Israel's religion was the soul of the nation and not a legalistic code. Jesus was not an anarchist but, like many rabbis of his day, emphasized the imperative of the two great commandments--love of God (Deut 6:6-9) and love of neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18). The law for Jesus has a new role--to guide and provide a means so that one's behavior is in accord with the imperative of these two great commandments. Jesus's teaching centered on the coming of God's kingdom and redefined that observance of the Torah is not enough, but one needs to reform one's life from sin to grace to be righteous in the sight of God. The Torah receives its justification and reason to exist from the supreme law of love, which underlies it.

The evangelists of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) knew the Scriptures so well that they were able to set the context of their accounts of Jesus's mission and teaching within the tradition of the Old Testament while making use of how the prophecies of old bridge the Old and New Testaments. Jesus of Nazareth: The Fulfillment of the Father's Promise sets into motion what the evangelists knew of Jesus's ministry, which was to establish continuity with Old Testament roots. Their respective gospels proclaimed the salvific events of Jesus of Nazareth as prophesied of old. The promise of the Father is the culmination of the Torah and the prophets in the person of Jesus of Nazareth himself, who embodied how God acts in human history. That promise is offered to all--the gift of eternal life.