This book by Yancey covered quite a complete areas on the life of Jesus.
First part of this book is on who he was - from the birth, background, his profile and temptation he faced. Second part covered why he came to this world, which give a detailed coverage on beatitudes, his mission, Sermon on The Mount, the miracles, and his final week before crucification. The third part is what he left behind, which includes the different he made, and God's kingdom.
A must read for a closer look on the walk of Jesus from birth to his crucification.
*on temptation: By turning down three temptations, Jesus forfeited the three greatest powers at his disposal, "miracle, mystery & authority". By resisting Satan's temptation to override human freedom, the inquisitor maintains, Jesus made himself far too easy to reject. He surrendered his greatest advantage: the power to compel belief.
*on temptation: As I looked back on the three temptations(in the desert), I see that Satan proposed an enticing improvement. He tempted Jesus toward the good parts of human without being the bad: to savour the taste of bread without being subject to the fixed rules of hunger and of agriculture, to confront risk with no real danger, to enjoy fame & power without the prospect of painful rejection - in short, to wear a crown but not the cross. The temptation that Jesus resisted, many of us, his followers, still long for)
*God insist on focusing his power on the enemy of restraint, because no pyrotechnic display of omnipotence will adhere the response he desires. Although power can force obedience, only love can summon a response of love, which is the one thing God wants from us and the reason He created us. Why does God content himself with the slow, un-encouraging way of making righteousness grow rather than avenging it? That's how love is. Love has its own power, the only power ultimately capable of conquering the human heart.
*From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love & humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.
*Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.
*Power, no matter how well intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
*Jesus left few traces of himself on earth. He wrote no books or even pamphlets. A wanderer he left no home or even belongings that could be enshrined in a museum. He did not marry, settle down, and begin a dynasty. We would in fact, know nothing abut him except for the traces he left in human beings. That was his design. The law and the prophets has focus like a beam of light on the One who was to come, and now that light, as if hitting a prism, would fracture and shoot out in a human spectrum of waves & colours.
* A sign is not the same thing as proof; a sign is merely a marker for someone who is looking in the right direction.
*Jesus introduced profound changes in how we view God. Mainly, he brought God near. To Jews who knew a distant, ineffable God, Jesus brought the message that God cares for the grass of the field, feed the sparrows, numbers the hairs on a person's head. To Jews who dare not pronounced the Name, Jesus brought the shocking intimacy of the Aramaic word Abba. It was a familiar term of family affection, onomatopoeic like "Dada", the first word many children spoke. Before Jesus, no one would have thought of applying such a word to Yahweh, the sovereign Lord of the universe. After him, it became a standard term of address even in Greek-speaking congregations; imitating Jesus they borrowed the foreign word to express their own intimacy with the Father.
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