Thursday 2 June 2016

Tim Chester on the Kingdom and the Cross


I’ve written some mini book reviews for EG, a quarterly publication from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. I’ll post them individually here over the next week or so.

Tim Chester, Crown of Thorns: Connecting Kingdom and Cross (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2015).

The kingdom and the cross: what God has joined together, let no one separate. That’s the gist of this short but enormously valuable and timely book. Tim Chester helps us see that there are not two competing versions of the gospel – one focused on the kingdom with God’s plan to restore all things, the other focused on the cross with the offer of forgiveness for sin. Nor is the solution a delicate balance between the two dimensions, but a coordination ‘in which the cross is central to the gospel of the kingdom and the kingdom is central to the gospel of the cross’. Read this for a helpful exploration of the relationship between the kingdom announced by Jesus and the cross proclaimed by Paul, and for a wonderful reminder that the way of God’s rule is the way of the death and resurrection of the king.

No comments: