I’ve seen Gerhard Lohfink’s Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith show up in so many footnotes that I finally decided to check it out for myself. It’s not often that I almost read a book translated from German into English in one sitting, but I couldn’t put this one down. I promise to post some quotes from it in the days to come.

In my series from Exodus this summer, I repeatedly told my congregration that God’s primary concern was not to save indivividual slaves from Pharoah. Rather, the two major goals of God’s Exodus project were to make a name for himself among the nations and to create a people for himself out of a bunch of slaves named Israel. Eventually, these two goals were combined so that Israel’s presence in the world as a holy nation was meant to bring glory to God’s name.

I find no evidence in the gospels that Jesus’ goals were all that different. Jesus’ ministry was not so much about saving individuals from the consequences of sin as it was about gathering a community around himself who would bring glory to God’s name. Of course, the inviduals caught up in this gathering were saved from the consequences of their sin, but the individual person or even the “soul” of that person is not the ultimate aim of the gospel. It’s the creation of a transformed community that is the prototype of a transformed world.

That’s what Lohfink is talking about.