Tom Wright on the Theme of the Gospels

A few days ago one of my favorite New Testament scholars (and probably the best in the English-speaking world right now) gave his inaugural lecture as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews University. My wife asked me recently to put the Gospel in a nutshell and this line of his seemed to me to do that particularly well.

"The story told by all four gospels is the story of How God Became King: not by the usual means of military revolution, but by the inauguration of sovereignty during Jesus’ public career, and the strange but decisive victory on the cross itself."

From this single point, summarized by St. Paul as "Jesus is Lord," everything else flows, backwards and forwards.