The thing I find fascinating about Jesus is His interaction with Peter more than anything else. Peter is probably the most disappointing disciple in the pack, next to Judas. And Judas seems to have his title of disciple put into question fairly frequently, so Peter quickly takes the bottom peg again. When Jesus first called Peter, Peter was a fisher man and Jesus wanted to turn Peter into a fisher-of-men. I'm not sure how that would look in the Greek so it was either a clever word play, or just another kind of job.
After Jesus rises from the dead (yay, Easter!) He goes back to Peter and says, "Peter feed my sheep." That is a big difference. That's not collect men, that's lead them and sustain them. That's a call from a fisher out on the water, to a shepherd on the fields. That is in harms way, and responsible, and all kinds of things. Now, Jesus had gotten His identity from the Old Testament, and lived out of that. He had told people things as explanations for what He was doing, and people followed Him. But what I like best about everything Jesus said, is that His explanations were victorious ones; or Good News.
The difference between News and advice is simple. News demands a reaction, advice asks for action. So the difference between Jesus' message, at the time, and everyone else's was that people needed to make decisions as to what they would do next, instead of make decisions on whether they would do something or not. Jesus, when He called Peter and commissioned Peter, was giving Peter the needed reaction from who He was. He already had seen the News and it was time to act on it in the right way.
The thing I find greatest about the Bible as a hole is that it's not a list of moral principles to weigh up and act out. The Old Testament looks like it, but it's basically a massive set-up anyway, Peter wrote about that himself. The Bible is, in fact, a massive story with bits of everything put in there; journal entries, letters, history books, hero stories, romance, poetry, all-sorts. And it acts a premise of victory. Jesus explained Himself in a context of Victory. He told people who were stuck in patterns of sin to "go and sin no more" and they went away not sinning anymore.
The Gospel is the Good News (metaphorically) of a victorious King coming home to His city, and His people hear of His victory in a battle and ready the city for celebration and everyone loves the King. All other kinds of moral codes from other religions as I have observed, is good advice of a defeated king coming home to his city sending word to the city to ready it's defences for an oncoming attack. The difference in attitude between the two cities is obvious; one is a victorious reaction to a King who has won a battle for them, the other is action of advice to some possible onslaught, and fear.
I suppose Good News demands a reaction, bad news needs advice. The news today on TV communicates bad news so we all know what a rubbish situation we're in, making any action excuse worthy. If the news showed good news people wouldn't know how to act because it demands a reaction rather than getting advice for action.
at the garden's edge beneath a speechless sky
as his friends all slept
Jesus wept- and no wonder
and now you say you wanna be set free??
and wanna set me free???
well I'm told that can only come from
a union with the One who never dies
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