Publisher's Synopsis
As humans we like to reduce people and movements to their least common denominator. We like to find formulas or three-point plans for a better life. But, Jesus isn't so easily boiled down. You can't take the breadth, length, height and depth of the power that created the earth and everything in it, and the love that redeemed us all on the cross, and capture it in a tag line or a bumper sticker. An honest look at the plain-sense meaning of the various teachings of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John show that Jesus talked about salvation, eternal life, and attaining the Kingdom of God in a different way almost every time he opened his mouth to teach. As the Gospel authors recorded, Jesus told those who followed him and sought his counsel to follow the commandments of God, love God and neighbor, share what they had with those in need, feed the hungry and care for the oppressed, hear his words and act on them, come as a child, be born again-above, believe in the Son of God, eat his flesh and drink his blood, enter by him as if by a gate, and be wary of wealth. This book serves as a critique of the standard Protestant Evangelical, or fundamentalist, approach to salvation. And, it serves as a challenge to the whole church to recapture the vision of salvation that Jesus actually preached and taught.