4 - The gospels and Christian ethics

Summary

Down the centuries and across the divisions of the Christian church, the story of Jesus has always been acknowledged as somehow normative for moral reflection and formation in the church. How could it be otherwise? The church began with the conviction that God had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead and that by that resurrection ‘God has made him both Lord and Messiah’ (Acts 2:36). The claim was that by raising Jesus from the dead God had vindicated Jesus. He had walked among people. He had announced the good future of God, ‘the kingdom of God’ (Mark 1:15). He had made its power felt already in his words of blessing and in his works of healing, in his readiness to forgive and in his friendship with sinners, in his confidence in God and in his loyalty to the cause of God. He had been put to death as a messianic pretender on a Roman cross, but God raised him up. By that great act of power God vindicated both Jesus and God's own faithfulness to the promises. In this Jesus the cause and character of God had been made known. In this Jesus our own humanity had been finally revealed. How could it be otherwise, then, that the story of Jesus would be acknowledged as somehow normative for the life and the common life of the Christian community? Even before the gospels were written the stories and sayings of Jesus were used to form and to reform the lives of Christians, and the gospels themselves witness to the confidence of the church that the story of Jesus can and should shape community, character and conduct.