Jesus’s audience were first century Jews. They survived off subsistence farming, building with wood and catching fish. They woke up with the sun, worked while it was day, spent evenings and Sabbaths with friends and family. They lived in villages with a few hundred people and arranged marriages for their 12 year old children.
They were part of a diaspora with a rich history of laws and prophets. They shunned non-Jews and heretics. They were suffering under a foreign pagan government who oppressed them, and pagan social institutions were that undermining their worldview. Jesus teachings, miracles, life and death addressed the wants, needs and cultural artifacts of his audience.
After Jesus death, the audience quickly changes. Representatives of the entire Roman Empire hear the message in their own language at Pentecost. The majority of the New Testament, the writings of Luke and Paul, are tasked with re-presenting Jesus to the broader Roman culture.
Often people simplify Jesus teachings to only deal with heart issues. Though there are repercussions for the individual, statements about murder and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount are scathing reviews of a fallen culture. Cultural norms allow for hatred and lust to rule one’s life, as long as technical laws aren’t broken.
As Paul shares the truth about Jesus, he is constantly co-opting language of the Roman Empire, showing that Jesus is the true power that Caesar pretends to be. Much of his life and writings are focused on destroying Jewish racism and idolatrous Roman nationalism, and inviting all people into Jesus’s Way.
A necessary, but often ignored step in developing a Jesus Way of Life is studying the water where we swim. Studying the Bible to learn what to think may not penetrate a cultural lifestyle in which sin is normal.
This is why from the beginning God’s people have been nomads, wanderers, and refugees. A Jesus Way may often mean swimming upstream; knowing and paddling against the water we find ourselves in.
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