“Peter, answering for the others, affirms their conviction that Jesus was ‘the Christ’—that is, the Messiah, or the coming King of the Jews. This affirmation became the bedrock upon which the Jesus movement was formed. This story, like the ‘good confession’, served to highlight the central conviction that bound Jesus’s earliest followers together: Jesus of Nazareth was the coming King of Israel.”

No one rejects Leviticus outright, but it’s hard for modern readers to engage. It just sits there, forgotten… Leviticus is not a description of a world that passed away. It's a vision of a world that is still yet to come. Leviticus is eschatology.

“The message of the Bible has an explicitly eschatological thrust centered on the future redemption of Israel. There is simply no way around it. This message was not only handed down to the Jewish people; it hinges on their own redemption. That is, ‘if their rejection brings reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?’”

“Humility permeates the teachings of Jesus as a conviction of the certainty of God’s coming Day. The table will most certainly be reorganized one day.”