N.T.Wright on A New World

"When Jesus dies as a failed, bizarre, nonpolitical political Messiah, Pilate embodies for a moment the apparent triumph of Satan over Jesus. "This is your hour," says Jesus to the soldiers in the garden. "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." Satan had offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world on one condition, that he fall down and worship him. Jesus had refused to do so and the cross is the direct result of that refusal. The kingdoms of the world reject him, and kill him. And not only Rome, either. There was no room for Jesus not only in the Roman empire of his day, but also in the official Judaism of the day.

We must not imagine that when Jesus was put to death it was by second-rate religious nonsense and third-rate political ploys. It was Judaism and Rome that put Jesus on the Cross: the highest religion and the finest political and governmental system that the world of that time had ever seen.

That tells us something very important about God's verdict on the whole of human affairs. But, beyond that, we can see that the whole life and ministry of Jesus has indeed been a battle with demons. Not just with the evil spirits who possessed poor lunatic souls whom Jesus set free, though they were real enough in their own way. No: the battle has been with the rulers of the world, the power structures who have organized themselves and their authority so that there is no room for God in the world. Jesus, then, has come not to offer yet one more political alternative but to break the stranglehold that the powers have on the world. He offers a new world, a world in which God is God and human beings are set free to be human beings."

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