teaching/sermons/col-1-15-20/commentaries/wright_how_god_became_king_extracts.md

Wright on kingdom and cross — what How God Became King gives Col 1:15–20

N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (HarperOne/SPCK, 2012). Source: wright_how_god_became_king.md. Mackie names this book as a "big influence" on the BibleProject Kingdom of God series. Wright's central claim: the gospels stage Jesus's life, death and resurrection as the moment Israel's God publicly became king in history — and the creeds skip this entirely (the "missing middle" between virgin birth and Pontius Pilate).

Quotes verbatim. [...] marks trims, [bracketed] indicates obvious transcription/formatting fixes. Citations are by chapter title + line number in the source markdown.

1. Cross-as-throne / enthronement-through-suffering

Wright's strongest version of the claim is in his treatment of John, in part 3. The cross is itself the enthronement, not the path to one.

"And so Jesus goes to his death, with the royal claim above his head: 'JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS' (19.19). Pilate knew it was provocative, but went ahead. From his point of view, it was a slap in the face for the Judaean rulers as well as additional mocking of the utterly unkinglike Jesus. But from John's point of view this means that Pilate, like Caiaphas eight chapters before (11.49–53), is saying far more than he knows. Jesus is enthroned as king of the Jews, and from now on he is also king of the world. The cross in John, which we already know to be the fullest unveiling of God's, and Jesus', love (13.1), is also the moment when God takes his power and reigns over Caesar. From now on, the ruler of this world is judged." — ch. 7, The Clash of the Kingdoms [line 1218]

The same point, sharpened, in Wright's reading of the trial scenes:

"It is in this light that we can understand what the evangelists are doing in the so-called trial scenes [...]. In both of these it appears, of course, as though it is Jesus who is on trial. But the way the evangelists tell the story [...] it becomes clear that actually it is Caiaphas and Pilate and the systems they represent and embody that are on trial – and that lose their case. Jesus, having declared that he will be vindicated, goes to his death as to an enthronement, while the Judaean leaders declare that they have no king but Caesar." — ch. 9, Kingdom and Cross in Four Dimensions [line 1618]

And the most concentrated single sentence, on the Caiaphas/Pilate axis:

"As Paul saw, the rulers of this age didn't understand what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2.8). [...] Sending Jesus to his death was assisting in the enthronement of the one whose bringing of justice to the nations flowed out of his sovereign, healing love (John 13.1)." — ch. 9 [line 1715]

Wright's John 19 climax — including the tetelestai, "it's all done":

"And all the lines draw the eye up to the final scene in which Jesus announces God's kingdom before Caesar's representative, while Israel's official leaders declare that 'we have no king except Caesar' (19.15). The result – the climax of the gospel, and for John the climax of Israel's entire story – is the paradoxical 'enthronement' of Jesus on the cross, the final moment of the fulfilment of the great scriptural story (19.19, 24, 28). Jesus' final word, tetelestai, 'It's all done!' says it clearly." — ch. 3 / ch. 5 region [line 618]

The Golgotha-as-Zion line — useful for the v.20 cosmic-reconciliation angle:

"The cross constitutes Golgotha as the new holy mountain. This is where the nations will now come to pay homage to the world's true Lord. The one enthroned there, with 'King of the Jews' above his head, is to have the nations as his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth as his possession. His victory over them will not be the victory of swords and guns and bombs, but the victory of his people and of their derivative suffering and testimony. That is how, for the four evangelists, the kingdom and the cross come together at last." — ch. 9 [line 1624]

Why this matters for the sermon. Wright independently arrives at the same claim as the BP cross-as-throne cluster in expansion/11_cross_as_throne.md. He is more careful with the rhetoric than BP — he frames it through the trial scenes and the Johannine irony rather than the Markan ironic-coronation. For a Col 1:18 ("firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might have the supremacy") + Col 1:20 ("peace through the blood of his cross") preaching move, Wright supplies the Anglican-bishop's-voice version of what BP says in Hebrew-Bible-hyperlink language.

2. Eternal vs inaugurated kingship — ammunition against adoptionist drift

Wright is aware of the problem. He never says "God became king at the cross" without immediately qualifying with the incarnational presupposition. The key paragraph:

"First, the evangelists insist that the kingdom truly was inaugurated by Jesus in his active public career, during the time between his baptism and the cross. That entire narrative is the story of 'how God became king in and through Jesus'. But note what follows. We in the West, perhaps ever since Chalcedon or even Nicaea, have read as the main text what the gospels treated as presupposition. In all four gospels, Jesus is the embodiment ('incarnation') of Israel's God. But this is not the gospels' main theme. [...] In musical terms, we have mistaken key for tune. The key in which the gospels are set is that of incarnational Christology. But the melody is that of the kingdom and of 'Christology' in the much stricter sense of 'Jesus as Messiah'." — ch. 10, Kingdom and Cross: The Remaking of Meanings [lines 1867–1868]

This is the load-bearing sentence for the preacher: key vs. tune. The cosmic-divine identity of Christ (Col 1:15–17) is the key; the kingdom-bringing on the cross (Col 1:18–20) is the tune. Both required; neither dispensable; not in competition. This holds the hymn together exactly as Frank's inventory item #6 requires.

Wright's most explicit on inaugurated-but-not-consummated:

"The early Christian writers were, of course, setting forth an eschatology that had been inaugurated, but not fully consummated; they were celebrating (Paul is quite explicit on this point in 1 Corinthians 15.20–28) something that has already happened, but at the same time something that still has to happen in the future. They believed themselves to be living between Jesus' accomplishment of the reign of God and its full implementation." — ch. 8, Where We Get Stuck [line 1326]

And, importantly for the "always was king" guard:

"Matthew believed that Jesus had already accomplished it: 'All authority', declares Matthew's Jesus, 'in heaven and on earth has been given to me' (28.18). Paul believed Jesus was already reigning; you can't understand Romans or 1 Corinthians or Philippians unless you take that as basic. Revelation celebrates the sovereignty of Jesus from first page to last." — ch. 8 [line 1325]

Wright on Jesus' eternal sonship as presupposition, not theme:

"As we have already seen, the incarnation is vital for all the gospels. They all saw, in Jesus, the living embodiment of Israel's God, returning to live among his people and to rescue them from their ultimate plight. And, however much they highlighted kingdom and cross, none of them supposed that there would have been anything to write about unless it had been for the resurrection from the dead of the crucified, God-embodying kingdom-bringer." — ch. 9 introduction [line 1389]

Honest framing. Wright's title ("How God Became King") is rhetorically aggressive, and a careless reader will land on adoptionism. But his actual argument is the opposite: incarnational Christology is the unstated presupposition the gospels assume and the creeds over-stated, drowning out the kingdom-tune. For the sermon's purposes, paraphrase the title with the qualifier built in: "How God publicly inaugurated his reign on earth as in heaven, in and through Jesus." That is what Wright argues; that is what guards against adoptionism; that is what reads Col 1:15–17 (eternal preeminence) and Col 1:18–20 (cross-inaugurated reconciliation) as one continuous claim.

3. The "missing middle" / "four speakers" argument

The thesis of Part One. The creeds skip everything Jesus did between his birth and his death — and that "everything" is the kingdom-inauguration that climaxes at the cross.

"The great creeds, when they refer to Jesus, pass directly from his virgin birth to his suffering and death. The four gospels don't. Or, to put it the other way round, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all seem to think it's hugely important that they tell us a great deal about what Jesus did between the time of his birth and the time of his death. In particular, they tell us about what we might call his kingdom-inaugurating work: the deeds and words that declared that God's kingdom was coming then and there, in some sense or other, on earth as in heaven. They tell us a great deal about that; but the great creeds don't." — ch. 1, The Missing Middle [line 211]

The "comma" line — a useful preacher-image:

"Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. Here we have the central pair of statements [...]. The virgin birth and the crucifixion, with nothing but a comma in between. Sadly, here most modern Christians who say the creed from the heart barely even notice the comma, let alone think about the wealth of biblical emphasis that is thereby dwindled down to nothing." — ch. 11, How to Celebrate God's Story [lines 1981–1983]

The four speakers themselves (the sound-system image — chapters 4–7):

  1. Israel — gospels as the climax of Israel's story
  2. YHWH returning — gospels as the story of Israel's God come in person
  3. Renewed people of God — the launching of the kingdom-bringing community
  4. Clash with Caesar — God's kingdom confronting empire

"There are four strands, four dimensions, that contribute to what they are saying, which in much modern reading have become distorted. [...] The point I want to make in this part of the book is that we only get the correct sound when all four are properly adjusted." — ch. 4 opening [line 485]

Why this matters for the sermon. Wright's "missing middle" is the structural argument; "four speakers" is the diagnostic tool. For Col 1:15–20 the live application is that the hymn refuses exactly the omission Wright accuses the creeds of. The hymn holds (vv.15–17) cosmic/incarnational Christology AND (vv.18–20) cross-inaugurated reconciliation in one breath. It is the anti-creed in structural terms: the hymn does not skip the middle. The preacher could frame this as: Paul (or whoever composed the hymn Paul quotes) is doing exactly what Wright says the creeds failed to do — letting kingdom and cross be the load-bearing center, with cosmic Christology as the presupposition that makes the kingdom-bringing intelligible.

4. The body imitates the head — cross-shaped participation

Wright's clearest statement on the church as the extension of the cruciform reign:

"This vision, of a community rescued by the cross and transformed into kingdom-bringers, follows directly from the story the four evangelists are telling. [...] The implicit ecclesiology of all four gospels is a picture of a community sharing the complex vocation of Jesus himself: to be kingdom-bringers, yes, but to do this first because of Jesus' own suffering and second by means of their own. The slaughtered and enthroned lamb of Revelation 5 is not only the shepherd of his people; he is also their template. Sharing his suffering is the way in which they are to extend his kingdom in the world." — ch. 9 [line 1592]

The "shepherd / template" line is the key — and it lands precisely on Col 1:18 ("he is the head of the body, the church"). The head's pattern is reproduced in the body.

And the "carrying forward, not adding to" qualifier — which is theologically careful:

"Here, the suffering and death of Jesus' people is not simply the dark path they must tread because of the world's continuing hostility towards Jesus and his message. It somehow has the more positive effect of carrying forward the redemptive effect of Jesus' own death, not by adding to it, but by sharing in it. [...] Jesus has constituted his followers as those who share his work of kingdom-inauguration." — ch. 9 [line 1565]

Wright quotes Col 1:24 directly in this section: "Right now I'm having a celebration – a celebration of my sufferings, which are for your benefit! And I'm steadily completing, in my own flesh, what is presently lacking in the king's afflictions on behalf of his body, which is the church." — Wright's own translation, set as the proof-text of the "carrying forward" claim [line 1549]. Useful for the preacher: the body extending the head's pattern is Pauline, and Paul says it of himself in Colossians itself. Col 1:24 is the immediate sequel to the hymn.

5. "Follow me" as reigning language

Wright doesn't develop this in a way that maps cleanly onto Col 1:15–20. The closest he comes is the John 21:22 line — Jesus' final word to Peter is a forward-pointing call to participate in the kingdom-mission, not to retreat into spirituality. Thin for sermon use; skip unless preacher wants the closing-of-John framing.

"'What's that got to do with you?' Jesus asks Peter when he enquired about someone else's future. 'You must follow me' (John 21.22). John's gospel ends, as they all do, with a forward look." — ch. 7 conclusion [line 1269]

Honest framing. This thread is not really developed in Wright. The Mark 10 "lord it over vs. servant" passage is, but Wright treats it through the empire/clash lens, not the discipleship-as-participation lens.

6. Now-and-not-yet

See section 2 above — Wright's clearest statement is the "inaugurated but not fully consummated" line at [line 1326]. One more useful framing, the eschatology made concrete:

"New creation itself has begun, they are saying, and will be completed. Jesus is ruling over that new creation and making it happen through the witness of his church. 'The ruler of this world' has been overthrown; the powers of the world have been led behind Jesus' triumphal procession as a beaten, bedraggled rabble. And that is how God is becoming king on earth as in heaven." — ch. 8 [line 1326]

The Colossians 2:15 triumphal-procession image Wright cites here connects directly to Col 1:16 (thrones, dominions, powers): the very powers listed in v.16 as created-through-Christ are the ones disarmed at the cross. Wright quotes Col 2:15 [line 1615] verbatim and reads it as the cosmic application of the kingdom-victory.

7. Justice, beauty, public engagement — the workable model

Wright spent seven years as Bishop of Durham, sat in the House of Lords, and has lived the workable-not-sectarian model the preacher is asking for. His clearest articulation:

"Third, the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated, that is implemented through his cross, is emphatically for this world. The four gospels together demand a complete reappraisal of the various avoidance tactics Western Christianity has employed rather than face this challenge head-on. It simply won't do to line up the options, as has normally been done, into either a form of 'Christendom', by which people normally mean the capitulation of the gospel to the world's way of power, or a form of sectarian withdrawal. Life is more complex, more interesting, and more challenging than that. The gospels are there, waiting to inform a new generation for holistic mission, to embody, explain and advocate new ways of ordering communities, nations and the world. The church belongs at the very heart of the world, to be the place of prayer and holiness at the point where the world is in pain – not to be a somewhat 'religious' version of the world, on the one hand, or a detached, heavenly minded enclave, on the other." — ch. 10 [line 1871]

This is the explicit refusal of both Christendom-capitulation and Anabaptist-withdrawal — Wright walking the third way between them. For the preacher who wants a non-Shane-Claiborne model, this is the paragraph.

The "putting-right people" line — concise, sermon-ready:

"Those who are put right with God through the cross are to be putting-right people for the world. Justification is God's advance putting right of men and women, against the day when he will put all things right, and thereby constituting the justified people as the key agents in that latter project." — ch. 10 [line 1876]

And the postmodern-challenge response, which connects cross-shape to public engagement:

"The paradox remains, and those who engage most directly in the work of the kingdom know, again and again, that the principalities and powers they are confronting are cruel, mean and dirty. Martyrdom of one sort or another, suffering of one sort or another, is what kingdom-bringers must expect. [...] Our 'big story' is not a power story. It isn't designed to gain money, sex or power for ourselves, though those temptations will always lie close at hand. It is a love story – God's love story, operating through Jesus and then, by the spirit, through Jesus' followers." — ch. 10 [line 1870]

Honest framing. Wright is aware of the danger of triumphalism and explicitly disclaims it — the kingdom is brought in by suffering, not by force ("the victory of his people and of their derivative suffering and testimony"). The model for normal people is not bishop-in-Lords specifically; it is: presence at the point where the world is in pain, with the cruciform pattern as the method.

8. Direct commentary on Colossians 1:15–20 or the hymn

Wright does not exegete the Col 1 hymn directly in this book. The book is on the gospels. But:

"To ignore the gospels' massive narrative scheme and go hurrying on to Paul for a more abstract formulation is to marginalize the centre of scripture and to misinterpret Paul as well. Think, for instance, of Philippians 2.6–11, which on this reading functions more or less as a summary of the gospels. Perhaps that is why twentieth-century scholarship has tried to split that passage off from the perceived Paul of Protestant imagination. Anything, rather than take seriously the utterly biblical concept of kingdom and cross." — ch. 10 [line 1875]

The preacher can extend Wright's Phil 2:6–11 = summary-of-gospels claim to Col 1:15–20: same shape, same Pauline strategy, both narratives of kingdom-and-cross compressed into hymnic form. This is implicit in Wright, not stated.

9. Cosmic Christology — the powers (v.16 territory)

Wright reads the cross as a Roman triumphal procession with the powers themselves chained behind — citing Col 2:15 directly:

"In other words, the powers that put Jesus on the cross didn't realize that by doing so they were in fact serving God's purposes, unveiling the 'wisdom' that lies at the heart of the universe. Paul puts it even more positively, seeing the cross as the weapon with which God stripped the armour from the rulers and authorities, as soldiers would do with beaten enemies: 'He stripped the rulers and authorities of their armour, and displayed them contemptuously to public view, celebrating his triumph over them in him.' (Colossians 2.15) That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross he was winning the victory over 'the rulers and authorities' who have carved up this world in their own violent and destructive way." — ch. 9 [lines 1611–1617]

The hyperlink to Col 1:16 is then automatic: the thronoi, kyriotētes, archai, exousiai created-in-him in v.16 are the same powers disarmed at the cross in 2:15. Wright doesn't make the Col 1:16 ↔ 2:15 link explicit, but the move is obvious once the v.16 list is in view.

Wright also pushes the cosmic-temple frame for the cross — which lands precisely on the v.16 ↔ v.20 inclusio Frank's prep already identifies:

"Jesus, after all, has come to Jerusalem and found the Temple no longer to be the place where heaven and earth do business, but the place where mammon and violence are reigning unchecked, colluding with Caesar's rule. Jesus himself, the evangelists are saying, is now the place where heaven and earth come together, and the event in which this happens supremely is the crucifixion itself. The cross is to be the victory of the 'son of man', the Messiah, over the monsters; the victory of God's kingdom over the world's kingdoms; the victory of God himself over all the powers, human and suprahuman, that have usurped God's rule over the world." — ch. 9 [line 1619]

The cross as the place where heaven and earth meet — Wright's language here is the BP "heaven-and-earth-overlap at Golgotha" claim in different vocabulary. The v.16/v.20 inclusio ("things in heaven and things on earth") in the Col hymn maps directly onto this.

10. Reconciliation through the cross (v.20)

Wright doesn't exegete Col 1:20, but his reading of the cross-as-cosmic-victory supplies the frame. The most useful single line:

"Whatever the cross achieves must be articulated, if we are to take the four gospels seriously, within the context of the kingdom-bringing victory. This is the ultimate redefinition-in-action of the messianic task, the kingdom-bringing messianic vocation. In all four gospels, not only in John, the cross is the victory that overcomes the world." — ch. 10 [line 1873]

He is careful — and this matters for sermon use — to include substitutionary atonement within the kingdom-victory frame rather than play them against each other:

"Second, however, when we see the cross in the light of the kingdom, we discover a fresh and helpful framework for understanding the vexed questions that surround substitutionary atonement. [...] Jesus, for them, is dying a penal death in place of the guilty, of guilty Israel, of guilty humankind. Through his death, the evangelists are telling their readers there will come the jubilee event, the great redemption, freedom from debts of every kind, which he had earlier announced and which is the central characteristic of the kingdom. All this makes the sense it makes not by playing 'substitution' off against 'representation', as has so often been done, but through Jesus' role precisely as Israel's representative Messiah, through which he is exactly fitted to be the substitute for Israel and thence for the world." — ch. 10 [lines 1874–1875]

Why this matters for the sermon. A common worry about cross-as-throne / Christus-Victor framings is that they soft-pedal substitution. Wright explicitly refuses this trade: substitution is included in the kingdom-victory frame, not displaced by it. For a Col 1:20 ("peace through the blood of his cross") sermon move, this is the careful evangelical-Anglican balancing the preacher can stand on.

What Wright adds to what's already in the prep

Already in project What Wright adds
BP cross-as-throne cluster (expansion/11_cross_as_throne.md) Independent confirmation in Anglican-bishop voice; the trial-scenes-as-vindication argument; "goes to his death as to an enthronement"
Frank's "natural arc — cosmic to cross" (inventory §2) The "key vs. tune" image — cosmic Christology is the key the gospels are set in; kingdom-cross is the melody. Both required
Frank's eternal-vs-inaugurated tension (inventory §6) The exact qualifier vocabulary: "inaugurated but not fully consummated"; "already happened, but still has to happen"; reads as presupposition vs. theme
Frank's hymn-as-anti-creed potential The "missing middle" thesis — the hymn does what the creeds fail to do: holds incarnation, kingdom-bringing, and cross in one breath
Col 1:24 (already in archive) Wright treats Col 1:24 as the proof-text for body-extending-the-head's-pattern, with the "carrying forward, not adding to" qualifier
Willard's "perfectly safe place" (willard_christ_in_action.md §9) The hard-edged counterpart: kingdom-bringers should expect suffering. Both true: cosmic safety + cruciform vocation
BP "the cross is the meeting place of heaven and earth" Wright in his own words: "the event in which this happens supremely is the crucifixion itself"

What didn't land

Surprises the preacher should know

  1. Wright's title is more provocative than his argument. "How God became king" reads, at first glance, as adoptionist. It is not. Wright explicitly frames the incarnation as the presupposition the gospels assume; the kingdom-becoming is the public, historical inauguration of a sovereignty that was always real but had never before been enthroned in this way on earth. The title is a polemical hook; the substance is careful. Worth saying this aloud once in the sermon if Wright is named.

  2. Wright explicitly preserves substitutionary atonement inside the kingdom-victory frame (§10). This is unusual among "Christus Victor"-leaning writers and is theologically generous to the evangelical tradition. Useful for a CSCC audience.

  3. The Bishop-of-Durham anecdote: Wright says he used to insist on changing the Easter hymn line "Now above the sky he's king" to "Now o'er all the world he's king" [line 361]. Small, vivid, sermon-quotable image of how the kingship language gets re-earthed.

  4. Wright treats Phil 2:6–11 as "a summary of the gospels" [line 1875]. This is an aside, but it directly implies the same of Col 1:15–20 — both hymns compress kingdom-and-cross into hymnic form. The hymn-as-gospel-in-miniature reading is implicit in Wright.

  5. The "putting-right people for the world" line (§7) is one of his most preachable. It supplies a single-sentence answer to "so what?" — justified people are agents of God's putting-right project, not refugees from it. Pairs with Col 1:20 ("reconcile to himself all things") at the application level.

Source map (line refs in wright_how_god_became_king.md)