ABSTRACT
Christ suffered a horrible and ignominious death. He was condemned by a Roman prefect abetted by the Temple aristocracy and was abandoned by virtually all of his friends and associates. The Christian gospel is a message of liberation for the captive and the oppressed, a pronounced option for the poor, one in which the violent practices of worldly politics give way to a dominion of peace upon Gods holy mountain. It is a declaration that the human tendency to engage in polarized judgment is not only untruthful but also that the new age in which all creation is one in Christ has appeared and supplanted it. The question for Jesus and for Paul is never whether the law has any legitimacy, only whether the legalistic Pharisee or Hellenist is correct in affirming that it justifies and leads to life.
