Exile & Return in Jesus’ Ministry

On the cross Jesus redeems his people. He rescues us from our sins—both the consequence and the dominion of sins. But that is not all we can say. There are many, many dimensions to understanding sin and its effects, and so there are many, many dimensions to our salvation. In short, Jesus accomplished a lot on the cross. And the same is true for the resurrection. The fact that Jesus was historically raised back to life has all kinds of implications for our world today.

In April of this year I was blessed to share some of my understanding of what Jesus accomplished in the cross and resurrection on the website, Christ Over All. I focus on just one aspect: the exile from God’s presence that sin brings about, as well as Jesus’ ministry that leads us out of exile. The value of seeing this is that it gives us a more expansive understanding of Jesus ministry, and also situates Jesus’ ministry more clearly within the over biblical storyline from Genesis to Revelation.

There are several ways you can engage this content. Here is the initial article I wrote called, “‘The Exodus He Accomplished at Jerusalem’: The Gospels’ Theology of Exile & Return in the Cross & Resurrection.” If you’d rather listen to the piece, my good friend Kevin McClure does an excellent job reading the paper. You can listen to that here. Finally, the website’s hosts interviewed me over the content of the paper (and other matters). You can listen to that interview here.

I hope you’ll be encouraged by this, and challenged to think of Jesus’ ministry in broader biblical categories.

Dr. Piotrowski is the President of Indianapolis Theology Seminary