by Lindy Backues
Editor’s Note: As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary this week, many are reflecting on the values and stories that shape common life in the U.S. We are republishing this reflection from a Mosaic board member because its themes—humility, hospitality, service, nonviolence, and care for neighbors near and far—speak to globally-minded and neighborhood-rooted Anabaptist convictions and practice.
Approaching the Christian gospel thematically can be a helpful way of distilling its central claims. While no summary can fully capture the richness of the New Testament witness, the following eight themes seem to me to stand very near the heart of Jesus’ message and ministry.
The Character of God and the Way of Christ
(1) Humility at the Heart of Reality
The Christian story begins with the claim that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is not fundamentally characterized by domination, coercion, or self-assertion, but by humility. Divine humility is not merely a strategy God occasionally adopts; it appears to be woven into God’s very character. If God is humble at the deepest level, then Christian discipleship necessarily involves learning humility as a way of life.
(2) Kenosis: Self-Emptying Love
The New Testament repeatedly points toward kenosis—self-emptying love for the sake of another. This movement reaches its fullest expression in the life and death of Jesus, who gives himself not only for friends but even for enemies. The gospel calls believers into this same pattern of costly love, service, and, when necessary, sacrifice.
(3) The Great Reversal of Power
Jesus consistently overturns conventional assumptions about power and status. The lowly are lifted up; the exalted are brought low. Strength is revealed through weakness, leadership through service, and kingship through suffering. This is the logic embodied when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, and it reaches its culmination in the biblical image of a Lamb seated upon the throne. In the kingdom of God, power is transformed rather than merely transferred.
Life Toward the Other
(4) Hospitality Beyond the Tribe
A central concern of the gospel is care for the xénos (ξένος)—the stranger, foreigner, outsider, or one beyond the boundaries of our tribe. Christian love extends beyond kinship, nationality, ethnicity, ideology, and social affinity. The question is not merely how we treat those who belong to us, but how we respond to those who do not.
(5) A Preferential Concern for the Poor
Throughout Scripture, God displays a persistent concern for the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized. The gospel repeatedly directs attention toward those who bear the greatest burdens and possess the fewest resources. This is not because the poor are morally superior, but because God’s justice and compassion are consistently oriented toward those most easily overlooked, excluded, or oppressed.
(6) Forgiveness and Release
At the center of Jesus’ teaching stands forgiveness. Followers of Christ are called to release resentment, abandon vengeance, and extend mercy to those who have harmed them. Significantly, this forgiveness often includes economic dimensions as well, as reflected in biblical themes of debt release, jubilee, reconciliation, and restoration.
The Shape of God’s New Community
(7) The Rejection of Redemptive Violence
Jesus rejects the notion that violence ultimately saves, heals, or redeems. Closely tied to this is a rejection of self-righteousness, for the conviction that we are unquestionably right often becomes the justification for coercion and harm. As Walter Wink argued, the gospel stands opposed to the “myth of redemptive violence” and invites humanity into a different way of confronting evil.
(8) Persons-in-Community
The biblical vision rejects both radical individualism and the erasure of the individual within the collective. Human beings are neither isolated atoms nor anonymous cogs. Rather, we are persons-in-community: creatures endowed with agency, dignity, and responsibility, whose lives are formed within relationships of mutual dependence, stewardship, and koinonia. We become most fully ourselves not apart from others, but in faithful participation with them.
A Final Observation
These themes do not exhaust the gospel, but they seem to recur with remarkable consistency throughout the New Testament witness. Indeed, I would argue that they are not peripheral concerns but central ones. If humility, hospitality, concern for the poor, forgiveness, nonviolence, self-emptying love, the inversion of worldly power, and life-in-community are absent from one’s understanding of Christianity, then one has likely missed some of the most important threads running through the story Jesus told and embodied.
Lindy Backues
Lindy Backues, PhD, is a member of the Mosaic Board and serves as chair of the CRM Committee. He is also Associate Professor of Business and Leadership at Eastern Mennonite University.
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The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.