Two different Christian groups arose in the 40 years after Jesus’ death.  They had different geographical locations and different theological understandings of Jesus.  But both experienced him as alive from the dead.  Both remembered Jesus, loved and honored him and sought to follow his way.  Both experienced God’s saving grace and tried to live righteously.  Both left their influence in the New Testament.  But sadly they came into conflict and  wrongly rejected each other.  They also developed some erroneous thinking here and there which entered the New Testament.

As David Chidester suggested in his Global History of Christianity the two groups were Jesus movements and Christ congregations.  Those groups outside of Palestine in northern Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece emphasized Jesus as a deity come into the world and gone back to the heavens.  Jesus’ death was regarded as a special redemptive event.  And his vindication by God raising him from the dead was also thought redemptive.  One was saved by grace through faith in the death and resurection of Jesus and by their faith participating in Jesus death and resurection as a way of dying to selfishness and coming alive to God and righteousness.

The Christ congregations were more Greek thinking and Gentile.  They saw Jesus as risen Lord who was founder and head of the church.  And God had made him head of a new body of humanity.  By believing in Jesus as one’s Lord (master) one was baptized (placed into) this new humanity which was a new world (creation) that God was creating and transforming.

This group was more Pauline for Paul  started it.  It developed the Lord’s Supper as we know it today as a memorial of Christ’ death.  The Jesus movement group kept the Lord’s Supper more as a rememberance of Jesus’ life.

The Jesus movement groups were located in Palestine and Southern Syria.  They were baically Jewish.  They centered more around remembering Jesus by collecting his sayings and following them in the way that Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

This group produced the early accounts of the miracle stories of Jesus and they understood Jesus more in the context of being like Elijah and Moses.  They saw Jesus more as the righteous teacher of wisdom than as divine.  They stayed connected to the synagogue and a broadly Jewish environment.  They too were saved by following the way of Jesus by dying to their selfishness and coming alive to God’s righteousness by obeying the teachings of Jesus.

They are largely responsible for giving us the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  These gospels and John were all written between about 70 C.E. and 95 C.E., well after the Pauline Epistles which were completed about 61 C.E.  Very probably the Epistles of James and Hebrews come from this group.

By the 50’s and 60’s C.E. the Jesus movement groups seem to have become disillusioned by rejection from their peers of their new social experiment.  They demanded repentance and began to prophesy judgment and destruction of their “evil generation.”  They developed an apocalyptic end of the world scenario and reinterpreted Jesus as a precursor to the “Son of Man” who was coming soon to bring destruction upon this “wicked generation.”  The Son of Man soon bringing judgment sayings in the gospels come from this group and not from the lips of Jesus.

There was a great deal of conflict between these two Christian groups which was sad and unnecessary.  Each represented a great element of the truth of Jesus.  The faith of one and the good works of the other are different sides of the same coin of transformed life and union with God.

Luke in the book of Acts seeks to smooth over these groups’ differences.  He tells how Paul came to confer with the elders of the Jerusalem Church.  The first church council was called and it was wisely decided to treat each other as Christian brothers and sisters and Paul was recognized as legitimately heading up the work of the Christ congregations and Peter, James and John were to continue working with the Jewish Jesus movement groups.  This was a wonderful Christian decision of unity and compromise, but it was not long abided by.  Sometime in the second century C.E. the Jesus movement groups died almost entirely out leaving us with the predominant Christ congregation viewpoint.

However, the Jesus movement influence remains a rich part of our New Testament and it is easily incorporated with, unified with the Christ emphasis in transforming lives and bringing them into union with God if only we will do it.  Doing it keeps the balance between our heavenly faith and our earthly good works. That balance is the only way to live wholesomely in Christ.

(For more onthis sign up for my course on Church History at Clovis Community College this fall beginning Aug.24).

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