This presence of a new reality, the presence in the shared life of the Church of the Spirit who is the arrabon of the kingdom, has become possible because of what Jesus has done, because of his incarnation, his ministry as the obedient child of his Father, his suffering and death, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven, and his session at the right hand of God, When the apostles are asked to explain the new reality, the new power to find joy in tribulation, healing in sickness, freedom in bondage, life in death, this is the explanation they give. It follows that the visible embodiment of this new reality is not a movement that will take control of history and shape the future according to its own vision, not a new imperialism, not a victorious crusade. Its visible embodiment will be a community that lives by this story, a community whose existence is visibly defined in the regular rehearsing and reenactment of the story which has given it birth, the story of the self-emptying God in the ministry, life ,death, and resurrection of Jesus. Its visible center as a continuing social entity is that weekly repeated event in which believers share bread and wine as Jesus commanded, as his pledge to them and their pledge to him that they are one with im in his passion and one with him in his victory.

~ Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 120.

“John omits any details which might suggest pity for the victim. On the contrary, the crucifixion is described as an enthronement in which the kings gives gifts of bounty to his people. The title on the cross, about which all four Gospels are substantially agreed, is a proclamation not only to Israel but to the whole world that Jesus is king. The writing of the title in the three languages makes the enthronement an international event. John brings out the immense seriousness of the title on the cross by his report of the argument between Pilate and the Jews. Does Pilate, driven against his will to condemn an innocent man, wish to carry his public mockery of the Jews still further? Or does he wish to assert his own belief that Jesus is in some sense a king? Perhaps both motives are present. For the Jewish leaders the title is an intolerable affront. . . . They demand that the title be amended to make clear that the claim to kingship is not acknowledged. But at this point Pilate, who has been driven to such helpless vacillation between the prisoner and his accusers, suddenly becomes firm. He refuses absolutely to alter the title, and the reader knows that what he has written will stand, not because Pilate is stubborn, but because he is the unwitting witness of the truth. On the cross, Jesus reigns.”

~ Lesslie Newbigin, The Light has Come, 252-53.