John Howard Yoder’s work “The Politics of Jesus” has been recommended to me on more than one occasion, and after reading it I can understand why. This book, originally published in 1972, and later revised and updated in 1994, still speaks powerfully today. There have been few books in my life that I have wrestled with, engaged with, and sought to dig deeper into than this book.

Yoder’s insight into Western Christianity—primarily since the time of the Reformation, but also since the beginning of Christendom—and how the Church in the West has understood Christian ethics and the impact of the divine and human Jesus of Nazareth on Christian ethics was both eye-opening and saddening. Anyone who is the least interested in or stirred by the topic of Christian ethics, or the lifestyle of a Christian in the midst of secular society, or the meaning of Jesus’ lifestyle as it pertains to the political or social realm should pick up this book.

Much of Yoder’s goal in this work is to peel back the presuppositions and misconceptions that interpreters of Scripture have been bringing to the text for centuries, and rather, allowing—as best we can—for the text to speak for itself, and to indicate the relevance of both Jesus’ lifestyle and teaching, how this relevance was carried forth in the works of Paul the Apostle, and how this relevance has been tweaked, changed, and even entirely forgotten within much of mainline Christianity in the West.

Above all, this is a book concerning the biblical text; it is exegetical and hermeneutical, and with any book revolving around biblical interpretation, there will be much discussion and debate. Yoder is not the final word on the subject of Christian ethics or Jesus as being political or socially relevant, and nor should he be. But if the way of Jesus is to be normative whatsoever for his followers—and I believe it is—then I would encourage many, if not all, Christ-followers to consider how the ethics of Jesus himself point us to how we are to live within society.