Contemporary Christianity would phrase Jesus’s mission as something like ’to save us from our sins’ which is partly right. However, early Christianity as it developed just after Jesus’s death and resurrection would say something more holistic like ’the mission of the Son was to turn humanity back to the Father, in every aspect of sinful human life.’ For the earliest Christians, Christ’s mission was not to change God’s mind about us, nor was it to do some ‘deal’ or ’transaction’ over our heads. It was to grab hold of us from within, heal us, recreate us, and reorient us back to the Father.
- Julie Canlis (in A Theology of the Ordinary)