Barth on the New Event

Here's a quote to get this blog back into the mood:

"[Jesus] himself is the new event, the great light of hope that has already come and will come again after having shined provisionally in these little lights. The new event is the world's reconciliation with God, which was announced in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament by Jesus Christ. The new event is the fulfilling and perfecting of the covenant between God and man. The new event is love, free grace, the unfathomable mercy with which God took up the cause of Israel, the criminal contender against God, and the cause of the whole rebellious corrupted human race. He took up their cause by letting his Word become flesh, miserable and sinful flesh of sin like our own. ...The Word became flesh in our place and for us, to overcome, take away, and eradicate the sin that separates us from God, the sin that is also the sing of death, the old element of our old nature and world."

Karl Bart, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (Eerdmans, 1963, 1972), 70.