I was reviewing Arthur G. Patzia's Emergence of the Church this evening for some teaching I have to do on Sunday and came acrsoss some great quotes (though not really connected):

The rationalists pictured Jesus as a preacher of morality, the idealists as the idea of Man; the aesthetes extolled him as the master of words and the socialists as the friend of the poor and as the social reformer, while the innumerable pseudo-scholars made of him a fictional character. Jesus was modernized. These lives of Jesus are the mere products of wishful thinking. The final outcome was that every epoch and every theology found in the personality of Jesus the reflection of its own ideals, and every author the reflection of his own views. (Joachim Jeremias)

The reign of God was the focal point. Proclamation and teaching centered on it; cures and exocisms were signs of it. But what has neither been clearly seen nor probed for its consequences is that the reign of God as imminent meant the imminent restoration of Israel, and the reign of God as already overtaking Israel in Jesus' words and acts that meant that Israel was already in process of being restored. His teaching was Torah appropriate to restored Israel and requisite to perfect restoration. His wonder-working signified the restoration of Israel and effected it by restoring the afflicted to their heritage as children of Abraham. The appeal to "the sinners" likewise belonged to this context. Offering forgiveness and eliciting conversion, it was designed to restore the outcasts to Israel. This is confirmed by Jesus' repeated efforts to reconcile the righteous to this move toward socio-religious integration. (Ben Meyer)

This means that God is now asserting his sovereignty and rule over those who have accepted his message of the kingdom. Jesus' aim, according to Dodd, "was to constitute a community worthy of the name of a people of God, a divine commonwealth, through individual response to God coming in his kingdom." The Twelve were recruited to confront humanity with this reality and to form the nucleus of what would become the church.