Christian Character & A Kingdom View

I've been reading Tom Wright's latest, After You Believe and it's fantastic. He unpacks why virtue (properly defined) matters and why, after you believe, Christian character is of utmost importance. Here he talks about ways to view the New Testament:

"Christians, particularly in the Western world, have for a long time been divided between 'epistles people' and 'gospels people.' The 'epistles people' have thought of Christianity primarily in terms of Jesus's death and resurrection 'saving us from our sins.' The 'gospels people' have thought primarily in terms of following Jesus in feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and so on. The 'epistles people' have often found it difficult to give a clear account of what was going on in Jesus's kingdom-announcement and his call to his followers to be 'perfect.' The 'gospel people'--or perhaps we should say the 'beginning-of-the-gospels people' since the line of thought they embrace usually screens out the last few chapters--have often found it difficult to explain why the Jesus who was doing these remarkable things had to die, and die so soon...The either/or split does no justice, in fact, to either the epistles or the gospels. Still less does it do justice to Jesus himself. For him, the kingdom which he inaugurated could be firmly established only through his death and resurrection. Or, to put it the other way around, the main purpose of his death and resurrection was to establish the kingdom he had already begun to inaugurate." (pg. 110-111)

N. T. Wright unpacks this a little...and then (and this is gold):

"Once again, part of the problem is that for many centuries Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus's death was "to save us from our sins," understood in a variety of more or less helpful ways. But for the gospels themselves, that rescue of individuals (which of course remains a central element) is designed to serve a larger purpose: God's purpose, the purpose of God's kingdom. And in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place (as Jesus already called the disciples to take theirs) not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it. In other words: rulers and priests." (pg. 112).