Q & R: Ongoing revelation?

Here’s the Q:

I’m loving your book A New Kind of Christianity. I do have a question; you describe the ongoing development of concepts of God in the Bible as evolving to higher and more refined levels. But you also describe Jesus as the ultimate Word of God. Do you mean by this that our ideas of Jesus are finalized and at the end of their evolutionary development, or would you agree that those concepts are also continuing to grow and evolve?
(Maybe you answer this later in the book, but I’m only about halfway done)

Here’s the R:
What an important question. Thanks for raising it.
When I say that Jesus is the ultimate Word of God, what I mean is that nobody can come along after and say, “Hey, remember how Jesus was nonviolent and called us to love everybody, no exceptions? Well, that wasn’t quite the full story, and I have some additional revelation. We should make exceptions regarding illegal aliens, Syrian refugees, Muslims, Jews, and LGBTQ people and their allies. They are should be treated as exceptions.”
You make a really important distinction … between “Jesus as the ultimate Word of God” and “our ideas of Jesus.” Those two are often terribly different. Our ideas are certainly not “at the end of their evolutionary development,” but are, as you say, “continuing to grow and evolve.” Jesus actually promised this very thing. He said that he had many things to teach that the disciples weren’t ready to bear, and that the Spirit of Truth would continue to guide his disciples into all truth. These new understandings would (to borrow a metaphor from Paul) build on the foundation of Jesus’ life and teaching.
Examples abound in Christian history. For example, I’m old enough to remember Bible-quoting Christians using an obscure verse in Genesis to defend racial segregation and discrimination – in spite of Jesus’ clear teaching that God’s love was non-discriminatory and universal. What was once normative (among White Christians) is now (thank God, and may it continue) fading away, being replaced by new understandings that were like unwrapped gifts present in Jesus’ life and teaching all along (like, for example, “love your neighbor as yourself!”).