March262012
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A fully Christian view of the Bible includes the idea of God’s self-revelation but, by setting it in a larger context, transforms it.
Precisely because the God who reveals Himself is the world’s lover and judge, rather than its absentee landlord, that self-revelation is always to be understood within the category of God’s mission to the world, God’s saving sovereignty let loose through Jesus and the Spirit and aimed at the healing and renewal of all creation.
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N.T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God
January72012
“The disciplines of prayer and Bible study need to be rooted again and again in Jesus Himself if they are not to become idolatrous or self-serving. We have often muted Jesus’ stark challenge, remaking Him in our own image and then wondering why our personal spiritualities have become less than exciting and life-changing.”
N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
January62012
“It is not enough to say one’s prayers in private, maintain high personal morality and then go to work to rebuild the tower of Babel.”
N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
July52011
“When the church is seen to move straight from worship of the God we see in Jesus to making a difference and effecting much-needed change in the real world;
when it becomes clear that the people who feast at Jesus’s table are the ones in the forefront of work to eliminate hunger and famine;
when people realize that those who pray for the Spirit to work in and through them are the people who seem to have extra resources of love and patience in caring for those whose lives are damaged, bruised and shamed,
…then it is not only natural to speak of Jesus himself and to encourage others to worship him for themselves and find out what belonging to his family is all about, but it is also natural for people, however irreligious they may think of themselves as being, to recognize that something is going on that they want to be a part of.”
NT Wright, Surprised by Hope
July42011
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There is ultimately no justification for a private piety that doesn’t work out in actual mission, just as there is ultimately no justification for people who use their activism in the social, cultural, or political sphere as a screen to prevent them from facing the same challenges within their own lives — the challenge, that is, of God’s kingdom, of Jesus’s lordship, and of the Spirit’s empowering.
If the gospel isn’t transforming you, how do you know that it will transform anything else?
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NT Wright, Surprised by Hope
July12011
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…think through the hope that is ours in the Gospel; recognize the renewal of creation as both the goal of all things in Christ and the achievement that has already been accomplished in the resurrection; and go to the work of justice, beauty, evangelism, the renewal of space, time and matter as the anticipation of the eventual goal and implementation of what Jesus achieved in His death and resurrection.
That is the way both to the genuine mission of God and to the shaping of the church by and for that mission.
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NT Wright, Surprised by Hope
June172011
“One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around.”
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
June132011
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We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over.
Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God MUST be a God of judgment.
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N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
June102011
“Part of Christian belief is to find out what’s true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture.”
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
