Quotes from NT Wright

The ultimate future hope remains a surprise, partly because at present we only have images and metaphors for it, leaving us to guess that the reality will be far greater, and more surprising, still.

If today's, and tomorrow's, church is to engage in this kind of mission, seeking both to implement the achievement of Jesus and his resurrection and thereby to anticipate the final renewal of all things, it must itself be renewed, resourced, and reshaped for this mission.

Sin," then, is not simply the breaking of God's rules. It is the outflowing of idolatry.

In the Lord, your labour is not in vain: what you do here in faith will stand, will last.

Near the heart of my purpose in this book is to suggest that not only have we misread the gospels, but that we have made them ordinary, have cut them down to size, have allowed them only to speak about the few concerns that happened to occupy our minds already, rather than setting them free to generate an entire world of meaning in all directions, a new world in which we would discover not only new life, but new vocation.

The best guess has him a little younger than Jesus of Nazareth; a birth date in the first decade of what we now call the first century is as good as we can get. As for

I have argued elsewhere that it is time for a fresh integration of different modes and methods of study, taking full account of these cultural assumptions and allowing the texts themselves to offer their own challenge, their own alternative points of view.

When God looks at sin, what he sees is what a violin maker would see if the player were to use his lovely creation as a tennis racquet.

God will download our software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again.25

Read John 14:1-31. Why does Jesus feel the need to reassure the disciples at this point (v. 1)? 2. What bold claim does Jesus make about himself in verse 6? 3. Why does this kind of claim often make people uncomfortable?

The first thing that is missing from the usual line of thought, then, is any attempt to show how Paul deals not just with "sin" itself, but with the idolatry that lies behind it and the ensuing loss of "glory.

without wondering what it might mean to say that the crucified and risen Jesus was the king of whom Psalm 2 had spoken.