How should Christians live? On the one hand, some very legalistic Christians stress the importance of keeping all the rules—that you must do this and never do that if you want to prove you are really a Christian. On the other hand, there are those who reject the whole idea of rules or traditions in the church and see the point of the Christian faith as setting us free from the institutionalized religious burden.But Paul addresses these two competing views by showing us a far better...

We cannot know Jesus without knowing his story. Today the debate over who Jesus is rages on. Has the Bible bound Christians to a narrow and mistaken notion of Jesus? Should we listen to other gospels, other sayings of Jesus, that enlarge and correct a mistaken story? Is the real Jesus entangled in a web of the church's Scripture, awaiting liberation from our childhood faith so he might speak to our contemporary pluralistic world? To answer these questions we need to know what story Jesus c...

We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as the straggler of the Trinity, a latecomer in God's interaction with the world. But our first introduction to the Holy Spirit is not the drama of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts. We first meet the Holy Spirit in the second verse of the Bible, hovering there, speaking the world into existence. Christopher Wright begins here and traces the Holy Spirit through the pages of the Old Testament. We see the Third Person of the Trinity in the decrees of...

Engage with the latest scholarship on the biblical theology of mission and missional hermeneutics with Christopher J. H. Wright's classic text.Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for mission. But Christopher Wright boldly maintains that there is a missional basis for the Bible itself. The entire Bible is generated by and is all about God's mission. In order to understand the Scriptures, we need a missional hermeneutic, an interpretive perspective in sync wit...

It's almost second nature for Christians to call God Father. Jesus taught his followers as much, although for them it was apparently a surprising practice. The worshiping community of the Old Testament used fatherly images for understanding God's character and actions, but "Father" was not a common way for believers to address God. In Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament, Christopher Wright explores in depth the images that pervade the biblical narratives, psalms, and ...

Christianity Today 2024 Book Award (Missions/Global Church)Outreach 2024 Resource of the Year (Mission and Cross-Cultural)Highly regarded biblical scholar and speaker Christopher Wright shows us that how we read the Bible has a profound impact on how we understand what mission is. According to Wright, "People read (and preach) the Bible in tiny bits and pieces, for its promises or rules or doctrines, and fail to take it . ...

Some people find the Old Testament to be confusing, out of date, and essentially replaced by the New Testament. They are missing out. The Old Testament offers us a grand narrative that reveals God's work, God's purposes, and God's wisdom. Christopher J. H. Wright fits the pieces together and shows us the coherent whole. Using seven key sentences drawn straight from the Old Testament, he connects the dots and points us toward Jesus."In the beginning God created the heavens and the e...

How should Christians be faithful disciples in the political turbulence of Trump and Brexit?Christopher J H Wright unpacks the Biblical theme of idolatry and connects it to discipleship in today’s world. As Christians, we desperately need to name and expose the false gods and idols that we are tempted to bow down to – ‘Here are your gods!’The Bible challenges the idols of political power and nationalism. The Biblical story is filled with hope that the kingd...

Many Christians believe that they have to understand everything about their faith for that faith to be genuine. This isn't true.There are many things we don't understand about God, His Word, and His works. And this is actually one of the greatest things about the Christian faith: that there are areas of mystery that lie beyond the keenest scholarship or even the most profound spiritual exercises. Sadly, for many people these problems raise so many questions and unc...

What do we understand by integral mission and how do we connect it to the Great Commission? Is mission a specialist activity just for a selected few?Wright’s offers theological reflections on these questions by expounding five dimensions of Christian mission, in which every member of the church ought to participate. These should spark off conversations and initiatives that lead to greater integration and alignment of the tasks of the church with God’s mission.

What does the Bible say about God's purpose for us, the witness of the church, and our mission to spread the message of the gospel?Chris Wright's pioneering 2006 book, The Mission of God, revealed that the typical Christian understanding of "missions" encompasses only a small part of God's overarching mission for the world. God is relentlessly reclaiming the whole of creation for himself, and each of us fit into that big-picture plan.In The Mis...

We cannot know Jesus without knowing his story. And that story began long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The Gospels tell us clearly that Jesus himself, along with his earliest followers, understood who he was and what he came to do in the light of the story of Israel as told in the pages of the Old Testament. Like them, we too will find that our own understanding of both Jesus and the Old Testament is transformed as we see each in the light of the other. Engaging with the Scriptures,...