ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover AwardWhen the Israelites exclaimed, "Here are your gods!" at the sight of the golden calf, they were attempting to hold on to the God of their history while fashioning idols for their own purposes. In today's Western world, plenty of shiny false gods still hold power—idols of prosperity, nationalism, and self-interest. Christians desperately need to name and expose these idols. We must retrieve the biblical emphasis on ido...

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC is the likely setting for the book of Lamentations. This was the most traumatic event in Old Testament history, as Israel faced extreme human suffering, the destruction ofthe ancient city, national humiliation, and the undermining of all that was thought to be divinely guaranteed, such as the Davidic monarchy, the city of Zion, and the very temple of their God. It is out of such unspeakable pain that Lamentations sp...

Tackle Key Questions from the Past Two Decades in this Fully Updated EditionEngage with the latest scholarship on the biblical theology of mission and missional hermeneutics with Christopher J. H. Wright's classic text—nowfully revised and updated!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 ab...

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 cla...

*A great multitude that no one could count . . . cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."*Every phrase in Revelation 7:10 resonates with significant themes in the Old and New Testaments. Christopher Wright views the story of God's salvation through the lens of this verse to show the great breadth of God's saving work: the character and purposes of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the redemption of all creation,the j...

Combining three volumes into one, Knowing God Through the Old Testament brings together three of Christopher J. H. Wright's best loved books: Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, and Knowing the Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament.Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament explores images that pervade the biblical narratives, psalms, and prophetic texts of the Old Testament. God is ac...

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.

Nothing confuses Christian ethics quite like the Old Testament. Some faithful readers struggle through its pages and conclude that they must obey its moral laws but may disregard its ceremonial and civil laws. Others abandon its teaching altogether in favor of a strictly New Testament ethic. Neither option, argues Chris Wright, gives the Old Testament its due.In this innovative approach to Old Testament ethics--fully revised, updated and expanded since its first appearance in 1983 as L...

What does it mean to be faithful disciples in a violent and unjust world?Habakkuk described an era of rampant moral and social evil among his own people, and a vision of the rapid rise of the Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar. The world he described is familiar in so many eras of human history, including our own. The frightening international tensions, confusion about political alignments and alliances, fractured moral and religious traditions, and social dissolution and degra...

There is no easy answer to the meaning of life--even when you believe in God.The book of Ecclesiastes seeks to answer the question: "What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?" The book's central character is Qoheleth, who wants to understand the meaning of life as far as he possibly can with the tools of his own empirical observation and reason. He struggles to reconcile the beautiful world that we love and enjoy with the baffling ...

**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 farbetter way—a...

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...