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...

**The cross is good news for us today.**With the expertise of a veteran biblical scholar and the wisdom of a seasoned pastor, Christopher Wright skillfully guides us on Jesus' journey from the Last Supper to the cross. Through the lens of the Old Testament, Wright navigates the Gospel accounts of events that include the meal in the upper room, Peter's denials, the taunts and jeers of soldiers and bystanders, and the anguish of crucifixion, inviting us to meditate on their significance for ...

Ezekiel comes to us as a stranger from a distant time and land. Who is this man? He is a priest who, on his thirtieth birthday, has a dazzling vision of God on a wheeled throne; an odd prophet who engages in outlandish street theater and speaks for God on international affairs; and a seer who paints murals of apocalyptic doom and then of a restored temple bursting with emblems of paradise. Should we take this literally, reading the text as we read the news or a history tex...

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 HolySpirit 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 decr...

Some people find the Old Testament to be confusing, out of date, and essentially replaced by the New Testament.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...

Many preachers steer clear of the Old Testament because they feel it is outdated in light of the New Testament and difficult to expound. On the other hand some preachers will preach from the Old Testament frequently but fail to handle it correctly, and end up preaching nothing but legalistic rules or symbolic lessons for our spiritual life. In this book, Christopher J. H. Wright encourages preachers not to ignore the Old Testament! It is the Word of God, it lays the foundation for our fait...

**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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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.