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...

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...

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.

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'scharacter 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...

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Some people find the Old Testament to be confusing, out of date, and essentially replaced by the New Testament.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

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 a...

**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...

In many corners of the world these days the climate of hostility hangs over any overt Christian faith commitment. Any kind of Christian commitment is now assumed to imply intolerance and often prompts reactions that range from a low-grade hostility and exclusion in the West to the vicious and murderous assaults on Christian believers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.Such issues are not new. Christians have faced them ever since Nero’s lions, and even...

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...

The prophet Jeremiah addressed the people of Judah over a forty-year period leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The book of Jeremiah addresses the exiles, especially those in Babylon, in the years after the catastrophe.In this Bible Speaks Today volume, we encounter the prophet who delivered the word of God to the people of Israel at the most terrifying time in their history. Understanding Jeremiah's context is essential to understanding his life ...