Tag Archives: N.T. Wright

Simply Jesus: Our Hero and King is Alive

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WrightThis post is part of the series  blogging through Simply Jesus.

In the last chapter the question was: Why did the Messiah have to die? In this chapter, Wright wrestles with the meaning of the Resurrection, Ascension, and Second Coming.

Wright sees all of these events as essential to God’s great restoration project in which He is ‘putting the world right‘.

The power that has tyrannized the old creation has been broke, defeated, overthrown. God’s kingdom is now launched, and launched in power and glory, on earth as in heaven.

In this chapter, Wright is challenging those Christians who look forward to going to heaven as a new place without focusing on living fully for Christ now.

To have this kind of view, Wright contends, is to miss out on what God is doing. Continue reading →

Applying Wright’s 5 Act Hermeneutic to 1 John

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NTWright_JohnWe have been studying the book of 1 John, and I have been catching up on reading Simply Jesus. In doing these two things I thought it would be interesting to re-read through 1 John and apply N.T. Wright’s 5 Act Hermeneutic.

Wright hermeneutic is based on taking the Scriptures as a meta-narrative, laying out its epic story (told in 66 books) in five acts (like a play). This story is about our God who loves His creation and the people in it. In this story there is an enemy, the Accuser who has deceived the people and wreaked havoc on creation. This enemy needs to be defeated. Continue reading →

Simply Jesus: Why did Jesus have to die?

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It has been awhile since I posted on my readings through Simply Jesus. Part of that has been the fact that life has been full of other activities. And part of that is because in this chapter Wright addresses an incredibly important question (which I wanted to take time to explore).

Why did the Messiah have to die?

Wright spends much of chapter 13 exploring how God surprised everyone in combining the roles of Messiah, servant, and returning God into the same person – Jesus.

This combination was a small step exegetically, but a giant leap theologically … Nobody, so far as we know, had dreamed of combining these ideas in this way before.

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Jesus’s vocation to be Israel’s Messiah and his vocation to suffer and die belong intimately together.

Wright then explains that the reason Jesus had to die was to defeat the true enemy – Continue reading →