“Blessings on the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours” (Matt. 5:3) doesn’t mean, “You will go to heaven when you die.” It means you will be one of those through whom God’s kingdom, heaven’s rule, begins to… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
“In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’s sayings in the other gospels about the “kingdom of God” are rendered as “kingdom of heaven”; since many read Matthew first, when they find Jesus talking about “entering the kingdom of heaven,” they have their assumptions… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“This means that the church, the followers of Jesus Christ, live in the bright interval between Easter and the final great consummation. Let's make no mistake either way. The reason the early Christians were so joyful was because they knew themselves to be living not so much in the last days (that that was true too) as in the first… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
“The very mention of crucifixion was taboo in polite Roman circles, since it was the lowest form of capital punishment, reserved for slaves and… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“Sunday, kept as a commemoration of Easter ever since that event itself (a quite remarkable phenomenon when you come to think about it), is… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“The point of trying to understand the cross better is not so that we can congratulate ourselves for having solved an intellectual crossword puzzle,… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“there is no such thing as a god’s-eye view (by which would be meant a Deist god’s-eye view) available to human beings, a point… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“The “goal” is not “heaven,” but a renewed human vocation within God’s renewed creation. This is what every biblical book from Genesis on is… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“having a hard enough time explaining to his disciples that he had to die; they never really grasped that at all, and they certainly didn’t take his language about his own resurrection as anything more than the general hope of all Jewish martyrs. How could they possibly have understood him saying something about further events in what would have been,… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
“If we are talking about the victory over evil and the launch of new creation, it won’t make much sense unless we are working for those very things in the lives of the poorest of the poor. If we are talking about Jesus winning the victory over the dark powers and thereby starting the long-awaited revolution, it will be much… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
“The personal message of Good Friday, expressed in so many hymns and prayers which draw on the tradition of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53) and its New Testament outworking, comes down to this: "See all your sins on Jesus laid"; "The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me"; or, in the words which Jesus spoke at the… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
“To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times--of our time and God's time, of the… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation… — N.T. Wright Copy Share Image
“Blessings on the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours” (Matt. 5:3) doesn’t mean, “You will go to heaven when you die.” It means you will be one of those through whom God’s kingdom, heaven’s rule, begins to appear on earth as in heaven. The Beatitudes are the agenda for kingdom people. They are not simply about how… — N.T. Wright Copy Share
