What I am studying (besides the Bible)

Lately, I have been listening to lectures by a famous theologian and bishop of the Anglican Church in Durham, England.  N.T. (Tom) Wright. Bishop Wright is widely considered an expert on the letters of Paul and he is also on the Eames Commission, which is seeking to steer the Anglican Church through the difficult waters of dealing with the American ordination of gay priests and how the church as a whole will respond to that situation.

I am currently reading his recently released book, “Simply Christian, Why Christianity Makes Sense”.  In both his lectures and his book, Wright speaks about God “putting the world to rights”. He says “Resurrection doesn’t mean going to heaven when you die. It isn’t about life after death, it’s about life after ’life after death’”. He discusses the concept that the ultimate goal for a Christian isn’t getting to heaven, it’s about being in a relationship with God that announces to the world that the Kingdom of God is here, that through Jesus the powers that corrupt and bind the world have been conquered, and that by His Spirit and through His church, He will heal and restore it.

We are called to be agents of that purpose, and we are also called to model that healing to others, showing the world that through Christ we have been made whole. We are currently living in the darkness, but we are doing so by the light of Jesus. And we are called to be those change agents through community. We are a group of people who belong to each other because we belong to God in and through Jesus Christ.

Wright says that the two primary reasons the church exists are to worship God and to work for His Kingdom in the world. But we can’t do it alone, we need the community and the fellowship of the church in order to build one another up, teach one another, pray with and for each other, and to set examples for one another.  To live the Christian life means dying with Jesus to the old way of living, rising again with Him, and  following Him into His new world, the world that God is now in the process of  “putting to rights”.

There is much here to consider. How are we supposed to live as citizens of God’s Kingdom? What is God calling us to do? How do we preach the “Good News” to a lost and lonely world? I don’t believe that it is enough for us just to consider ourselves saved from our sin through Jesus and His sacrifice, we also need to go out into the world and live our lives as examples of that Good News. We need to be Christ to the world.

N.T. Wright will be speaking at the January Series of Calvin College event in Grand Rapids this January, for more information on that event click here.

To read more from and about N.T. Wright, or to download mp3 files of his lectures, visit the unofficial N.T. Wright webpage on the internet by clicking here.