One In Jesus

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

Mystery

Now, if I had a little more of the Orthodox or Catholic in me, I might just wave my hands, declare it all a “mystery,” and move on — which is a third possibility that our Enlightenment minds rebel at. We are unwilling to just trust God and move on. But the Jews had no trouble with the concept of “secret things”–

(Deut. 29:29-30:1 ESV)  29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

That is, we are accountable for what’s been revealed. If it’s not been revealed, it won’t be on the test, and so don’t sweat the mysteries! Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

The sacramental nature of baptism

Of course, in the Churches of Christ, Rom 6 is a famous prooftext for the necessity of baptism as a condition of salvation. In our traditional teaching, baptism is in fact the fifth and final step of five steps essential to being saved: hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. Hence, we would quite seriously argue that no one could be saved based on the many salvation passages in Rom 1 – 5 because they mention only faith in Jesus not baptism. Which entirely misses Paul’s point.

If you’ve read the earlier posts and, more importantly, the earlier chapters of Romans, you know that Paul most certainly does not, in Romans, present baptism as the fifth and final step for how to be saved. In fact, he’s just spent the largest part of chapters 1 – 5 to demonstrate that both Jews and Gentiles are saved by faith in Jesus — because God made a covenant with Abraham to count faith as righteousness (covenant faithfulness). And if we’re saved by faith because of God’s covenant with Abraham, well, there’s nothing in Genesis about Abraham being baptized. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

Romans 6 – 8, Introduction

Wright dwells on these three chapters at some length. He begins with this observation:

These three chapters, in fact, are the full exposition of what Paul meant in Romans 3: 24 when he described the unveiling of God’s saving purpose as “the redemption which is found in the Messiah, Jesus.” Romans 3: 24– 26, to be discussed in our next chapter, seems to be a shorthand summary of this “redemption.” Paul has waited until this point to provide his much fuller account of what he there summarized in advance.

Wright, N. T.. The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (Kindle Locations 4451-4454). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

It helps if we remember that “redemption” means to pay the price to free someone from slavery. We could also translate “manumission” or “escape from slavery.” And Wright notes that when the subject is freedom from slavery, the Exodus is nearly always in mind. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

Chapter 6, An Introduction

At last, we get to chapter 6, famous in the Churches of Christ because it begins with a discussion of baptism, closely tying baptism to our salvation.

Now, the problem with traditional Church of Christ interpretation of this passage is that we focus exclusively on baptism and ignore how it fits within the flow of Paul’s argument — thereby missing the points that Paul actually intends to make.

Again: you must first exegete the text to understand what Paul meant to say to the church in Rome. Only then can you ask what it means for today’s church. Continue reading →

ataraxia_hbd

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

A Re-translation, Chapter 4

In most of the previous posts, I’ve offered a revised or annotated translation of the text. I thought it would be interesting — and perhaps even helpful — to accumulate these into a single text.

Unlike the earlier translations, I’ll not show the changes in brackets except where I’m not just translating but also explaining outside the text.

And I hasten to add that this is my own translation, based on my understanding of Wright but not at all the same as his own translation The Kingdom New Testament (which can be bought at Amazon). Continue reading →