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.

Romans 8:1

At last, we arrive at Romans 8, a truly revolutionary chapter.

(Rom. 8:1 NET) There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

No verse in the Bible has changed my Christian perspective more than this one. Until I read this verse, I believed that there might be saved Christians and damned Christians — as is commonly taught in the Churches of Christ. But “no condemnation” is pretty plain language. For those in King Jesus, there is “no condemnation.” None. Zero. 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.

A Re-translation

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).

Romans chapter 7, modified from the NET Bible translation

1 Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the Torah), that the Torah is the master over a person as long as he lives?  2 For a married woman is bound by Torah to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the marriage.  3 So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she is joined to another man, she is not an adulteress.  4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the Torah through the body of Christ by joining in his death through baptism, so that you could be joined to another, that is, Jesus, the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God. 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 7:14-17

(Rom. 7:14-17 NET) 14 For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin.  15 For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want– instead, I do what I hate.  16 But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good.  17 But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. 

Wright explains,

When we read this passage in the light of our other investigations into the early Christian understandings of the “end of exile” and the “forgiveness of sins,” we get a clue as to what Paul is saying. Israel’s long “enslavement,” the “continuing exile” of Daniel 9 and many other texts, was not just a long, dreary process of waiting. It was the time in which the strange power called “Sin,” the dark force unleashed by human idolatry, was doing its worst precisely in the people of God. 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 7:9-11

(Rom. 7:9-11 NET)  9 And I was once alive apart from the law [Torah], but with the coming of the commandment [Sin] became alive  10 and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life [immortality] brought death [loss of any hope of immortality]!  11 For [Sin], seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died [lost hope of immortality].

Who is “I”? Most commentators debate whether “I” refers to a non-Christian in need of the Spirit or to someone already saved but struggling against Sin. Certainly, most if not all Christians have experienced the tension between wanting to do right and being unable to do right — both before and after baptism. And the rest of chapter 7 could certainly be read either way.

But Wright believes that “I” refers to Israel or, more generally, mankind.  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.

2 Corinthians 3:4-6

(2 Cor. 3:4-6 NET)  4 Now we have such confidence in God through Christ.  5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as if it were coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,  6 who made us adequate to be servants of a new covenant not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Paul now makes the reference to Jer 31:31 ff explicit when he refers to the “new covenant,” which is always a reference to this passage. The “new covenant” is not based on the “letter” but on the Spirit. 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 7:5-8

(Rom. 7:5-6 NET)  5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful desires, aroused by the law [Torah], were active in the members of our body to bear fruit for death [the loss of the hope of immortality].  6 But now we have been released from the law [Torah], because we have died to what controlled us, so that we may serve [as a bond-servant or slave] in the new life of the Spirit and not under the old written code [Torah].

Here we hit a major turning point in the discussion. In fact, Paul has had the Spirit very much in mind going back to chapter 2, but he has been speaking in other terms — faith, justification, righteousness, death, sin, eternal life, and such — in order to set up the problem that can only be solved by God’s Holy Spirit. Continue reading →