Category Archives: Christopher J. H. Wright

“Jesus never read the New Testament” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“In the midst of the many intrinsically fascinating reasons why Old Testament study is so rewarding, the most exciting to me is the way it never fails to add new depths to my understanding of Jesus.

I find myself aware that in reading the Hebrew scriptures I am handling something that gives me a closer common link with Jesus than any archaeological artefact could do. For these are the words He read. These were the stories He knew.

These were the songs He sang. These were the depths of wisdom and revelation and prophecy that shaped His whole view of ‘life, the universe and everything.’ This is where He found His insights into the mind of His Father God.

Above all, this is where He found the shape of His own identity and the goal of His own mission. In short, the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you come to the heart of Jesus. (After all, Jesus never actually read the New Testament!).”

–Christopher J.H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), ix.

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“This is The Story” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“When we grasp that the whole Bible constitutes the coherent revelation of the mission of God, when we see this as the key that unlocks the driving purposefulness of the whole grand narrative, then we find our whole world view impacted by this vision. As has been well documented, every human worldview is an outworking of some narrative. We live out of the story or stories we believe to be true, the story of stories that ‘tell it like it is,’ we think.

So what does it mean to live out of this story? Here is The Story, the grand universal narrative that stretches from creation to new creation, and accounts for everything in between. This is The Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going.

And the whole story is predicated on the reality of this God and the mission of this God. He is the originator of the story, the teller of the story, the prime actor in the story, the planner and guide of the story’s plot, the meaning of the story and its ultimate completion. He is its beginning, end and center. It is the story of the mission of God, of this God and no other.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 533.

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“The whole Gospel” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“There is no other power, no other resource, no other name through which we can offer the whole Gospel to the whole person and the whole world than Jesus Christ crucified and risen.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 315-316.

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“O, hear the music of God’s future” by Christopher J. H. Wright

“Mission means inviting all the peoples of the earth to hear the music of God’s future and dance to it today.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 134.

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“Christ’s monumental cosmic claim” by Christopher J. H. Wright

“When we come to the Great Commission we find indicative followed by imperative. Jesus begins with the monumental cosmic claim, words that echo the affirmation of Moses about YHWH Himself (Deut 4:35, 39), that ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’ (Mt 28:18). This is the reality behind the command, the indicative behind the imperative. The identity and the authority of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen, is the cosmic indicative on which the mission imperative stands authorized.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 60.

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“The cancer of idolatry” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“Only the gospel exposes the cancer of idolatry.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006), 179.

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“What a travesty” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“What a travesty it is when humans, who themselves are the work of God’s hands and were made to rule the rest of the works of God’s hands, choose instead to worship the work of their own hands (Ps. 115:4).”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006), 174.

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“We invent surrogate deities” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“Having turned our back on the sole living Creator of all that provides for our needs, we invent surrogate deities to fill the vacuum.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006), 170.

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“The fount of life” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“The cross, paradoxically the most terrible symbol of death in the ancient world, is the fount of life.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006),313.

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“The One who has set His glory above the heavens” by Christopher J.H. Wright

“The One who has set His glory above the heavens is the only One before whom we should tremble in awe and worship.”

–Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006), 171.

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