Salvation Belongs to Our God

Christopher J. H. Wright

Description

Christopher Wright uses this verse as a lens through which he surveys the Bible’s teaching on 'salvation’. Every phrase in the verse resonates with significant themes in the Old and New Testaments, all of which combine to show that the Bible tells the story of God’s salvation very broadly indeed, in relation to the character and purposes of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the redemption of all creation, the joy of Christian experience and the responsibility of Christian mission.
This clear, deep and warm-hearted exposition enriches our grasp of the Bible’s multi-faceted teaching about salvation.

Informations

• Publié par: Langham Creative Projects
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907713538
• Langue: English

Extrait

Salvation Belongs to Our God
Celebrating the Bible’s Central Story
Christopher J. H. Wright
Series Editor: David Smith
Consulting Editor: Joe M. Kapolyo
Global Christian Library Series

© Christopher J. H. Wright, 2008
Published 2013 by Langham Global Library
an imprint of Langham Creative Projects
Langham Partnership PO Box 296, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA3 9WZ, UK
www.langham.org
ISBNs:
978-1-907713-07-1 print
978-1-907713-54-5 Mobi
978-1-907713-53-8 ePub
Christopher J. H. Wright has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. First published in Great Britain in 1979. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a trade mark of International Bible Society. UK trade mark number 1448790.
First published 2008 by InterVarsity Press, ISBN: 978-1-84474-243-1
This edition 2013 by Langham Global Library
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Wright, Christopher J. H., 1947-
Salvation belongs to our God : celebrating the Bible’s
central story.
1. Salvation--Biblical teaching. 2. Salvation--Christianity.
I. Title
234-dc23
ISBN-13: 9781907713071
Cover & typesetting: projectluz.com

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

To Paul, Brother in life and brother in the Lord.
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
‘Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.’
(Revelation 7:9–10)
Contents

Cover


Preface


1 Salvation and Human Need


Salvation in general


Salvation from sin


Questions for reflection and discussion


2 Salvation and God’s Unique Identity


Salvation as the property of God


Salvation as the identity of God


Questions for reflection and discussion


3 Salvation and God’s Covenant Blessing


Abrahamic blessing


Blessing is creational and relational


Blessing is missional and historical


Blessing is covenantal and ethical


Blessing is multinational and Christological


Questions for reflection and discussion


4 Salvation and God’s Covenant Story


The covenant sequence


Salvation – the story


Salvation: past, present and future


Salvation: the unique story


Questions for reflection and discussion


5 Salvation and Our Experience


Experiencing salvation


Mediating salvation


The assurance of salvation


Questions for reflection and discussion


6 Salvation and the Sovereignty of God


God’s sovereignty and mission


God’s sovereignty and the destiny of the nations


God’s sovereignty and the extent of salvation


God’s sovereignty and pastoral assurance


Questions for reflection and discussion


7 Salvation and the Lamb of God


Jesus – the saving God


Jesus – the Lamb who was slain


Jesus – the Lamb on the throne


Conclusion


Questions for reflection and discussion


About Langham Partnership

Endnotes
Preface
It is a pleasure and a privilege to contribute a volume to a series which owes its origin to one of John Stott’s fertile ideas. The Global Christian Library, or Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective, is a series intended to provide simple and readable surveys of key Christian doctrines, with the contributing authors coming mainly from the majority world, so that the series as a whole resonates with insights and perspectives from many different global contexts. At the time the series was conceived, John Stott had just invited me to take over the leadership of the Langham Partnership International, and since Langham Literature is the major sponsor of the series, he kindly invited me to contribute this study on Salvation. It is offered with thanks to John Stott and appreciation for the value of the other volumes in the series.
Two events contributed to the development of my thinking on the topic. The first was the conference of Anglican leaders and theologians from around the world in July 2002, hosted by Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, at which I was invited to present a plenary paper on ‘Salvation’. I chose to adopt a survey of biblical perspectives, starting from the very end of the Bible with the text, ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’ (Rev. 7:10), and using that as my template. Shortly after, I was invited to deliver The Frumentius Lectures 2005 at the Evangelical Theological College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (named after the first missionary bishop of Ethiopia in the fourth century). I developed the same approach further for those lectures. I am grateful to Peter Walker, Steve Bryan and Semeon Mulatu for their invitations and the stimulation they provided for the work which has eventually been consolidated in the following pages. And I thank David Smith (Series Editor) and Philip Duce (IVP), whose editorial work has helped improve and clarify my initial draft in many ways.
It will be clear that this book strives to treat its topic by gaining a biblical perspective that is as broad as possible. The Bible uses the vocabulary of salvation very widely indeed. I did not want to predetermine what constitutes ‘acceptable theological’ categories, within a structured doctrinal framework. I rather wanted to take that text in Revelation 7:10 and find out what biblical assumptions, content, expectations and implications are nested within its simple phrases. I took the text for many a run and walk, chewing and turning it over again and again in the light of the rest of the Bible story and teaching. The results of meditating deeply on that text in all its biblical resonances were surprisingly comprehensive. I hope the following chapters will enrich readers’ grasp of how the Bible itself uses the language of salvation in such multifaceted ways.
Because I spend a lot of time in this book talking about the way the Old Testament speaks of salvation, it is necessary to be very particular about the God who meets us in the pages of the Old Testament. His personal name in Hebrew was YHWH, which in some older Bibles was roughly transliterated as ‘Jehovah’. Scholars nowadays tend to use the name ‘Yahweh’ as a possible indication of how the original name was pronounced, though nobody can be completely sure. Ever since the Greek translators rendered the Hebrew letters with the title Ho Kyrios , meaning ‘the Lord’, there has been a tradition of translation, which in English Bibles results in the use of ‘the LORD ’, in upper case. I sometimes use ‘Yahweh’, or ‘the LORD ’, where I want to make it very clear that the text is not just talking about God in some general sense, but specifically referring to the named covenant God of Old Testament Israel.
It is also very important to emphasize that when the word ‘Israel’ is used in this book, we are talking about the biblical Israel of the Old Testament era, or its theological extension in the New Testament to include all those who through faith in the Messiah Jesus are included in the seed of Abraham. It is impossible to gain a fully biblical perspective on salvation without reference to the great story of God’s involvement with the people of Israel in biblical times, his promise to Abraham, the exodus, the covenant at Sinai, the temple and sacrificial system and, of course, the messianic promises that lead us to Jesus. But we shall see that the promise of God to and through biblical Israel was a promise that includes all the nations in its scope. Indeed, even in the Old Testament itself, ‘Israel’ as the name for the covenant people of God becomes extended, in prophetic anticipation, to include other nations.
Most of all, it needs to be stressed very emphatically that although we do need to speak of Israel if we are to be faithful to the Bible’s own story and teaching, there is nowhere in this book where I am referring to the modern Israeli state. That is not part of this discussion at all. In my view, great damage is done by those who confuse and conflate the Old Testament Israelites in the canon of the Bible, the contemporary diaspora of ethnic Jews around the world, Judaism as a religion, and the mo