The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
Interpretation
Easter signifies the revelation of a new divine reality through Jesus Christ, inviting believers to be part of it.
This quote by N. T. Wright encapsulates the essence of Easter as a pivotal moment in the Christian faith, where the resurrection of Jesus is seen as a manifestation of God's new creation. It emphasizes that through this event, individuals are offered an opportunity to join a transformative journey that aligns them with the divine and its promises.
In practice
This quote can be shared during Easter services to inspire congregants about the significance of the resurrection.
The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
Most of the things that really matter require faith. How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know that Mozarts Jupiter Symphony is sublime and beautiful? There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - How do I know that two plus two equals four? There are different layers, different types of knowing.
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.
I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.
Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.
Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.
He [God] watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.
Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.
Ordinary women attempt to change our bodies to resemble a pornographic ideal. Ordinary women construct a false self and come to hate this self.
And I could weep at how mean people are and how they betray their fellow creatures, perhaps for the sake of personal advantage. It is enough to make a person lose heart sometimes. I often wish I lived on a Robinson Crusoe island.
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