Quotes From "Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense" By N.T. Wright

The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world. . The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship. N.T. Wright

It is not about "life after death" as such. Rather, it's a way of talking about being bodily alive again after a period of being bodily dead. Resurrection is a second-stage postmortem life: "life after 'life after death. N.T. Wright

After defending the value of prepared prayers, the author cautions against over-reliance on them. Just as David could not fight in the armor of King Saul, we are called to fight in the way God has equipped us uniquely. N.T. Wright

The author chuckles at the resistance to using a prepared, written liturgy in prayer. He compares it to being unwilling to dress in any clothing we did not make ourselves, or being unwilling to drive a car we did not construct entirely by ourselves. N.T. Wright

The only sure rule is to remember that the Bible is indeed God's gift to the church, to equip that church for its work in the world, and that serious study of it can and should become one of the places where, and the means by which, heaven and earth interlock and God's future purposes arrive in the present. N.T. Wright

Author says writing about Jesus is difficult because it is like writing about a friend "who is still liable to surprise us. N.T. Wright

The author extols the power of having significant portions of God's Word read in public worship with the following analogy. He says that by reading a few short verses, we are like someone glimpsing nature through window from across the room. But by taking in more lengthy passages of Scripture, we are like someone who, intrigue, gets right next to the window to take in more of the view that it offers, basking in more of the arc of the whole the whole narrative. N.T. Wright

The Bible is the story so far in the true novel that God is still writing. N.T. Wright

To many, "The Bible is a form of verbal wallpaper, pleasant enough in the background, but he stop thinking about it after you have lived in the house for a few weeks. N.T. Wright

We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire. N.T. Wright

The debate that has been conducted in terms of "creation versus evolution" has gotten caught up with all kinds of other debates, and this has provided a singularly unhelpful backdrop to the would-be serious discussion of other parts of the Bible. N.T. Wright

That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God's dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in. N.T. Wright

Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence. N.T. Wright

The author compares rationalism and much of organized religion do a dictator who paves over natural springs in order to dispense water in a more organized fashion. The pushback of the world hungry for wonder may be compared to the break out of those springs from their constraints. Not everything they produce is healthy, but the overreaction of eliminating them is worse. N.T. Wright

The author explains the evidence for they would help from astronomy. He says that if planets are behaving in a way that cannot be explained by what is already known, then another planet is searched for which would explain their behavior. This, he says, is actually how the more distant planets were discovered. We look, then, for something that would explain what is not inexplicable from what we already see. . N.T. Wright

Setting the stage for the Tower of Babel, the author says that, while humanity had a mission to reflect God, it had been distracted by its own reflection and was both fascinated and fearful of what it saw. N.T. Wright

Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet. N.T. Wright

For Christians it's always a love game ... that He is love itself ... Indeed, some have suggested that one way of understanding the Spirit is to see the Spirit as the personal love which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father. N.T. Wright