Revelation for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone)

by Tom Wright

To see Jesus as he is would drive us not to snuggle up to him, but to fall at his feet as though we were dead.

A great deal of this book is about ideas-made-visible, on the one hand, and scripture-made-real on the other.

To grasp all this requires faith. To live by it will take courage. But it is that faith, and that courage, which this book is written to evoke.

a Jesus who is mind-blowing, dramatically powerful but also gentle and caring; a Jesus in and through whom we see his father, God the creator; a Jesus who has spoken, and still speaks, words which explain what is going on in the present, and warn of what will happen in the future (verse 19).

That is part of the whole point of the book. Jesus himself won the victory through his suffering, and so must his people.

‘Love’, in the early Christian sense, is something you do, giving hospitality and practical help to those in need, particularly to other Christians who are poor, sick or hungry.

It’s easy to let this slip. It’s easy to settle down into a vaguely comfortable existence which puts its own needs first and, sometimes, last as well.

They are to ‘conquer’, not by fighting back, but by following Jesus himself, who won the victory through his own patient suffering.