Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

As I said earlier, I assumed for many years, and many readers will still assume, that the only real point of it all was to get people to “believe” in this Jesus so that they would be “saved” and “go to heaven when they died.” But this was not the concern that drove Paul and Barnabas. I have labored this point elsewhere, but it still needs saying as we watch Paul set off on his complex crisscrossing travels. The early Christians did not focus much attention on the question of what happened to people immediately after they died. If that question came up, their answer might be that they would be “with the Messiah”1 or, as in Jesus’s remark to the dying brigand, that they might be “with him in paradise.” 2 But they seldom spoke about it at all. They were much more concerned with the “kingdom of God,” which was something that was happening and would ultimately happen completely, “on earth as in heaven.” What mattered was the ultimate restoration of the whole of creation, with God’s people being raised from the dead to take their place in the running of this new world.