Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

“Hope” in this sense is not a feeling. It is a virtue. You have to practice it, like a difficult piece on the violin or a tricky shot at tennis. You practice the virtue of hope through worship and prayer, through invoking the One God, through reading and re-imagining the scriptural story, and through consciously holding the unknown future within the unshakable divine promises. Saul had

so often—it becomes a recurring theme in early Christian storytelling—when something has to be done, it will be done through an obedient, but quite likely nervous and worried disciple.

God uses us all

that when Paul told the story of Jesus some people found that this Jesus became a living presence, not simply a name from the recent past. A transforming, healing, disturbing, and challenging presence. A presence that at one level was the kind of thing that would be associated with a divine power and at another level seemed personal—human, in fact.

After he had been seven times in chains, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, and had preached in the east and in the west, he won the genuine glory for his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and having reached the farthest limits of the west. Finally, when he had given his testimony before the rulers, he thus departed from the world and went to the holy place, having become an outstanding example of patient endurance.17

What was it about this busy, vulnerable man that, despite everything, seems to have been so effective?

The Creator works in a thousand ways, but one central way is through people—people who think, who pray, who make difficult decisions, who work hard, especially in prayer. That is part of what it means to be image-bearers. The question of divine action and human action is seldom a zero-sum game. If the worlds of heaven and earth have rushed together in Jesus and the spirit, one should expect different layers of explanation to reside together, to reinforce one another.