Simply Christian

Today we finished a sixteen week staff study of N T Wright’s Simply Christian.  It’s a amazing book and led to some great conversations.  I thought I’d mark the completion of the study but just the beginning of a conversation by posting to final paragraph which captures what it means to follow Jesus:

 Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection.  Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.  Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.  Made for relationship, we insist on our own way.  Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment.  But new creation has already begun.  The sun has begun to rise.  Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world.  It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning.  That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian:  to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s world, which he has thrown open before us.