The future goal is the thing which produces character in the present.

— N.T. Wright

The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him in his world. That is, of course, if it’s the real Jesus you’re looking at. Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made up a ‘Jesus’ for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time, but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.

— N.T. Wright

The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life.

— 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

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is the reason for the Colossians' gratitude. The battle has been won.

— N.T. Wright

The radical hermeneutic of suspicion that characterizes all of post-modernity is essentially nihilistic, denying the very possibility of creative or healing love. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus we find the answer: the God who made the world is revealed in terms of a self-giving love that no hermeneutic of suspicion can ever touch, in a Self that found itself by giving itself away, in a Story that was never manipulative but always healing and recreating, and in a Reality that can truly be known, indeed to know which is to discover a new dimension of knowledge, the dimension of loving and being loved.

— N.T. Wright

The "word" did not "offer itself" in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion, any more than Caesar's heralds would have said, "If you'd like a new kind of imperial experience, you might like to try giving allegiance to the new emperor.

— N.T. Wright

The work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.

— 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

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

— N.T. Wright