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If there is any one subject that has been central to N. T. Wright’s teaching and writing ministry, it just might be the gospel. From academic books and articles to semi-academic and more popular works, explorations of themes related to the gospel fill the pages of Wright’s works. And after years of paragraphs and chapters explaining the gospel, Wright published a full-length, popular-level book on the subject, titled plainly enough, Simply Good News.

Much of Wright’s efforts when teaching about the gospel have been to clear up common misunderstandings about the gospel in modern Christianity. For example, it is common to talk about sharing the gospel in the church today, and more often than not, sharing the gospel refers to giving someone the plan of salvation (usually in terms of sin, forgiveness, and going to heaven). Wright reminds us very simply, however, that the gospel is good news, not good advice, and news is about something that happened.[1] So most precisely, the gospel is about what happened to Jesus and through Jesus. Another common misunderstanding Wright steadfastly seeks to clear up—perhaps one of the most well-known and staunchest themes of his writings—is that the goal of God’s saving work in Christ is not “going to heaven when you die”; rather, it is new creation, specifically resurrection and a new heavens and new earth.

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“For to us a child is born,

Jesus was born into a politically charged world.

Rome occupied the land. The Jewish people neither trusted nor welcomed their occupiers—and, truthfully, most Romans despised the Jews just as deeply. The birth of Jesus took place amid resentment, fear, and competing visions of power.

Hatred is often the human response to clashing political priorities. When your side holds power, it can feel like my values, beliefs, and hopes are being suppressed. This has always been how it is. Human beings naturally place enormous weight on government—and on the politics that shape it—believing that the right political outcome will secure our future.

Jesus was born to be our king. In the New Testament, no figure is more transparent about this than King Herod. Herod was a compromised ruler: Far from being “born king of the Jews,” Herod was not even Jewish but was installed by Rome and made responsible for governing the Jewish people (Matthew 2:1-16). He understood something deeply unsettling: a new political reality would be an existential threat to his reign.

Political power—then and now—is tenuous.

So when Herod heard about the birth of one who would be “born King of the Jews,” he responded with raw political logic. Feeling threatened, he attempted to eliminate the danger by ordering the slaughter of all the baby boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16). That is politics in its most unfiltered form—fear-driven, ruthless, and self-protective.

Politics, at its raw essence, is often like this.

Today, politics in North America is changing. It is taking on deeper meaning and, in many cases, is morphing into something distinctly religious.

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A subject about which N. T. Wright has produced a ton of material is the atonement and its benefits. His 1996 academic book Jesus and the Victory of God includes a good amount of Wright’s early research on the cross and Jesus’ death. Of course, his commentaries over the years have explored key passages about Jesus’ death. There have been scholarly articles and chapters in popular books all exploring various aspects of the meaning, goal, and achievement of Jesus’ death. Then Wright stirred up a good amount of controversy in 2009 with the release of Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, in which he responded to John Piper’s critique of his understanding of justification.

Then in 2016, N. T. Wright released his big book on the atonement. It is titled The Day the Revolution Began, and it is Wright’s culminating work on the meaning of Jesus’ death. In interviews about the book, Wright says he tried to take a fresh run at the biblical data and that he learned much as he did so. And in fact, he changed his position on the atonement in some key ways during his work on this book.

The book itself is over 400 pages long, so there’s no way to interact with all of it here, nor is that necessary for our purposes. Suffice it to say that there is a wealth of helpful material in the book that can provide us with a deeper, broader, more wholistic understanding of the cross.

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This topic is an important one and not a topic to leave to speculation, especially today when spiritual and evil forces are often being discussed in significant ways by public figures, even high-profile ones like Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson. It is also a heavy topic that requires seriousness and concentration in what you are about to read. Let’s examine the Word of God to discover 10 principles that can guide us as we seek to understand how demons operate.

In approaching the topic of demons and how they function, I’d like to clarify upfront that I personally take a posture often described as “seeking, but discerning” (for how this works on topics like miraculous spiritual gifts, click here). I arrived at this approach after many years of seeking a fair-minded exploration of this topic, especially as it relates to how we as Christians should respond to spiritual warfare and demonic influence.

I was trained in both undergraduate and graduate theological environments to believe that miraculous gifts became less and less prominent throughout the history of the church, after the apostles. A case can be made for that general belief, but, the more I researched, the more I realized one cannot make a valid historical argument that once the apostles died, exorcisms and dealing with the demonic subsided. As we will see below, exorcism was a common practice in the early church after the apostles.

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Dear RENEW.org Network Leaders,

If you are a church leader or everyday Christian and you want to learn how to be more effective at leading people to Jesus through baptism, then we have free recordings that you will want to watch (see the link below). We believe that leaders learn best from likeminded leaders who are further along. We also try to help competent leaders learn from other effective RENEW.org church leaders to be more faithful and productive.

At RENEW.org Network we teach that baptism—as an expression of repentant faith in Jesus—is for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). It is one of our distinguishing doctrines. So naturally, we want to share the particularly effective practices of some churches associated with us regarding baptism. We believe that all biblical baptisms are important, including children, teens, and family members, but adult baptisms are especially important.

In North America, adult baptisms, or lack of them, are early indicators, harbingers, and alarm bells. They’re “canaries in the coal mine.” A good number of adult baptisms shows that a church is presenting the gospel clearly, that one’s eternal destiny is a fundamental concern in the church, and that major life change is being brought by the Holy Spirit in the church’s ministry. On the other hand, few or no adult baptisms are alarm red flags and warning signs. A lack of adult baptisms may indicate that the leadership is fuzzy on the gospel, fuzzy on the eternal stakes, not focused on the Great Commission, and/or they have substituted a focus on something secondary. The gospel of Jesus is the central focus of the New Testament (Mark 8:35-37); it determines everyone’s eternal destiny (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)—so surely our ministries must reflect this priority.

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The following is an excerpt from Josh Branham’s book What Are You Waiting For?: A Young Leader’s Guide to Changing the World, from his chapter on Fight.

Everything fell apart at mile 20. I experienced all the typical side effects of running a marathon—heartbeat racing, accelerated breathing, legs on fire. You know, the fun stuff. Then all of a sudden, CRACK!

“How are you doing?” my brother asked.

“My foot hurts,” I gasped between breaths.

“This is a marathon. Everything hurts,” Andrew responded.

Andrew is my older brother. He had two marathons under his belt compared to my zero. I didn’t need his sarcasm. The race was called “Haulin’ Aspen” (pun intended) in Bend, Oregon. The course took us through the scenic Deschutes National Forest. The stunning views of pine trees and Mount Bachelor almost made the pain bearable. Almost.

After three hours, we were hitting the wall. The wall is a phenomenon experienced by many endurance athletes. It’s when you run out of energy because you’re out of glycogen. It feels like you are dying. Runners often say the halfway point in a marathon is mile 20. The idea is that the last 6.2 miles are just as hard as the first 20. I disagree. The last 6.2 are way worse.

I had never run more than 20 miles before that day. I didn’t know what would happen exactly. Could I push past the wall? Would I make it to the finish line? How much would I slow down? Every step was uncharted territory. One thing was sure: it would be painful.

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People throughout history have done all sorts of things with Bibles. Some have bought them and left them on shelves. Others have burned them in book burnings. Bibles have been manipulated like sock puppets in the hands of people who want to make the Bible say what they want it to say. So what is the best way to use the Bible?

Here are six options for how you might read the Bible. Why don’t you take a few minutes and ask yourself which of these six best describe how you read the Bible?

Just owning a Bible doesn’t mean you read it. (And if we’re being honest, just reading it doesn’t mean you understand it.) The truth is the Bible is a massive book that was written a long time ago, and it can be intimidating to open. Especially since it’s been known to change the lives of people who take it seriously. So one option is simply not to read it.

Here’s another reason people, even Christians, might not feel like reading their Bibles: They feel like they already basically know what it says. But do they? A lot of people who grew up in the church basically learned a seven-year-old’s version of the Bible. They learned some stories, they learned some moral lessons (we should be a good person, not a bad person), and they learned that Jesus died and rose from the dead. And that’s about all they learned. The truth is the seven-year-old’s version is like a swimming pool, whereas the Bible is like an ocean. You could spend your life studying just a few of the Bible’s books and still have more to learn by the end.

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Putting it lightly, the Bible has a lot to say about peace. In fact, in the King James translation, the English word “peace” appears about 470 times, making it one of the most used words in the entirety of the scriptures!

In the Old Testament, some of the usages of “peace” seem more trivial. For example, damam (דָּמַם), has (הָסָה), charash (חָרַשׁ), and chasnah (חָשָׁה) all mean “quiet” and are usually translated as “hold one’s peace” (Genesis 24:21, Exodus 14:14, Leviticus 10:3, Numbers 30:4, Judges 18:19, 1 Samuel 10:27, 2 Samuel 13:20, 2 Kings 18:36, Nehemiah 8:11, Job 11:3, Psalm 39:12, Proverbs 11:12, Isaiah 36:21, Zephaniah 1:7, etc). One interesting use, for example, is Esther 4:14 (ESV), when Mordecai is talking to Esther about the importance of approaching the king in order to save the Jews:

“If you remain silent [charash] at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

The root word shalah (שָׁלָה), meaning “tranquil” or “at ease,” and its forms are used a few times in the Old Testament to describe a peaceful land (1 Chronicles 4:40) and the act of an ambush—that is, striking during a peaceful time (Daniel 8:25 and 11:21-24).

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Forgiveness is one of the core elements of Christianity. There is no other religion or supposed deity that offers forgiveness as God does. Forgiveness is the “intentional act of ceasing to feel resentment toward someone who has caused harm, or to pardon.” As we will discover with the selected verses, God’s forgiveness goes even deeper than this definition. It is more than just a lack of resentment or a passing pardon.

When reflecting on the depth of God’s forgiveness, it leads me to worship. Our good Father does not need to forgive us by any means, but he does. Let these words about forgiveness lead you to worship the one who extends forgiveness to all people, including you and me.

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What do we do when we see moral failure in a Christian, especially a Christian leader?

Maybe you have seen news come out recently about Philip Yancey, a Christian author and speaker who has influenced Christian thought and teaching through his writing that spans from 1982 to the last few years.

Yancey recently confessed to a recent affair that lasted 8 years with a married woman. He stated that he has confessed before God and his wife that he has sinned and that he has withdrawn himself from further ministry. He has started counseling and is focusing the rest of his time on working on his marriage. His wife also made the statement of her hurt and her loss of trust in her husband and her commitment to working through this with Philip because of her vows to him that were made 55 years earlier. She said she knows that Christ’s blood has made Philip’s forgiveness possible and that she is praying for God to help her reach a place of forgiveness as well.[1]

I don’t bring this up to air Yancey’s dirty laundry. I am bringing it up because when something like this happens, it causes us as followers of Jesus to ask, What do we do? How do we respond?

Unfortunately, Yancey is just the most recent Christian author/teacher who has had a major moral failure revealed. Earlier last year, Michael Tait from Newsboys had allegations brought to light about him, or we could look back to 2021 when allegations were investigated about Ravi Zacharias, or there are less well-known names that have been found out, like a pastor in Mountain Home, Idaho, this last year, who had charges against him for different forms of assault.

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