New Testament Wisdom for Everyone

Top Highlights

“Faith is what happens when you look out of the window, away from yourself, to the God who is so much greater than you. Patience is what happens inside the house when you do that.” (Pages 16–17)

“As every tyrant knows, death is the final threat by which power is exercised in this world.” (Page 6)

“What matters is being ready; being prepared; being wise; thinking ahead” (Page 69)

“He stresses first that the ‘spiritual’ person makes judgments on a different plane to the merely natural one (verse 15), while the judgments that such people make will pass him or her by without effect. The evidence he offers is a quotation from Isaiah 40:13, where the prophet looks at the wider world and asks, ‘Who has known yhwh’s mind?’, expecting the answer, ‘No one’. But if the Messiah has already become for us ‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption’ (1:30), then it is not a long step to say that we—that is, those who have the spirit—possess the Messiah’s mind. If that is true, there is no depth of wisdom too deep, no height too high, for us to explore.” (Pages 10–11)

“Thus, as my teacher, Professor George Caird, used to say, the highest religion and the best government that the world had ever seen got together to execute the Lord of glory—an irony that Paul, too, undoubtedly appreciated. The Bible is always clear that God intends human society to be ruled by appropriate wise and just government; but all government, precisely because it wields power, has the capacity to go bad, to become arrogant, to act in ways that promote its own self-interest instead of true justice, wisdom and truth.” (Pages 5–6)