I just finished one of N.T. Wright’s newest books called “Simply Good News (Harper One, 2015).
All in all, I would certainly recommend the book. However, Wright does go a little far at times, especially in his claims that the majority of pastors and church leaders have it all wrong in their understanding of the gospel. It may be true that some pastors and church leaders may present an understanding of the gospel that is too narrow, but they don’t necessarily “have it all wrong.”
Wright does a good job of explaining how the gospel is much bigger than we typically think of it.
Here are a few excerpts from chapter 5 of the book (Rethinking Heaven). If your interest is peaked, you can get the book on Amazon.
The NT is not interested in an ultimate hope that leaves earth out of consideration. That is why popular talk about heaven is so misleading. What matters is new heaven and new earth.
We are “citizens of heaven” (Phil. 3:20) not in the sense that we are going off to heaven, the capital city, to join the king. Instead, the king is going to come from heaven to transform our lives here.
God made this world of space, time, and matter; he loves it, and he is going to renew it. And part of the good news is that we will live on the renewed earth ourselves, with bodies to match.
The problem is not “Oh dear, humans sinned, so they will now go to hell” (although hell is a real place of punishment). The problem is “Humans sinned, so the whole creation will fail to attain its proper goal.”
Jesus is enthroned – that’s how the Gospel writers see it – as, on the cross, he completes his work of covenant renewal, the forgiveness of sins. And all this is so that humans thus rescued from their sins can resume their proper work as image bearers. To say, “Jesus died for your sins” ought to lead at once to “so you can freely pick up your role as a truly human being and discover your particular vocation within God’s purposes for this world.”
Sins have been forgiven; the dark powers that stand behind all enslaving political authorities have been defeated; God’s people are rescued from their long, sad sojourn under the rule of the pagans.
The resurrection of Jesus means the launching of the new creation. The new creation has already happened; that is the good news about the past. The new creation will happen completely; that is the good news about the future. That is the larger hope, within which all Christian thinking about the future ought to be framed.
The good news, in other words, is not all about me. It’s all about God and God’s creation – God’s new creation, which results from the covenant renewal that has been affected through the coronation of Jesus as Messiah and the world’s rightful lord.
When we say, “Jesus died for our sins” within a message about how to escape this nasty old world and go to heaven, it means one thing. When we say, “Jesus died for our sins” within a message about God the creator rescuing his creation from corruption, decay, and death, and rescuing us to be part of that, it means something significantly different.