Bishop Tom Wright is a firm and frequent critic (in Surprised by hope and other writings) of the idea that ‘salvation’ equates to ‘going to heaven when you die’.
What, then should we understand to be the meaning of ‘heaven’ in Scripture? Several answers may be given to this question:-
1. ‘Heaven’ can mean ‘sky’, or what we would understand as the rest of the cosmos apart from the earth, Gen 1:1.
2. ‘Heaven’ can mean the abode of God and of those closely associated with God. …
In 1 Corinthians 15:58 Paul writes,
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Tom Wright (Surprised by Hope, SPCK) places considerable emphasis on this verse, coming as it does after Paul’s great affirmation of physical resurrection. Although I do not think that Wright offers a novel interpretation of this verse, I do think that he draws out its implications more clearly and helpfully than most:-
…For Paul, the bodily resurrection does not leave us saying “so that’s all right; we shall go, at the last, to join Jesus in a non-bodily, Platonic heaven”…Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess.
I’m probably not the only preacher who sometimes finds it difficult to know how to end a sermon.
Bryan Chapell has some helpful hints. Here’s a summary.
The modern hearer tends not to appreciate high literature. And, in any case, why give the final word to someone else?
‘Unless the poem says precisely what you intend, says it better than you could, and touches a deeper chord than you can reach, frame your own final words.’…
Most of us (writes Tom Wright in Surprised by hope, 206-213) take ‘salvation’ to mean ‘going to heaven when you die’; implying that this present body and this present world will be left behind and the ‘soul’ will fly off to some disembodied existence.
But this view scarcely counts as ‘rescue from death’. Rather, it colludes with death by denying that God’s good creation really is good, and that he intends ‘to reaffirm that goodness in a wonderful act of new creation at the last’.…
Some people ask (says Tom Wright in his Surprised by Hope, 201-206), ‘even if Jesus was raised from the dead, what difference does it make?’ Indeed, even Easter hymns can give an inadequate answer by obscuring the fact that Jesus’ resurrection guarantees something more than life in some kind of future ‘heaven’.
…But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom.
‘There is no one way to prepare sermons’, writes John Stott in I believe in preaching. ‘Every preacher has to work out his own method, which suits his temperament and situation.’ Nevetheless, there are skills that can be learned and habits that can be acquired. The following outline of the relevant chapter (6) in Stott’s book is taken largely from Xenos.
Of course, there must be a text, ‘for we are not speculators, but expositors’. …
I’m afraid this is going to be an insufferably sniffy and snobbish post.
A list has recently been compiled of the most played classical music over the past 75 years.
The top ten is
The list was compiled for BBC Radio 2 based on music played on TV, radio, online streaming and public places such as shops.…
Expository preaching must remain faithful to the text of Scripture. There are two ways, says John Stott, in which the expositor might depart from his text: forgetfulness and disloyalty.
G. Campbell Morgan, himself a fine expositor, noted of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College Oxford that he
declared that it was his habit to write his sermons, and then choose a text as a peg on which to hang them. I am quite free to say…that the study of his sermons will reveal the accuracy of his statement, and show the peril of the method.…
We do not subscribe to the myth of progress – the idea, popular in earlier evolutionary thinking, that the world will get better and better. Nor do we believe, with Plato, that we are souls in transit, passing through this illusory world on our way to to something beyond space, time and matter.
The shape of things to come is determined, in biblical thinking, by the threefold story of creation, rebellion, and redemption. We can tell the story of Jesus as the moment all creation has been waiting for:-
Bryan Chapell puts it well:-
Application may be attitudinal as well as behavioral. In fact, the frequent mark of immaturity among preachers is too much (or too early) an emphasis on behavior. Mature preachers do not ignore behavior, but they carefully build an attitudinal foundation for whatever actions they say God requires. This is more than a rhetorical tactic. Its source is the biblical insight that out of the heart come the issues of life (Prov.…
