Quotes from Richard B. Hays

The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God's redemptive purposes in the world.

The value of our exegesis and hermeneutics will be tested by their capacity to produce persons and communities whose character is commensurate with Jesus Christ and thereby pleasing to God.22

When the identity of the community is understood in these terms, participation in any form of ethnic division or hatred becomes unthinkable, and ethnic division within the church becomes nothing other than a denial of the truth of the gospel. 'That is why racism is a heresy. One of the church's most urgent pragmatic tasks in the 1990s is to form communities that seek reconciliation across ethnic and racial lines.

this means—in the Apocalypse just as in the prophetic visions upon which it draws (Isa. 65:17–25, 66:22)—that God will have redeemed and transformed the creation, not abolished it.

The radical move that Paul makes is to proclaim that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, stand equally condemned under the just judgment of a righteous God.

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so [literally "let him/her separate"]; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called us.37 (7:15) This declaration implies a crucial claim: participation in the community of faith is the most fundamental commitment, more basic than marriage. The line that divides the new creation from the old can run right through a marriage.