Quotes About Redemption

The first thing that is missing from the usual line of thought, then, is any attempt to show how Paul deals not just with "sin" itself, but with the idolatry that lies behind it and the ensuing loss of "glory.

God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might himself alone rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. This

Resurrection, we must never cease to remind ourselves, did not mean going to heaven or escaping death or having a glorious and noble postmortem existence but rather coming to bodily life again after bodily death.

that God's call of Abraham and his family was designed to put right what was wrong with the world.

The cross stands at the heart of John's kingdom theology, which in this stunning passage is revealed as the heart of John's redemption theology, the vision of the love of God revealed in saving action in the death of his Son, the Lamb, the Messiah.

The hope of Israel, expressed variously in the Torah, Prophets, and Psalms, was not for a rescue operation that would snatch Israel (or humans or the faithful) from the world, but for a rescue operation that would be for the world, an operation through which redeemed humans would play once more the role for which they were designed.

But for him the incarnate Son is also Israel's Messiah.

The living God comes into his world in the person of Israel's representative, to do for Israel and the world what they could not do for themselves, to be the place of meeting between the Creator and his human creatures.

so that the blessing of Abraham could flow through to the nations in King Jesus.

The good news is bigger, better, fuller than you ever imagined.

The resurrection of Jesus is the launching of God's new world.

You cannot rescue someone from the scars of an abusive upbringing by replaying the same narrative on a cosmic scale and mouthing the word "love" as you do so.

First, Jesus was going to take us to be with him in heaven. There are different ways people have imagined this happening, but the message is still the same. Somehow, the good news in the past (what Jesus did two thousand years ago) points forward to one particular piece of good news about the future (he will take us to heaven). This completes the new relationship with God that is for many the sole focus of the good news. And this is seriously misleading.

I did mind and it did matter, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to forgive at all

Resurrection, by contrast, has always gone with a strong view of God's justice and of God as the good creator.

Israel's hopes were not for the demise of the space-time universe, but for the earth to be full of God's glory. It

God creates "that which is not God" out of generous love in order that he may then, in the end, fill it, flood it, drench it, with his love and his glory.

we should be in no doubt that, for the gospel writers themselves, there was never a kingdom message without a cross

God's faithfulness to the covenant with Israel, even granted the large-scale failure of Israel as a whole, will result in the rescue of the whole sinful world.

For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel

Jesus and his first followers, as Second Temple Jews, believed as well in an eschatology of new creation. This did not involve the abolition of the present world and its replacement with a totally different on. Nor did it imply the steady evolution-from-within of the Stoics, let alone the escapist 'eschatology' of the heading-for-heaven Platonists. They believed in the redemptive transformation of the present world into a new one.

Second, the means by which this goal is attained is precisely the "forgiveness of sins." If, as Paul implies in 2:15, the objection of Jews (or Jewish Messiah believers) to the inclusion of Gentiles is that they are "Gentile sinners," then this objection is overturned precisely because the Messiah "gave himself for our sins.

Romans 6–8. These three chapters, in fact, are the full exposition of what Paul meant in Romans 3:24 when he described the unveiling of God's saving purpose as "the redemption which is found in the Messiah, Jesus.

Both these elements, sin and death, need to be dealt with on the cross.