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THE GOSPEL

ACCORDING TO

Acts
About The Author

N.T. WRIGHT
N.T. Wright is a prolific author for both academic and popular readers.
He isthe author of Simply Jesus, Surprised by Hope, The Day the Revolution
Began, Jesus and the Victory of God, and Paul and the Faithfulness of God.
He is also the author of the For Everyone Series of New Testament
Commentaries.

He currently serves as Research Professor of New Testament and Early


Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Previously
Wright served as Bishop of Durham, Canon Theologian of Westminster
Abbey, and Dean of Lichfield Cathedral. For twenty years he served as
Professor of New Testament Studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford
Universities.

He writes often for newspapers in England, including the Times, the


Independent, and the Guardian. He has been interviewed numerous
times by radio and television broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic,
including ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, FOX, and NPR. N.T. Wright Online
provides courses developed by Professor N.T. Wright of St. Andrews
University, Scotland, such as Simply Jesus and Paul and His Letter to the
Ephesians.

You can sign up for a free course at ntwrightonline.org/philemon.

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The Gospel According
to Acts

The Acts of the Apostles is one of the longest books in the New Testament,
but it's also something of a page turner! Luke was a skilled narrator; if you sit
down and read the book straight through, you'll find there really isn't a dull
page in the whole thing.

It covers quite a long time, telling the story from Jesus's resurrection right
through to when Paul arrives in Rome, which is probably A.D. 60: a 30-year
span compressed into one book.

I suspect that the reason for the books length is that in the first century
that's more or less what you can get on a scroll.

What Luke Doesnt Tell Us

There are many things, of course, that Luke doesn't tell us because this isn't
actually Early Church History. There are lots of other things we'd love to
know. For instance:

Where did Peter go after he disappeared in Chapter 12?


What was James doing all that time when he was the big man in Jerusalem?
What about all the expansion of the church to the south and to the east?

Instead, Luke concentrates on Paul, and as we go along, we will see there is


good reason for that.

A Sequel for Theophilus

Luke begins Acts just as he began his Gospel because this book is the sequel.
Both are addressed to someone called Theophilus.

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Dear Theophilus, he says. The previous book I wrote had to do with
everything Jesus began to do and teach.

We don't actually know who Theophilus was. It may be that, actually, it is a


made up name meaning one who is a lover of God. That would mean Luke
is writing for anyone who loves God and wants to know what God has done
in Jesus and what God is continuing to do in Jesusand that's what the next
line says.

I wrote, he says in the Gospel about everything Jesus began to do and


teach. The implication being: Jesus hasn't stopped doing and teaching.
Rather through his Holy Spirit, Jesus is still active and going on doing what he
came to do.

The Kingdom of God

It's pretty clear that what Luke is talking about throughout this book, and
what he was talking about for much of the Gospel of Luke, is the kingdom of
God. What does the kingdom of God look like? What does it mean for God to
become king? What does it mean for God to take charge?

Today people often say 'Well, if God really was in charge, if God really did do
something dramatic in and through Jesus, then surely God wouldn't have
just allowed the world to go to rack and ruin the way it seems to still be
doing all the time!.

But Jesus said again and again, in the Sermon on the Mount and in his
parables, This is what the kingdom of God is like. It's quite different from
what you've imagined'.

Likewise, Luke intends to say, Actually, this is what it looks like when God
takes charge. Jesus gives instructions to his chosen apostles. He equips them
by his Spirit. This is what it looks like when Jesus himself is now the Lord of
the world.

It's very surprising. Sometimes it's actually shocking. Because things don't
work out as they want it to. Things don't work out the way that we might
want them to. But, by the end of the book, the full sweep from Acts Chapter
1 to Acts Chapter 28, we find that Paul is in Rome announcing the kingdom
of God and the lordship of Jesus.

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A Strange New Phenomenon

Everybody in Luke's day knew Rome was the center of the great imperial
power. Paul was announcing that God is God, God is King, Jesus is Lord, right
under the very nose of Caesar himself.

Something has happened in A.D. 30 or 33 when Paul is converted. Nobody


outside of a small geographical area had heard of Jesus of Nazareth. By the
time Paul is in Rome people across the then-known world know who Jesus is.
At least they've heard what people are saying about him.Within another
couple of generations or so the Roman emperors had to do business with
the leaders of this movement of people called Christians.

What is this strange new phenomenon that has been unleashed upon our
unsuspecting world? Our unsuspecting empire?

Luke begins by introducing us once more to the risen Jesus. The beginning of
The Acts of the Apostles hooks onto the end of Luke's gospel. Jesus, he says,
showed himself to the disciples alive, after suffering, by many proofs. He
was seen by them for 40 days during which he spoke about God's kingdom.

It's pretty clear that what Luke is talking


about throughout this book, and what he was
talking about for much of the Gospel of Luke,
is the kingdom of God. What does the kingdom
of God look like? What does it mean for God to
become king? What does it mean for God to
take charge?

That sense of this being all about a fresh understanding of the Kingdom is
important throughout the book.

As they were having a meal together, he began telling them what the
kingdom would look like. He said 'I want you to stay here in Jerusalem to wait
for the Father's promise. He says they should remember how it was when
John baptized with water. But in a few days from now, you will be baptized
with theHoly Spirit.

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Just as at the end of Luke, just as at the end of John, there's a sense that if
the disciples are now to be for the world what Jesus had been for Israel, they
are going to need to be equipped with his Holy Spirit.

It isn't the case that Jesus is just going away and leaving them to figure it all
out themselves. They'll have a lot of figuring out to do. But they will have
God's own Spirit. This mysterious personal power. This new breath. This new
energy which they called the Spirit or the Holy Spirit is what will guide them
and direct them.

What Do Jesuss Resurrection and Ascension Mean?

What we see then in this first paragraph or so of Acts is the whole question
about Jesus being risen and the risen Christ being ascended. What, then,
does it mean that Jesus is Israel's messiah?

If we go back to the Old Testament we see in passages like Isaiah 9, Isaiah 11,
Isaiah 42, that the messiah, when he comes, will be the Lord of the whole
world.

Luke will later draw upon Psalm 2. In Psalm 72, when we see this picture of
Israel's true king, the ultimate seed of David, who is going to be the Lord of
the whole world, such that from sea to sea, from north to south, all over,
people are going to pay him homage.

Throughout the Old Testament period, though, that remained a grandiose


and seemingly impossible dream.

It happened briefly under Solomon, David's heir and successor. It was


Solomon who built the temple which is significant for the story we are going
to be telling. But it's never subsequently been realized. The Davidic kings had
died out at the time of the exile and different people in Jesus's day and
centuries before had wondered if and when God would ever fulfill these
promises to send a king, to send a messiah, to send somebody who would
actually be the Lord of the world in the way that He'd always promised.

There must have been many times where that promise seemed to be in the
balance, when they must have said maybe there's not ever going to be a
king. Maybe it's just a nice idea. A general metaphorical way of talking about
how God is going to put the whole world right. But, nevertheless, there were
many who clung onto their original hope.

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Jesus says, How foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all of the
prophets had said. Was it not necessary that the messiah would suffer these
things and enter his glory?. What we see in Acts is Jesus entering into his
glory. Because his glory, as in Psalm 8, is his rule as the messiah, as the truly
human one, as God incarnate over the whole world.

Again, it doesn't look like what we or they might have suspected but this is
the story that Luke is telling. So, Jesus goes on and responds to the disciples
question. They think, Well, Jesus has been crucified; that was not our game
plan. He's now been raised from the dead. That was a complete surprise as
well.

They are still trying to get their heads around what it all means. In verse 6
they say 'Master, is this the time you are going to restore the kingdom to
Israel?' You see what they're thinking. They are imagining on the basis of the
Psalms and the prophets.

'Okay. We're tracking with what the scriptures had said: that if a messiah
comes and does the extraordinary things Jesus did, it seems he should have
had to do this also.

Presumably that means that Israel is going to be, as Deuteronomy had said,
the top nation is the head and not the tail. The world leader. The one
through whom now God is going to bring his New World to birth. To bring
justice and peace to bear on the rest of creation. That's their dream and they
will be part of it. They are the 12 representing Israel.

But Jesus doesn't just come out and answer their questions. There's a
question about when these things will happen, he says. There's a question
about what exactly will happen.

People debate and argue as to whether in verses 7 and 8 Jesus is saying no


or yes. I have a good friend who would say that Jesus answer is actually, No
this is not the time; God is not restoring the kingdom. You have a job in the
meantime. Then God will restore the kingdom. That is an option that some
people take.

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The Agenda

But I think it's quite clear that actually in Verses 7 and 8, Jesus is saying We're
not talking about times; we haven't got a chronology mapped out. That's
something that God the Father has got all on His own authority. But what will
happen is that you will receive power when the Spirit comes upon you and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria and to the ends
of the earth.

That's the agenda. That is the agenda that we see then lived out through
Acts. In Judea, because in the early chapters of Acts are all focused on
Jerusalem itself and little province of Judea. But then in Acts 8, Philip goes off
to Samaria and the Samaritans who were so distrusted and sometimes
actually hated by the Jewish people, they hear the word of God and respond
to it!

Another King

Then, of course, through the mission of Paul particularly, but actually starting
with Peter, in Acts 10 and 11, the gospel goes out to the gentile world as well.

So by the end it has, in principle, reached to the ends of the earth. Because,
just as all roads led to Rome in the ancient world, so all roads led from
Rome. Once you had planted the gospel in one of those great cities, and
ultimately in Rome itself, the word was going to get out into the rest of the
world.

So I think what Luke is saying is that Jesus is saying, Yes but maybe not in the
way youd expect. It doesn't look like a naturalist or military takeover. Rather
it looks like the church bearing witness like ambassadors going out to foreign
countries to say, Not only do we have a new king, but actually he's your king
as well. That's how it works, again and again, in Acts, announcing Jesus as
the world's true lord.

This is why, for instance, in Acts 17, when Paul and Silas are in Thessalonica,
the crowds hear what they're saying: there's another king, namely, Jesus.
That is the message of Acts. That there is another king and that it is Jesus.
And this opening chapter of Acts is all about how his rule is being launched
on earth as in heaven. That's what it's all about.

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When we look at the Book of Acts, it comes basically in two halves. It divides
at the end of Chapter 12. Up to the end of Chapter 12, we are basically still in
the Middle East in the world of the Jews and their immediate neighbors,
including the Samaritans, including some of the other territories that bump
up against them. Yes, there is a hint, when Peter goes to Cornelius in Acts 10
and 11, that this is a sign that the gospel is going out to the Gentiles. And at
the end of Chapter 11 there's a sign that now in Syria, in the great city of
Antioch, that there's now a community that goes by the name Christianoi,
Christians for the first time.

Basically, Acts 1-12 is the proclamation of Jesus as the king of the Jews under
the nose of the present Jewish authorities, particularly of the Herods, just as
in the gospels. There always seems to be a Herod in the background looking
over the shoulder and saying What's going on here? I'm the king of the Jews
thank you very much. But at the end of Acts 12, the Herod at the time, Herod
Antipas I, comes to a bad end.

So then we move to the second half of the book in Chapters 13-28, it is all
about the gospel going out to the gentile world, into Caesar's world, into the
world with a very different lord. Lord is kyrios in Greek, so this is the land of
Kyrios Kyser, Lord Caesar.The gospel goes out there, though it has a hard
time getting toRome.Paul finally gets there because he is imprisoned, and
appeals to Caesar to hear his case.

When he gets there, Luke says he is able then, even though he is under
house arrest, to announce God as king and Jesus as Lord openly and without
interference, with nobody stopping him and telling him, No you can't say
that here. That, for Luke, is the climax of the book. That he is announcing
these things with all boldness. That's one of thekey terms in Acts. The
boldness which enables people to talk about Jesus in the face (sometimes
literally) of rulers and authorities or whoever they may be. They're not shy;
they're not afraid, because they believe that Jesus is the world's true Lord. So
Luke says they do this and Paul does it with all boldness and with no one
stopping him.

You might have thought well there would be plenty of people in Rome who
want to say, For goodness sake, shut up that person because he is a
nuisance, but they don't. As far as Luke is concerned, it's been a huge
journey to get there but the gospel has gotten to the end of the earth. So we

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see then in this first short section of Acts 1:1-8, that this is how the kingdom
is launched. Not just in Jesus himself but, granted his death on the cross, his
resurrection. This is now the commissioning of the disciples to take the news
of this kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Spaceman Jesus?

We now come to verses 9-11 of Acts Chapter 1, one of the most difficult
passages for the average modern reader, which is the ascension of Jesus.

So often we have looked at that biblical text and have been puzzled. Just
what are we supposed to think? Did Jesus really do a vertical take-off like a
spaceman? I know churches where there is a great east window with a
picture of the ascension of Jesus going up and all you can see is a cloud with
two feet sticking down and the disciples staring up as though to say, What
on earth is going on (of course, it isn't on earth by then, but still)?

People have really gotten hung up on that. They thought, are we supposed
to believe that heaven, from their point of view, is a place within our solar
system a few miles up above our present earth and what would that say
about, for instance, people in other parts of the world?

Naivet? Or Something Else?

But actually, first century Jews weren't nearly as naive as we've often
imagined. They didn't think of heaven as a location within our space, time,
matter, or universe. They thought of it as a different dimension (to use a
more modern metaphor), or like a different mode of being, which intersects
with our mode of being. Again, this is another way of putting a label on
something that we don't have good language for.

But they were quite happy talking about up and down without meaning that
God lived a long way upstairs and that we lived downstairs and maybe there
would be other creatures down below as well. They used that language just
like they use the language the prophets do of the sun and the moon being
darkened and the stars falling from heaven when what they are talking
about is a major socio-political catastrophe like the fall of Babylon in Isaiah
13.

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Several other biblical passages work in that way. So, we have to be careful in
imagining that oh, they seemed to think that this was a vertical takeoff, but
of course, we can't really believe that. I think the answer to that supposition
is no. This is standard first century language for heaven and earth, that
Jesus goes from them into the heavenly dimension.

Behind the Curtain

It's very interesting that throughout the New Testament, when the different
writers talk about Jesus coming back again, sometimes they talk about His
return but sometimes they talk about His appearing. First in Colossians 3
and then in 1 John 3 we are told that when He appears, it's not then that He's
gone a long way awayit's that He's in a different dimension. It's as though
He's behind an invisible curtain and one day the curtain will be removed and
we will discover that He'd been there all along.

This language of heaven and earth, though it's confusing, is very important
for us to get our heads around. Particularly because what's going on in the
story of the Ascension is, of course, that the human Jesus with His risen
physical body, physical and, perhaps, even more than physical because it
now can't be hurt, it can't get sick, it can't die again; it's a more robust thing,
not less. This body is now in God's space, God's dimension, God's heavenly
presence. But for us, with centuries of philosophical wandering all over the
map, this is very difficult to get our heads around.

Blame Platonism

I was once debating with my old friend, the late Marcus Borg, who said the
whole point of the letter to the Hebrews and the Book of Acts is that Jesus,
who is crucified and raised from the dead, is now in heaven. Marcus would
say to me 'Tom, I just can't imagine that.' I used to say, Marc, you need to
work on your imagination, because the problem is that our imagination has
been infected by Platonism particularly.

Around Paul's day and a little bit later, there were one or two philosophers in
the world that we loosely call Middle Platonism, to distinguish from Plato
himself, a few hundred years earlier and the Neoplatonists from a few
hundred years later. It's a loose label but it meansgreat philosophers like
Philo and Plutarch, one a Jew then and the other a Gentile, in the first
century.

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For them, the worlds that we have and all that there is, was at least two-fold.
There was a heavenly world and there was an earthly world. But for them,
heaven and earth were not compatible. The problem was that we were
marooned on earth like voyagers stuck on a desert island and we longed to
get back to our real home, which was in heaven. Of course, that's what a lot
of Christians think the New Testament is about. But it isn't. That's the view of
Plutarch, one of those Middle Platonists. That we are on earth at the
moment but we want to leave earth and go to heaven instead and instead of
having a body we just want to have a soul because that's what heaven needs.

We are on earth at the moment but we want to


leave earth and go to heaven instead and
instead of having a body we just want to have
a soul because that's what heaven needs.

One Single Creation

As far as the Jewish world is concerned, God made one single creation:
Heaven and Earth. A single, bifurcated reality with heaven and earth as the
twin halves of God's good creation. It isn't that earth is the shabby bit and
heaven is the nice bit. Heaven and earth are both good. God saw all that he
had made and it was very good. We can get rid of the idea that Jesus
wouldn't have wanted his body in that heavenly dimension because now
heaven and earth are joined together in a new way in and through Jesus
himself.

The Jews have various ways of conceiving this, and indeed, in the centuries
before the times of Jesus, there was an entire literary genre which we may
suppose goes with an entire set of spiritual possibilities or practices which
were to do with finding a way of glimpsing or even having a revelation of
things that were real in heaven and that we wanted to become real on earth.

We loosely call this literary genre apocalyptic because that word means
revelation. An Apocalyptic event happens when something is a present
secret in the heavenly dimension is unveiled to the surprised and, perhaps,
alarmed watchers still within the earthly dimension. I think that was often a
literary genre that was used because people were aware in the long years of
extended exile to the time in Babylon, though they have rebuilt the temple,
and the temple, as we'll see later on, was the place where heaven and earth
were supposed to come together.

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Like a Son of Man

Though they've rebuilt the the temple, there was a sense that the job hadn't
been finished. That the living glorious divine presence hadn't actually come
back in power and glory as had been promised by Isaiah and Ezekiel in other
places, which we'll look at later. So various seers and prophets and devout
persons in their praying and their studying of scripture were hoping that
maybe they would have some kind of revelation of heaven and earth coming
together at last.

One of the most famous books in that genre is the book of Daniel in the Old
Testament. We're not sure when Daniel was finally edited, probably in the
first half of the second century B.C., though many of the stories undoubtedly
go back a long way behind that. But it was written at that time of great crisis
and turmoil for the people of God, with political disasters happening and
then God doing surprising rescue operations.

In Daniel Chapter 7 there is this extraordinary vision of one like a son of


man, a human figure, who seems to be oppressed and being attacked. But
then, after the monsters have come up out of the sea and done their worst,
(that's a symbol for the Pagan nations all around the people of God), after
that, there's one like the son of man coming on the clouds and is presented
before the Ancient of Days, before God the creator himself, and is actually
seated on a throne right beside God himself. This is a scary thought. Are
there now two Gods? No, unfailingly not.

This is written by Jewish monotheists who, within their monotheism, see that
actually from the beginning, from the heaven and earth chapter, the Genesis
Chapter 1, there is a role as humans, which as Psalm 8 puts it, is to be
crowned with glory and honor and to have all things put into subjection
under their feet. Somehow that line from Genesis 1 and the role of humans
as being in God's image, Gods reflectors if you like, that coming through
Psalm 8 what is man that you're mindful of him, the son of man that you
take thought for him, you've made him a little lower than the angels to
crown him with glory and honor, putting all things under his feet'.

This then comes through Daniel 7 and now to our surprise, and perhaps
alarm, it turns out to be real. Jesus himself is the one like the son of a man
who, having suffered at the hands of the beast, and particularly the last

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great beast, Rome itself, Jesus is now exalted. Jesus is now on the throne.
This means of course that this really is the coming of the kingdom of God.
Jesus is going to be enthroned and that from now on all the forces of
darkness, all the monsters that have come up out of the sea, are going to
eventually be put in their place.

Within this whole apocalyptic tradition, we look back and see that Luke is
here tracking with what he and others had said in the gospel narratives.
Because when Jesus is on trial before the high priest the day before he is
finally crucified in Luke 22:66, the high priest asks him if he is indeed God's
messiah. Jesus says, Yes, and from now on you will see the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of power. Matthew 26:64 says the same thing. From
now on this is how it's going to be. Some people have misread that passage
and you can misread Mark 14 in that way as well. But I think the right way to
read it is not one day you'll look out the window and see the Son of man
coming down to earth. Rather, from now on, you are going to see what it
means.

The son of man has come on the clouds and has been seated at the right
hand of God himself. Everything is going to be different as a result of this.
The beasts are going to be overthrown and the kingdom of God is being
launched.

You can tell that this is what's in the author's mind because of the use of
Psalm 110, as well asthose passages in the Gospels and, from time to time,
throughout Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament, notably in the Letter
to the Hebrews, which referenceThe Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right
hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

This explanation of this'one like the son of man' is the fulfillment of that
great Psalm prophecy: one of the most quoted verses from the Old
Testament in the whole of the New Testament. It's a statement that now
already something has happened, as a result of which the world is a different
place.

The Throne and the Cross

Jesus is now enthroned. How has that happened? Something to do with what
he did on the cross. In the early chapters of Acts we'll see the little hints on
how they're trying to navigate what it meant that Jesus died on the cross.

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How does that mean that the kingdom of God can now be launched in a new
way?

It seems to have something to do regarding Daniel 7, to do with the fact that


through his death the powers have been put in their place. They have been
held to account. They have been, in principle, condemned, even though they
will still rage and make a lot of noise and actually make life, as we'll see, very
difficult for Jesus's followers. There's another strand as well, which I think any
first century reader of Acts would actually pick up reading Acts 1:9-11.
Because many, many people, right across the Roman Empire, knew what
happened when a Roman Emperor died. Actually, when Julius Caesar died, he
wasn't even emperor at that stage, but he was trying to become some kind of
supreme leader.

In 44 B.C. when he was assassinated, at his funeral, some clever person


released an eagle so that as when Caesar was being burned on his funeral
pyre, an eagle flew up into the sky and people said, There it is; there's his soul
being taken up to heaven. So, who knows who organized and orchestrated
that. But from then on, the senate voted that Julius Caesar was now divine.
He had gone up to heaven. He was now a god and therefore conveniently his
adopted son Augustus as he later became known, Octavian as he then was,
could be styled 'Son of God' or 'Son of the deified one. It's a very convenient
thing if you're an emperor ruling a mighty empire. Actions become divine
ones. Have your name on the coins and inscribe Son of God. Because that
means everyone is going to want to obey you. Otherwise bad things may
happen to them right there.

Acts happens under the shadow of imperial ideology which was actually the
fastest growing religion in Paul's world. An ideology which said Caesar is Lord.
He is the son of the deified one. So the Roman Empire now has the status of
divinity to back it.

Acts is saying, No, Jesus is Lord. Here's the difference: With Caesar,
supposedly his soul has gone to heaven, so he's now joined the pantheon;
he's joined Jupiter and all the rest, whatever that meant to people on the
street, it certainly meant you better do what you're told and pay your taxes or
it will be worse for you, etc., but Caesar was not coming back. Oh, I know that
later there was a rumor of Nero coming back again, but that was just
something that was rumbling along in the 70s after Nero's death as a way of
saying maybe the old emperor will come back one day. But nobody actually
thought that somebody like Augustus or any emperor was going to come
back in the same way that they had seen him go.
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Citizens of Heaven

But what we have here is, as Jesus is lifted out of sight, two men appear
dressed in white. Why are you standing here staring into heaven? This Jesus,
who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way
that you saw him go. So, whatever it was that they saw, there will be a fresh
appearing. Here again people make a classic mistake. They think well, Jesus
will come back and snatch us away so that we can go back to heaven with
him. That's not what it means at all.

At the end of Philippians Chapter 3, Paul says very clearly, We are citizens of
heaven. Yes, but from there we are waiting for the King, the Lord Jesus, the
messiah, who will change our mortal bodies to be like his glorious body by
the power which enables him to subject all things to himself. In other words,
he is going to come back in order to sort out this world once and for all. We
are not, in other words, looking to escape this world and go to heaven; we
are part of the new project in which heaven and earth have been brought
together in and through the person of Jesus himself, looking for the time
when Jesus will return to make heaven and earth one at last. That has been
the purpose, it seems, from the beginning. It is for that purpose that Jesus
then commissions his disciples to go out as heralds of the king, to be
witnesses to this new heaven and earth reality which has come to birth as
we'll see in the second chapter.

This is going to happen in quite almost literally a breathtaking way when the
spirit comes upon them. But already what we see in Acts Chapter 1 is heaven
and earth joined together in Jesus. If we know our business, we should be
saying this is because, in this human being who is somehow the living
embodiment of Israel's God, the promise of Genesis 1 has already been
fulfilled. There is New Creation. He is the beginning of it and we are invited to
join in.
Prof. N.T. Wright, Lectures presented 22 May 2017, St. Andrews, Scotland

There is New Creation. Jesus is the beginning


of it and we are invited to join in.

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