N.T. Wright - The Mission of God in the Gospel of John

John frames his gospel with deliberate echoes of the creation story in Genesis, all the way from ‘in the beginning’ at the very start to the ‘new Eden’ themes in chapter 20.
In chapter 1 the focus is on Jesus as the ‘Word made Flesh’, uniquely revealing the glory of God to the world, but in chapter 20 the focus is on the disciples, who are equipped with the Spirit to be, for the world, what Jesus was for Israel (‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’).
Picking up from the earlier hints about the Spirit in chapters 7 and 14-16, we glimpse the task of the Church in terms of the rivers of living water (ch. 7) and the holding of the world to account (ch 16). John 20 thus shows how Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and the gift of his Spirit, launch God’s mission of new creation.
N. T. Wright is a New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian, author, and former Bishop of Durham. He is co-founder of N. T. Wright Online and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University.
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[@michaelbrickley2443]

All these lectures are so timely and educational. Thank you, Mark Lanier, for your devotion.

[@elanamo]

I love the introduction to N.T. Wright and the references to AI's introduction to N.T. Wright on John's Gospel. And then, beautifully, N..T. Wright then entertains us and teaches with wonderful wisdom and clarity.

[@tinolouw]

NT Wright - the GOAT

[@juegangermanface7498]

really marvelous...the end is the best...greetings from vienna,austria

[@billpattison]

I whole heartedly agree. The ending was outstanding!

[@danielalvarez2279]

Awesome introduction!!a 😂😂😂

[@dagwould]

A. The six stages of any building's construction, after design has been completed, of course: 1-site preparation and excavation (including site utility mains) 2-footings 3-superstructure 4-enclosure 5-engineering services installation 6-fitout and finishing (so it can be used by those in God's image) No surprises here. Like the Genesis creation account, a logical dependency progression. Note, depending on the structural and enclosure systems, stages 3 and 4 can overlap as can 4 and 5 and 5 and 6. B. On Creation Tom is well known for his line that theology has 'platonized' its eschatology, much to the detriment of the gospel, in my view; but in this otherwise stimulating lecture, he does this very thing to the creation. He platonizes it. He removes it from history in its own terms and places it in some 'other' idealist construction. What Schaeffer would call an 'upper storey' of disconnection with not only history, but our 'life-world'. To do this he has to idealize, indeed I would go as far to say 'paganize' the creation account. He can only do this by placing the account in a Waltonian almost Gnostic dream-world of 'temple theology'. Yet, pagan accounts of creation do the very same thing; they remove their account from real space and time usually through extremely long ages, if not eternal 'durations' that use time to prevent any real connection between God and man-in-his-image. And on 'image' I think Tom goes too far into Walton's cul-de-sac. The text tells us: "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness". Likeness is the word Tom skips; so likeness means, inter alia, I suggest, in communicable range and for communion. The text is also determined to both define and sequence days in day terms. Defined as 'evening and morning' type days, and run in succession, after the similar patterns in Numbers 7 and 29 where the cadence of days is even more obviously placed in history. History, where God really reveals and identifies himself in word and action, because it is only in history that we speak and act; ultimately, in fellowship with him. And the very point of the Genesis account is to place the creation in history. Not like the pagan stories, which de-historicize and dislocate the accounts to render them inaccessible, along with their inaccessible gods. The days of creation show God active and present in our time and space, collocated with us, both ontologically and diachronically: the first act of communion; that he is with us in the denominating tempo of history: days. He creates in words of rational causality (strikingly picked up and incarnate in John 1. cf Col 1:16, 17) in a dependency sequence; of course from a naive earth-observer point of view. Nevertheless including a number of physical claims that provide an existentially defining frame of reference for our experience of the creation and its creator. Now, to say this is not 'science' is a mere distraction and anachronistically so, 'modern science' being a recent practice stimulated by the very concrete historical nature of Genesis 1, as Harrison demonstrates. And history is the point. God's revelation is entirely in the history which traces our congress with God through the time and in the place he created for that very congress. It gives the real-history context for everything that Tom touches on from Jacob's ladder through the work of the prophets to the Incarnation. It then makes the new creation a meaningful reprise of the creation: both in history, and with real people in the domain of God's creation. Starting with 'heaven and earth' come together in God's loving acts of creating, disrupted in Genesis 3:8, to 'heaven and earth' once more together in the new creation. Tom's derogation of the creation account removes so much wonderful and exciting drama from the historical-realist revelation of the Bible. By this, Christian faith becomes a lesser thing, a 'religion' amongst other gropings for a resolution of the dilemma of man, rather than the startling acts of the God who lives and speaks and calls us to live and speak with him in eternal communion.

[@dannewcomb7631]

Is Francis Collins even a believer? I don't think so. I read his book The Language of God. He's a deist at best.

[@fcastellanos57]

I like N. T Wright. Knowing he has spent many hours in the book of John, I am sure he is familiar with John 20:30-31 where the evangelist lays out why he wrote his gospel, which is to show that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. This passage should tell us that John was not proving that Jesus was God, even though he seems to say that in the beginning of it by saying “the word was God… etc”, or just a couple of verses prior to 30 where John tells us that Thomas calls Jesus “my lord and my God”. So, why do we think that Jesus is the Most high? We have other gospels for instance Matthew 16:16 where Jesus asks Peter “ Who do you think that I am” and his answer” you are the Christ, the son of the Living God”. We can see how Jesus responded by saying that my Father has revealed this to you. So why do we make Jesus some sort of God when Jesus himself does not say so? By giving Jesus divinity, we are taking away his humanity. Luke 1:26-35 tells us also, how Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, and because of this, Jesus is called the son of God. Jesus was a fertilized egg just like we were at his conception, and he developed in Mary who bore him. The Most High, by his Spirit came in union with Jesus and became spiritually one with him. Not that the Father became Jesus or that Jesus was God but that the Father manifested Himself in Jesus by the union with the spirit of Jesus. The word of God, which is the mind of God made active, spoke the world in Genesis as we can read when it says “ and God said”, not that the word became light, or his creation, but by His power He brought everything to existence with His speech. By the same token, in John 1:14, the word became flesh does not mean that the speech of the Most high became a human, but that the speech of the Most high created a human in the womb of Mary. There is no spiritual component in the conception of a human, there is only genetic material. There was no human Father with Jesus so the Most high added the male part to fertilize the egg, after all the Most high is the creator in Genesis. In summary, Jesus is a human and not devine.

[@simonskinner1450]

Your conclusion is right not Wright.

[@heidibrown997]

So sorry for you. Jesus was either God or a lunatic. God is Triune . Fully God ,fully Sprite and fully God as the Son. Blessings, it does take Revelations from God. Praying.

[@fcastellanos57]

@@heidibrown997 Don’t be sorry about me. Jesus could have been a human also, so he either was a human, a lunatic, or God, I say Jesus was a human. God is not Triune, find this in your Bible if you want, you do not find it. I suggest you read John 20:30-31 and see if John says Jesus is God, or you can go to Matthew 16:16 and see if Jesus agrees with Peter when he says that “ you are the Christ, the son of the Living God”, or you may want to Mark 12:29-31 “29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[b] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] There is no commandment greater than these.” John 20:17 tells us that Jesus has a God and this is his Father also. Study history, the dogma of the Trinity was invented around the year 381, there was no concept of Jesus being God with Jesus’s apostles, much less the Trinity.

[@faithfulservantofchrist9876]

Why are you writing and commenting the way you are? It seems like you're trying to convince people that Jesus is not God. Which is strange because if that's true, people would come to that conclusion on their own. Taking verses that speak of Him being human or the Messiah doesn't prove He's not God. We take the Bible as a whole; you're just selecting proof texts. What you are doing is rationalizing; you are looking for logical reasons to confirm your emotional biases. John 20:30-31 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Look at the verse you picked it doesn't help you it actually hurts your case. Hes the Christ, the Son of God which is a divine title. Hes the begotten one of a kind Son of God not like we are the adopted childern of God. But most importantly is you believe in him you may have life in HIS NAME. Its in Him that we have eternal life. Because God is the only Savior and shares his glory with no one. If Christ was just human he couldn't die for the sins of the world. Human life is only worth another human life. Christ could die for the sins of another but not the whole. What makes his death so significant is that hes the infant God of the universe and he's worth all the sins of all people of all time. People who deny Christ is God have spiritual problems. I do not believe you are saved, you dont have the Holy Spirit as far as I can see. So for you you don't see Christ the way he really is because you have a hard heart and refuse the Holy Spirit. I bet you have bad doctrine across the board. You probably think people need works to be saved also.

[@simonskinner1450]

@@faithfulservantofchrist9876 For a start proving Jesus is the Messiah raised from his people by his Father as Deuteronomy 18:18 makes him a man. His Father is God with a human mother, so he does inherit as first born in two realms. His blood a better sacrifice not for atonement, but for changing the covenant, wherein all judgement has passed to him from his Father. I have a Ytube video series called 'Myths in so-called Christianity' to bring the truth of the NT. Jesus has to have the authority to forgive sins to redeem those from their past at baptism, but he must be a kinsman of the Jews, he can be God in any way but not the Creator.

[@drmanojkumarkhatore4476]

It seems like the whole point of theological education in India is to keep us -Christ-followers from North Indian Hindu background- in the hunt of the good things that they will grant freely to the less deserving, less industrious South Indian Christian background (preferably, children of big pastors) for free. The SI get all the cherished study & job opportunities. *Nepotism & favouritism prevails everywhere.* And, if we question their injustice, we are "*complainers.*" What is more, God hates the people who complain (even if their complaint is genuine). In essence, God loves only South Indian Christians and makes them the future professors of the New/Old Testament. We have Zero value.

[@onceamusician5408]

Because Wright has rejected the concept of imputed righteousness by refuting a straw man of it- namely that it is some kind of infusion of a reified essence of righteousness ( which it is NOT) in order to reject it outright; and because such errors have logical consequences Wright does NOT know what the mission of God is he is yet another intellectual who has submitted the scripture to his great intellect rather than the converse. as God is merciful to deal with intellectual pride - i speak of my own - God will forgive Wright if he avails himself of the personal one on one relationship with Christ which His cross purchased. But i doubt this will ever happen. This man has nothing to say to me. having gutted Paul he has gutted the gospel

[@simonskinner1450]

Wrong concept Tom. John's gospel is about witness as John 20:31 "believe that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah)". Jesus is explained as "the Godhead bodily" as Col 2:9, and John's gospel introduces us to Jesus, the Father and the Spirit. Jesus a man raised from his people by his Father to impersonate his Father in the flesh, to suit Deuteronomy 18:18. Gods intention is that we obey his commandments and have eternal life, and only those of John 3:5 can be raised as John 3:13. My latest Ytube video 'Is Christianity the truth of the NT? No. #31 Myths in so-called Christianity', for the truth of the NT.

[@abrahamphilip6439]

God has a mission ? He who sees the rnd from the beginning has a Will no doubt, to the Lords prayer, not mission ,

[@gulanhem9495]

Why God cannot have a mission? He has the mission to improve human life and increase justice.