I recently read N.T. Wright’s book, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. His driving force for this book is a response to a book published in 2007 by Dr. John Piper called, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, which probes the foundations of Wright’s understanding of Paul and if this is a helpful or harmful understanding.
I personally find Wright’s view of The New Perspective on Paul very exciting. I love how he puts the Scriptures, Paul, and Jesus in their historical context. He takes that same approach with this book and makes the doctrine of justification very clear and historical. I’m personally not helped by the esoteric explanations of justification that others have given. What I loved most about this book, though, is the overarching, big picture paradigm which is opposite of an anthropocentric vision that is often espoused.
Here are some great quotes of this idea of us not being the center of the universe:
“Salvation is hugely important…. Knowing God for oneself, as opposed to merely knowing or thinking about him, is at the heart of Christian living…. But we are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. It may look, from our point of view, as though ‘me and my salvation’ are the be-all and end-all of Christianity. Sadly, many people–many devout Christians!–have preached that way and lived that way. This problem is not peculiar to the churches of the Reformation. It goes back to the high Middle Ages in the Western church, and infects and affects Catholic and Protestant, liberal and conservative, high and low church alike. But a full reading of Scripture itself tells a different story (23).”
“God made humans for a purpose: not simply for themselves, not simply so that they could be in relationship with him, but so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world. And the closing verses of Scripture, in the book of Revelation, are not about human beings going off to heaven to be in a close and intimate relationship with God, but about heaven coming to earth (24).”
“Paul’s view of God’s purpose is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight…. Paul’s understanding of God’s accomplishment in the Messiah is that this single purpose, this plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, this reason-God-called-Abraham … finally came to fruition with Jesus Christ (94).”
N.T. Wright in many of his books, and certainly in this one, has continually opened my eyes to the big picture of God’s purpose and saving activity in the world.