People often get upset when you teach them what is in the Bible rather than what they presume is in the Bible.

Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation.

People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor, and means Jesus died and was glorified - in other words, he went to Heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that.

All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.

God is the Creator God, he doesn't want to say, "Okay, creation was very good, but I'm scrapping it." He wants to say, "Creation is so good that I'm going to rescue it."

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.

The whole point of what -Jesus was up to was that he was doing close up, in the present, what he was promising long-term in the future. And what he was promising for that future and doing in the present was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing -people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose — ​and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that large project.