I am a new creation…

This book by NT Wright that is causing me to think is exciting.  I suppose it is exciting to become aware of old ideas presented in new ways that in turn open up new horizons of thought.  God is always so much greater than – well greater than I thought him to be just yesterday.  And so each day of life brings new possibilities; new chances to think in new ways.

Surprised by Hope is about the resurrection.  It’s about the promise of new life and new creation that we have in Christ.  So here are a few quotes that seem significant to me so far:

The challenge is in fact the challenge of new creation.  To put it at its most basic: the resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than the Christian or the theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be.  It is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world.  The claim advanced in Christianity is of that magnitude:  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.  p67

and then a page later:

…the question of Jesus’ resurrection, though it may in some senses burst the boundaries of history, also remains within them; that is precisely why it is so important, so disturbing, so life and death.  We could cope – the world could cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts.  The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.  p68

Good stuff. 

Reminds me of that chorus – “I am a new creation… here by the grace of God I stand.”