When someone brings together salvation and community (Israel, Church), I’m listening. Chris Wright does just that in a new book, but before I get to it, a brief note. When I first began teaching our survey of the Bible course at NPU, I was in search of books that put things together. I found Chris Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament about as good a book as I could find — even if I had my questions about the book. There was more in store, I thought, for Chris Wright’s approach. I was not surprised when he came out with …

The Mission of God, which is the textbook I will use next year with my honors students. It’s a big book.
So I was excited to see that he had come out with a little version of some of the themes in the big book. That book landed on my desk recently and it is called Salvation Belongs to Our God.
Here are reasons you need to read Chris Wright:
1. He is one of the few authors today putting the whole Bible together in accessible language.
2. His way of putting the Bible together is not simply historical and not simply theological, but is always and always missional.
3. Salvation Belongs to our God ties together the Bible around the theme of God’s redemptive work — anyone who reads the Bible and doesn’t talk about “salvation” is wiping out the big idea. Wright keeps his eye on the big ideas of salvation.
4. There are group study questions at the end of each chp (I prefer them at the back of a book).
5. His chp on personal salvation is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time — but I’ll not spoil it for you. He makes personal salvation part of God’s big work of redemption.
6. He deals both with God’s sovereignty and with world religion questions.
Good grief, this is a good book.