Faith Bubbles Up

N. T. Wright on Paul's preaching:

God’s word, that is, the message about Jesus as the climax of God’s saving plan, the unfolding of God’s future putting-to-rights of all things, is announced. Foolish and scandalous though it is, when you tell this story, the story of the great eschatological apocalypse that has taken place in Jesus, God’s spirit goes to work in a new apocalyptic event, itself part of the inaugurated eschatology. Human hearts and minds, to their own great surprise, are opened, warmed, challenged, broken and healed and remade, all through the word and the Spirit. And the immediate result, as any reader of Paul will know, is faith: discovering that the creator of the world is our very own Abba, father; believing, against all other evidence and wisdom, that Jesus really was raised from the dead, and that his death was therefore not a nonsensical disaster but really did deal with sin; hailing him gladly as lord.

‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord,’ says Paul in Romans 10, ‘and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ Granted, each time he defines Christian faith it comes out slightly differently, but that passage sums it up pretty well. The preaching says, Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead; the Spirit works through that preaching, so that (although it’s scandalous nonsense) faith bubbles up, the faith which is thus the sure sign that the word has done its work and which is for that reason the single badge, the only badge, by which Christians are to be identified.

Irish Theological Quarterly
72 (2007) 131–146
Paul as Preacher: The Gospel Then and Now, p.138
N. T. Wright
© 2007 Irish Theological Quarterly