The Bible gives us the history of the human experience with God: The triumphs, the failures, the redemptions, and ultimately, the enduring love of the Father for His Creation. Nowhere is this love seen more clearly than through the life of Jesus Christ. In this foundational message by the best-selling author of When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson shares the importance of Jesus in understanding God's love for humankind. Modern interpretations and theology point to God as being angry, vengeful, and genocidal, attributing to Him some of the very worst aspects of the human condition. The Old Testament is an incomplete picture, as God portrayed through Jesus is a very different God indeed. In Jesus Christ is Perfect Theology, Bill Johnson reveals how Jesus completes the picture of God presented in the Bible, and provides to us the measure by which we should judge all things.

The Bible gives us the history of the human experience with God: The triumphs, the failures, the redemptions, and ultimately, the enduring love of the Father for His Creation. Nowhere is this love seen more clearly than through the life of Jesus Christ. In this foundational message by the best-selling author of When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson shares the importance of Jesus in understanding God's love for humankind. Modern interpretations and theology point to God as being angry, vengeful, and genocidal, attributing to Him some of the very worst aspects of the human condition. The Old Testament is an incomplete picture, as God portrayed through Jesus is a very different God indeed. In Jesus Christ is Perfect Theology, Bill Johnson reveals how Jesus completes the picture of God presented in the Bible, and provides to us the measure by which we should judge all things.

Why is God's beauty often absent from our theology? Rarely do theologians take up the theme of God's beauty—even more rarely do they consider how God's beauty should shape the task of theology itself. But the psalmist says that the heart of the believer's desire is to behold the beauty of the Lord. In The Beauty of the Lord, Jonathan King restores aesthetics as not merely a valid lens for theological reflection, but an essential one. Jesus, our incarnate Redeemer, displays the Triune God's beauty in his actions and person, from creation to final consummation. How can and should theology better reflect this unveiled beauty? The Beauty of the Lord is a renewal of a truly aesthetic theology and a properly theological aesthetics.

In this important study Hays argues against the mainstream that any attempt to account for the nature and method of Paul's theological language must first reckon with the centrality of narrative elements in his thought. Through an in-depth investigation of Galatians 3:1-4:11, Hays shows that the framework of Paul's thought is neither a system of doctrines nor his personal religious experience but the "sacred story" of Jesus Christ.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.

How does Christ's obedience relate to our salvation? Speaking into current conversations about the nature of salvation, respected New Testament scholar Brandon Crowe argues that we are saved by Christ's perfect obedience, which has implications for understanding the gospel message, Christian hope, and discipleship. Jesus is not only the quintessential model of faithfulness in a fallen world, but his unique work frees us from the burden of perfect obedience.

Few treatments of the death of Jesus Christ have made a point of accounting for the gruesome, degrading, public manner of his death by crucifixion, a mode of execution so loathsome that the ancient Romans never spoke of it in polite society. Rutledge probes all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She shows how each of the biblical themes contributes to the whole, with the Christus Victor motif and the concept of substitution sharing pride of place along with Irenaeus's recapitulation model.