Living with the authority of scripture

Living with “the authority of scripture,” then, means living in the world of the story which scripture tells. It means soaking ourselves in that story, as a community and as individuals. Indeed, it means that Christian leaders and teachers must themselves become part of the process, part of the way in which God is at work not only in the Bible-reading community but through that community in and for the wider world. That is the way to become surefooted in our proposal of, or reflection upon, fresh initiatives or suggestions about how the Christian community should respond to new situations—— for instance, in spotting that what the world now needs, in fulfillment of some of scripture’s deepest plans, is global economic justice. It means being, as a community, so attentive not just to what our traditions say about scripture, but to scripture itself, that we are able, by means of it, to live by the life of heaven even while on earth.

All this means that we are called to be people who learn to hear God’s voice speaking today within the ancient text, and who become vessels of that living word in the world around us.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 187; emphasis original