Who is Jesus Christ? You've never met Him in person, and you don't know anyone who has. But there is a way to know who he is. How? Jesus Christ - the divine Person revealed in the Bible - has a unique excellence and a spiritual beauty that speaks directly to our souls and says, "Yes, this is truth." It's like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light, or tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet. The depth and complexity of Jesus shatter our simple mental frameworks. He baffled proud scribes with his wisdom but was understood and loved by children. He calmed a raging storm with a word but would not get himself down from the cross. Look at the Jesus of the Bible. Keep your eyes open, and fill them with the portrait of Jesus in God's Word. Jesus said, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, He will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." Ask God for the grace to do His will, and you will see the truth of His Son. John Piper has written this book in the hope that all will see Jesus for who he really is and will come to enjoy him above all else.

How can we live faithfully in a world that feels like it is coming apart at the seams? In All Things Hold Together, Stephen C. Shaffer offers an invitation to return to an older, more humble, and yet more confident Christian faith. In Christ, all things hold together. Apart from him, things fall apart. The multitude of fractures in our world result from the removal of our center in Christ. Worldview is not a weapon. It was meant to mend the fractures opened up by the modern world. The recovery of a theological center, of a Christian worldview, is intended as a way of sewing back together what the modern world is ripping apart. Worldview serves to give voice to a way before and beyond the fractures, a world we have abandoned in order to rule ourselves. All Things Hold Together works to recover this original purpose of Christian worldview and present it as a gift for faithfully navigating our contemporary culture.

The book tracks Jesus's story and its implications in prose and poetry--in scripture, story and song, sketches and snippets of essay. After starting with a chapter on ways of being with scripture (taking it seriously but often not literally) and suggestive chapters on God and the Old Testament, it moves from Jesus's incarnation through his ministry and passion for the Kingdom of God to his Passion and bodily resurrection. These are followed by chapters on "what happened next," including two chapters on contemporary Christianity, the good and the bad of it. The "take" on Jesus, as both title and sub-title suggest, is broad, in some ways quite orthodox but insisting on his call for compassion, social justice, inclusiveness and wholeness for all. It's also about Jesus alive and with us now, albeit in a different dimension from those with which we are familiar. The many meditations are often brief, and the poetry is "for people, and not just for critics and other poets"! There is much here to think about, but it's not an academic tome. It can be provocative, and often it's just plain fun!

As Christians engage controversial cultural issues, we must remember that "all things hold together in Christ" (Col. 1:17)--even when it comes to science and faith. In this anthology, top Christian thinkers--including Robert Barron, Timothy George, Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Mark Noll, and N. T. Wright--invite us to find resources for faithful, creative thinking in the riches of the church's theological heritage and its worship traditions.

Christian faith starts with Jesus Christ who said 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' This is a book both for the enquirer and for the committed Christian who is growing towards a more informed belief. In Christ All Things Hold Together asserts the truth of the Christ who was the Son of God, who cares for us, who shared our humanity and who rose from death--a truth dependent, not on irrational faith, but on the revelation of the Gospel.

As an Anabaptist, John Howard Yoder is often depicted as Christ-centered in his theology but with a creation-deficient approach to culture. In this clearly reasoned study, Branson Parler argues that Yoder advocates a trinitarian theology of culture that upholds the continuity between God’s work in creation and in redemption. For Yoder, Jesus’ humanity makes him directly relevant to culture while Jesus’ divinity connects him directly to creation. Yoder’s writings, says Parler, affirm that Jesus restores and re-establishes the politics of creation. In Things Hold Together, Parler joins a growing number of writers from outside Anabaptist or Mennonite traditions who are finding resonance with Yoder, one of the leading theologians of the twentieth century. “Interpreters who dismiss Yoder’s call to discipleship find comfort in suggesting he lacked a doctrine of creation or in finding him to be at best a heterodox theologian. Parler takes the ground away from such critics. His book sets the bar for any future reception of Yoder's theology.”—D. Stephen Long, author of Speaking of God: Theology, Truth and Language "Things Hold Together helps us see that John Howard Yoder was from first to last a trinitarian thinker. Parler therefore provides an illuminating context for interpreting Yoder's critique of H. Richard Niebuhr." —Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe professor of theological ethics, Duke University

Volume 6 of the Bible Exposition Commentary 6-volume set