The question of the good life--what it looks like for people and societies to be well ordered and flourishing--has universal significance, but its proposed solutions are just as far reaching. At the core of this concern is the nature of the good itself: what is right? We must attend to this ethical dilemma before we can begin to envision a life lived to the fullest. With Seeking What Is Right, Iain Provan invites us to consider how Scripture--the Old Testament in particular--can aid us in this quest. In rooting the definition of the good in God's special revelation, Provan moves beyond the constraints of family, tribe, culture, state, or nature. When we read ourselves into the story of Scripture, we learn a formative ethic that speaks directly to our humanity. Provan delves into Western Christian history to demonstrate the various ways this has been done: how our forebears identified with the narrative of God's people, Israel, and how they applied the Old Testament to their particular times and concerns. This serves as a foundation upon which modern Christians can assess their decisions as people who read the whole biblical story from the beginning in our time. Provan challenges us to grapple with ethical issues dominating our contemporary culture as a people in exile, a people formed by disciplines steeped in the patterns and teachings of Scripture. To come alongside ancient Israel in its own experiences of exile, to listen with Israel to the utterances of a holy God, is to approach a true picture of the good life that illuminates all facets of human existence. Provan helps us understand how we should and should not read Scripture in arriving at these conclusions, clarifying for the faithful Christian what the limits of the search for what is right look like. --Carol M. Kaminski, Professor of Old Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Can we know how the ancient Israelites lived 'the good life'? In his last work, Norman Whybray brings his considerable learning to this question in a social and theological study of the Hebrew Bible. He discovers that far from giving a faint or undifferentiated picture of 'the good life', the books of the Old Testament each yield a distinct impression of what this life entails, underpinned by divine guidance and protection. Comprehensive in scope, and marked by Professor Whybray's lucid thought and style, this book is a fitting addition to the work of an illustrious scholar. It will richly reward any reader interested in the social world as depicted in the Bible, and in God's relationship with it.

ECPA 2020 Christian Book Award Finalist! Wouldn’t it be great if we could do what pleases God, helps others, and is best for us—at the same time? Can we live the good life without being selfish? In Giving Is the Good Life, bestselling author Randy Alcorn teaches life-changing biblical principles of generosity and tells stories of people who have put those radical principles into practice. Each story is a practical application that can help stimulate your imagination and expand your dreams of serving Jesus in fresh ways. These real-life models give you not just words to remember but footprints to follow. Giving Is the Good Life reveals a grander view of God and generosity—one that stretches far beyond our imagination and teaches us what the good life is really all about.

Scholars of the social sciences have devoted more and more attention of late to the concept of human happiness, mainly from sociological and psychological perspectives. This volume, which includes essays from scholars of the New Testament, the Old Testament, systematic theology, practical theology, and counseling psychology, poses a new and exciting question: what is happiness according to the Bible? Informed by developments in positive psychology, The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness explores representations of happiness throughout the Bible and demonstrates the ways in which these representations affect both religious and secular understandings of happiness. In addition to the twelve essays, the book contains a framing introduction and epilogue, as well as an appendix of all the terms used in reference to happiness in the Bible. The resulting volume, the first of its kind, is a highly useful and remarkably comprehensive resource for the study of happiness in the Bible and beyond.

Salvation and human flourishing--a life marked by fulfillment and well-being--have often been divorced in the thinking and practice of the church. For the apostle Paul, however, the two were inseparable in the vision for the good life. Drawing on the revolutionary teachings and kingdom proclamation of Jesus, Paul and the early church issued a challenge to the ancient world's dominant narratives of flourishing. Paul's conviction of Jesus' universal Lordship emboldened him to imagine not just another world, but this world as it might be when transformed. With Paul and the Good Life, Julien Smith introduces us afresh to Paul's vision for the life of human flourishing under the reign of Jesus. By placing Paul's letters in conversation with both ancient virtue ethics and kingship discourse, Smith outlines the Apostle's christologically shaped understanding of the good life. Numerous Hellenistic philosophical traditions situated the individual cultivation of virtue within the larger telos of the flourishing polis. Against this backdrop, Paul regards the church as a heavenly commonwealth whose citizens are being transformed into the character of its king, Jesus. Within this vision, salvation entails both deliverance from the deforming power of sin and the re-forming of the person and the church through embodied allegiance to Jesus. Citizenship within this commonwealth calls for a countercultural set of virtues, ones that foster unity amidst diversity and the care of creation. Smith concludes by enlisting the help of present-day interlocutors to draw out the implications of Paul's argument for our own context. The resulting conversation aims to place Paul in engagement with missional hermeneutics, spiritual disciplines, liturgical formation, and agrarianism. Ultimately, Paul and the Good Life invites us to imagine how citizens of this heavenly commonwealth might live in the in-between time, in which Jesus's reign has been inaugurated but not consummated.

Tim Chester shows how the gospel makes a real difference as he takes us to this little-read, life-changing New Testament letter. With clarity and insight, he helps small groups to be excited about, and equipped for, letting the truth transform their lives, their churches, and their mission. These five studies will help small groups and individuals see how to live the good life.

What if it is death that teaches us how to truly live? Keeping the end in mind shapes how we live our lives in the here and now. Living life backward means taking the one thing in our future that is certain—death—and letting that inform our journey before we get there. Looking to the book of Ecclesiastes for wisdom, Living Life Backward was written to shake up our expectations and priorities for what it means to live "the good life." Considering the reality of death helps us pay attention to our limitations as human beings and receive life as a wondrous gift from God—freeing us to live wisely, generously, and faithfully for God's glory and the good of his world.