NT Wright has been instrumental in reconfiguring my theology on the Kingdom of God. How I think about heaven and eternity and the depth of my existence has been deeply formed by NT Wright and Dallas Willard in the past few decades.

He has written a new book I need to have in my online cart and plunge into because it is about the pinnacle of Paul’s writing: Romans 8. An entire book on Romans 8. In a recent interview he got into some of the message he believes is there and we, as Christians miss. (Begin around the 57:50 mark in this video.)WHY we exist is crucial.

The message we usually trip up on as believers in America is the message of salvation. We have truncated the gospel into this: “You need to ‘get saved’ so you can go to heaven when you die.” It’s not the message of Jesus in the gospels and you won’t find it in Paul’s writings, either, but that is the message of “salvation” we usually boil the gospel down to in our evangelical culture.

If I am saved so I can go to heaven, what do I do NOW?

This is what Wright drives at constantly and he says that is the bedrock of Paul’s message in Romans 8, which is truly one of the greatest chapters we may read in the entire New Testament. It is a good interview.

But I want to get at that main message from another angle: the Sermon on the Mount.

“The Holy Post Podcast” has been a staple in my listening diet for several years. Kaitlyn Schiess has been a regular on the show for the last few years and she has a new book out called The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture has been used and abused in American politics and where we go from here. Schiess is a PhD student at Duke Divinity School and until now I had not read any of her writing. She is incredibly insightful when she is on the podcast. This book is well written, well researched, and a powerful message to the American church, especially as evangelicals and how we pick and choose our verses and how politicians do the same… and often to very harmful ends.

Early on in her book, she takes on the phrase, “a city on a hill” which has been used by Ronald Reagan and every political candidate running for president since in some way. It comes from the Sermon on the Mount and it’s been hijacked to talk about America. Schiess gets at what Jesus was actually talking about in that paragraph and, indeed, the whole Sermon. It is very similar to Wright’s claim on Romans 8.

“If you go back and read the whole sermon, you’ll see that this one little phrase is part of a larger point: God’s people are blessed for the sake of the world. We are oriented not merely inward toward each other but also always outward toward the world. Our witness and our work are public, not hidden or private or separate.

“A theologian in the early church, John Chrysostom, interprets the passage this way: ‘Jesus says in effect: “You are not accountable only for your life but also for that of the entire world.”‘” (p. 11)

You are not accountable only for your life but also for that of the entire world.

NT Wright claims a very similar point for Romans 8. It gets to the depth of our existence. We are not here for ourselves. We are not here merely for worship with each other as believers and then we die and get to go to heaven.

We are blessed for the sake of the world. Our walk with Christ right now should have a profound impact on this world… now.

Wright says that includes lament. We weep for the world when the world weeps. We carry in prayer the matters of the world to God. Asking for God to come and heal the hurting.

We work in education to lift up people to make their way in this world successfully.

We do research in science to solve huge issues so we can be sustained better as human beings on this planet.

We build businesses to not only build a product, but build people up so they have work that brings them dignity in this life.

We paint, sculpt, perform, write, and create in other forms so the world knows beauty.

These two particular interactions this week have helped unveil a vision in my life a little further. It is pulling back the curtain a little more as to how I can live well in this “last third” of my life.

And it brings me to the depths of emotion when I think of Israel and Gaza. To know I pray because it matters in this world, lifts me immensely. To understand that when I weep, I weep for Palestinian families as well as Israeli families, all of whom have lost loved ones in some way to the current tragedy. When I pray, I pray for the Jew as well as the Palestinian. When I pray against corrupt power, I know it exists not just in Gaza, but in Jerusalem as well. Oppression must be lifted, and that isn’t the sole domain of one side.

I pray and weep and lament and intercede with complexity. I am stirred deeply not because it matters to me. I am not pulling out charts and trying to predict what this means for the rapture. This isn’t about my eschatology.

I pray because it matters to them.

For the sake of Israeli families. For the sake of Palestinian families. For the sake of those living along borders that are now tense because leaders bent on war are making noise at those orders. I pray because it matters to them.

This is the depth of my existence. I don’t pray for me. I pray for them.

We need to grasp the gospel more fully in our lives. Our existence matters in this world. Not for us. FOR THEM.

Let us get to work.