SPCK - N T Wright
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - False Prophets
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - False Prophets
by SPCK - N T Wright
False Prophets 2 Peter 2.1-10a ‘I told you it was easy to get lost.’ Our host stood on the doorstep with a wry smile on his face. We had assumed we more or less knew the way. We have a good sense of direction. We had even been there before; surely we would remember the route once…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Prophecy Made Sure
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Prophecy Made Sure
by SPCK - N T Wright
Prophecy Made Sure 2 Peter 1.12-21 I am writing this in the middle of winter. First thing in the morning, when I get up, there is no sunlight visible at all. The sky is dark. But, if the clouds are not too thick, there is a light which from ancient times has been seen as an early…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Confirm Your Call
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Confirm Your Call
by SPCK - N T Wright
Confirm Your Call! 2 Peter 1.1-11 My grandson, aged one and a half, was taken the other day into a big toyshop. It was a riot of exciting things, all in bright colours. From floor to ceiling, from one end of the shop to the other, and all over the tables and stands in the middle,…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Standing firm by God's Power
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Standing firm by God's Power
by SPCK - N T Wright
Standing Firm by God’s Power 1 Peter 5.8-14 One of the great advances in tropical medicine came when researchers discovered how malaria was spread. They had been trying to treat the disease for a long time, but it seemed hopeless. As fast as you helped one patient, three more wer…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Humble Shepherds
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Humble Shepherds
by SPCK - N T Wright
Humble Shepherds 1 Peter 5.1-7 From time to time the television or the newspapers tell us that there is a crisis of ‘leadership’. What that means, often enough, is that the media disapprove of the actual political leaders we happen to have at the moment, but even without that rat…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Sharing the Messiah's Suffering
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Sharing the Messiah's Suffering
by SPCK - N T Wright
Sharing the Messiah’s Sufferings 1 Peter 4.12-19 Early Christian Letters for Everyone 12Beloved, don’t be surprised at the fiery ordeal which is coming upon you to test you, as though this were some strange thing that was happening to you. 13Rather, celebrate! You are sharing the…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Transformed Living
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Transformed Living
by SPCK - N T Wright
Transformed Living 1 Peter 4.1-11 My dental hygienist was enthusing the other day about a new kind of electric toothbrush. Only two minutes, she said, morning and night; that’s all it will take. Just what you need. I lay there in the chair, my mouth full of dentistry, and did the…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering for Doing Right
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering for Doing Right
by SPCK - N T Wright
Suffering for Doing Right 1 Peter 3.17-22 The older I get, the more I dislike things which need to be put together, after you buy them, by following complicated instructions and diagrams. Part of my dislike is my sense that I will probably get it wrong, force something where it w…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The New Way of Life
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The New Way of Life
by SPCK - N T Wright
The New Way of Life 1 Peter 3.8-16 Most of us know the feeling of getting into a car we haven’t driven before. You have a look round, see where the switch for the lights is, check the angle of the mirrors, and so on. It may take a moment to figure out, with some of today’s cars, …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Marriage and Its Challenges
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Marriage and Its Challenges
by SPCK - N T Wright
Marriage and Its Challenges 1 Peter 3.1-7 I remember a wise preacher pointing out that even when people are free to make up their own minds and form their own decisions, most of them quickly find a framework to fit into. They adopt a stereotype; they fit into a pattern; they beha…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering as the Messiah Did
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering as the Messiah Did
by SPCK - N T Wright
Suffering as the Messiah Did 1 Peter 2.18-25 Not long ago, at the height of a snowstorm, our house, and two nearby villages as well, were without electric power for fourteen hours. Our heating system is controlled by electricity, so the house became very cold. We could burn logs …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Living in a Pagan World
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Living in a Pagan World
by SPCK - N T Wright
Living in a Pagan World 1 Peter 2.11-17 I woke up gradually that morning. I had been tired out by the events of the previous day, and I had been sleeping so deeply that I seemed to be emerging slowly from a warm, dark tunnel. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, but when eventually I …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Living Stone
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Living Stone
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Living Stone 1 Peter 2.4-10 I have never been a great gardener. Among many other reasons – lack of patience, moving house too often – I would name the problem I met the very first time I tried to take control of the small garden outside our first house. It was overgrown and n…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Newborn Babies
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Newborn Babies
by SPCK - N T Wright
Newborn Babies 1 Peter 1.22-2.3 I was in the car the other day when a programme came on the radio which won my admiration – for sheer daring. An interviewer had gone to a farm where they were raising different kinds of deer, whose meat they were selling as venison to smart restau…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Ransomed by Grace
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Ransomed by Grace
by SPCK - N T Wright
Ransomed by Grace 1 Peter 1.10-21 John went into a junk-shop the other day, in a little town not far from here. He was looking for something in particular, and after wandering around for a while he thought he saw just the thing. It was a bowl, about eight inches across. Someone h…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Genuine Faith and Sure Hope
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Genuine Faith and Sure Hope
by SPCK - N T Wright
Genuine Faith and Sure Hope 1 Peter 1.1-9 I am sitting in a newly built room. It was, before, simply a garage, without even a door: almost an open shed. But we needed to transform it into a place where I could work. So, for the first time in my life, I had to deal with architects…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Praying in the Faith
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Praying in the Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
Praying in the Faith James 5.13-20 There are many things in life which look extremely odd to someone who doesn’t know what’s going on. Imagine watching someone making a musical instrument if you’d never heard music in your life. What, you might think, can such an object possibly …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Patience and Trust