Parakeets make delightful pets. We cage them or clip their wings to keep them where we want them. Scot McKnight contends that many, conservatives and liberals alike, attempt the same thing with the Bible. We all try to tame it. McKnight's The Blue Parakeet calls Christians to stop taming the Bible and to let it speak anew to our heart.

McKnight challenges us to rethink how to read the Bible, not just to puzzle it together into some systematic belief but to see it as a Story that we're summoned to enter and to carry forward in our day.

First-rate scholars and preachers on four interpretive approaches to Paul and Romans

Pauline scholarship is a minefield of differing schools of thought. Those who teach or preach on Paul can quickly get lost in the weeds of the various perspectives. How, then, can pastors today best preach Paul’s message?

Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica have assembled this stellar one-stop guide exploring four major interpretive perspectives on the apostle Paul: Reformational, New, Apocalyptic, and Participationist. First elucidated by a scholarly essay, each perspective is then illuminated by three sermons expositing various passages from Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans.

Coming from such leading figures as Richard Hays, James Dunn, Fleming Rutledge, and Tom Schreiner, these essays and sermons splendidly demonstrate how each perspective on Paul brings valuable insights for preaching on Romans. 

[Table of Contents]

Introduction

Interpretive Perspectives on the Apostle Paul

1. Romans and the “Lutheran” Paul: Stephen Westerholm

2. Romans and the New Perspective: Scot McKnight

3. Romans and the Apocalyptic Reading of Paul: Douglas A. Campbell

4. Romans and the Participationist Perspective: Michael J. Gorman

Preaching Romans: Sermons

Reformational Perspective

5. Romans as Ecclesial Theology: Building Multiethnic Missional Churches: Michael F. Bird

6. God Justifies the Ungodly: Romans 4:1–8: Thomas R. Schreiner

7. The Transforming Reality of Justification by Faith: Romans 5:1–5: Carl R. Trueman

New Perspective

8. The Balance of Already/Not Yet: Romans 8:1–17: James D. G. Dunn

9. This Changes Everything: Romans 5:12–21: Tara Beth Leach

10. Pass the Peace by Faith: Romans 4:1–4, 13–17: Scot McKnight

Apocalyptic Perspective

11. Immortal Combat: Romans 1:16–17 and 5:12–14: Jason Micheli

12. In Celebration of Full Communion: Romans 3:21–24: Fleming Rutledge

13. Old Adam, New Adam; Old World, New World; Old You, New You: Romans 5:12–21: William H. Willimon

Participationist Perspective

14. Death Becomes Her: Romans 6:1–14: Timothy G. Gombis

15. Made New by One Man’s Obedience: Romans 5:12–19: Richard B. Hays

16. Breathing Well: Romans 8:12–30: Suzanne Watts Henderson

Conclusion

17. Implications: Joseph B. Modica

The NIV Application Commentary helps you communicate and apply biblical text effectively in today's context.

In Galatians, Paul reminds us of the total sufficiency of Jesus in securing our salvation, and of the leadership of the Holy Spirit for living it out. Calling us back to the simplicity of Christ, Galatians is as critically important for us today as it was when Paul first penned it. Exploring the links between the Bible and our own times, Scot McKnight shares perspectives on the letter to the Galatians that reveal its enduring relevance for our twenty-first-century lives.

To bring the ancient messages of the Bible into today's context, each passage is treated in three sections:

• Original Meaning. Concise exegesis to help readers understand the original meaning of the biblical text in its historical, literary, and cultural context.
• Bridging Contexts. A bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of today, built by discerning what is timeless in the timely pages of the Bible.
• Contemporary Significance. This section identifies comparable situations to those faced in the Bible and explores relevant application of the biblical messages. The author alerts the readers of problems they may encounter when seeking to apply the passage and helps them think through the issues involved.

This unique, award-winning commentary is the ideal resource for today's preachers, teachers, and serious students of the Bible, giving them the tools, ideas, and insights they need to communicate God's Word with the same powerful impact it had when it was first written.

The NIV Application Commentary helps you communicate and apply biblical text effectively in today's context.

To bring the ancient messages of the Bible into today's world, each passage is treated in three sections:

• Original Meaning. Concise exegesis to help readers understand the original meaning of the biblical text in its historical, literary, and cultural context.
• Bridging Contexts. A bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of today, built by discerning what is timeless in the timely pages of the Bible.
• Contemporary Significance. This section identifies comparable situations to those faced in the Bible and explores relevant application of the biblical messages. The author alerts the readers of problems they may encounter when seeking to apply the passage and helps them think through the issues involved.

This unique, award-winning commentary is the ideal resource for today's preachers, teachers, and serious students of the Bible, giving them the tools, ideas, and insights they need to communicate God's Word with the same powerful impact it had when it was first written.

Contemporary evangelicals have built a "salvation culture" but not a "gospel culture." Evangelicals have reduced the gospel to the message of personal salvation. This book makes a plea for us to recover the old gospel as that which is still new and still fresh. The book stands on four arguments: that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the Story of Israel in the saving Story of Jesus; that the gospel is found in the Four Gospels; that the gospel was preached by Jesus; and that the sermons in the Book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament. The King Jesus Gospel ends with practical suggestions about evangelism and about building a gospel culture.

To read Romans from beginning to end, from letter opening to final doxology, is to retrace the steps of Paul. To read Romans front to back was what Paul certainly intended. But to read Romans forward may have kept the full message of Romans from being perceived. Reading forward has led readers to classify Romans as abstract and systematic theology, as a letter unstained by real pastoral concerns.

But what if a different strategy were adopted? Could it be that the secret to understanding the relationship between theology and life, the key to unlocking Romans, is to begin at the letter’s end? Scot McKnight does exactly this in  Reading Romans Backwards.

McKnight begins with Romans 12–16, foregrounding the problems that beleaguered the house churches in Rome. Beginning with the end places readers right in the middle of a community deeply divided between the strong and the weak, each side dug in on their position. The strong assert social power and privilege, while the weak claim an elected advantage in Israel’s history. Continuing to work in reverse, McKnight unpacks the big themes of Romans 9–11—God’s unfailing, but always surprising, purposes and the future of Israel—to reveal Paul’s specific and pastoral message for both the weak and the strong in Rome. Finally, McKnight shows how the widely regarded "universal" sinfulness of Romans 1–4, which is so often read as simply an abstract soteriological scheme, applies to a particular rhetorical character’s sinfulness and has a polemical challenge. Romans 5–8 equally levels the ground with the assertion that both groups, once trapped in a world controlled by sin, flesh, and systemic evil, can now live a life in the Spirit. In Paul’s letter, no one gets off the hook but everyone is offered God’s grace.

Reading Romans Backwards places lived theology in the front room of every Roman house church. It focuses all of Romans—Paul’s apostleship, God’s faithfulness, and Christ’s transformation of humanity—on achieving grace and peace among all people, both strong and weak. McKnight shows that Paul’s letter to the Romans offers a sustained lesson on peace, teaching applicable to all divided churches, ancient or modern.

Emphasizing the historical distance between the New Testament and our contemporary culture, The Sermon on the Mount by Scot McKnight, part of the new The Story of God Bible Commentary series, offers helpful contextual insights for those seeking to discern how to live out the Bible in today’s world. Perfect for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and lay people alike, this highly anticipated series provides a clear and compelling exposition of the text in the context of the Bible’s overarching story. The authors move away from “application” language, which has been criticized as being too simplistic, encouraging instead a wider perspective and discussion of how the biblical story can be lived today.

Offering a new type of application commentary for today’s context, the Story of God Bible Commentary series explains and illuminates Scripture as God’s Story, with each New Testament text examined as embedded in its canonical and historical setting, in order to foster discernment in living the story faithfully and creatively with and for the Church in the 21st Century.