Quotes by Peter Enns

Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.

When we reach the point where things simply make no sense, when our thinking about God and life no longer line up, when any sense of certainty is gone, and when we can find no reason to trust God but we still do, well that is what trust looks like at its brightest – when all else is dark.

To love as God loves means loving not just others like us, but those who are not.

Grace grows best in winter.

In the New Testament, Gods steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is Gods supreme, grand, climactic act of faithfulness. Not only that, but faithful also describes Jesus. Paul writes, We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ (Galations 2:16...). A better reading is faithfulness of Jesus Christ -- which is found in footnotes of many Bibles -- and the two readings couldnt be more different... Paul isnt saying, You are not justified by your efforts but by your faith. The contrast hes making isnt between two options we have; the contrast is between your efforts and Jesus faithfulness to you, shown in His obedient death on a Roman cross. Paul is interested in telling readers what Jesus did, Jesus faithfulness, not what we do. Gods grand act of faithfulness is giving His son for our sake. God is all in. Jesus grand act of faithfulness is going through with it for our sake. Jesus is all in. Now its our move, which really is the point of all this. Like God the Father and God the Son, we are also called to be faithful. On one level, we are faithful to God when we trust God, but faith (pistis) doesnt stop there. It extends, as weve seen, in faithfulness toward each other, in humility and self-sacrificial love. And here is the real kick in the pants: When we are faithful to each other like this, we are more than simply being nice and kind -- though theres that. Far more important, when we are faithful to each other, we are, at that moment, acting like the faithful God and the faithful Son. Being like God. Thats the goal. And we are most like God, not when we are certain we are right about God, or when we tell others how right we are, but when we are acting toward one another like the faithful Father and Son. Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in.

[The Lords Supper teaches that] Rituals are good, and they are instituted and used by God to connect his people with him. We learn through ritual that the church is not just made up of individuals, but is a corporate body. It is not just about personal salvation, but a group of people, the people of God, who are bound to one another and to the faithful through the generations. (page 263)

Repetition and familiarity work. What is repeated becomes familiar, and this becomes a part of us. Our own culture understands this, but alas, not always the church. Far too many equate ritual with spiritual dryness. True, ritual and liturgy can be dead--even using the terms can raise hackles--but only when the significance and power of those rituals are forgotten. Spiritual death is not a property of ritual itself. To the contrary, ritual has always been and will always be a means of securing for future generations the power and reality of the gospel. (Peter Enns, Exodus, page 262).

No attempt should be made to reconcile Yahwehs hardening of Pharaohs heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain.