For Everyone Bible Study Guides (19 vols.)

by N. T. Wright; Dale Larsen; Sandy Larsen; Lin Johnson; Patty Pell

and

2 more

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2009–2012

The For Everyone Bible Study Guides are a series of short, question-based study guides based around the New Testament For Everyone series. The series is intended to encourage church (and other) groups to study the Bible using the For Everyone model. Experienced Bible study writers have selected excerpts and written questions that guide users through the thought of Tom Wright on each passage. From the anguish of creation in Romans to the process of discovery and mystery in the Gospel of John. Each study brings thoughtful insight and reverent devotion your personal bible study. Thoughtful questions, prayer suggestions, and useful background and cultural information all guide you into a deeper understanding of the Christian story and the Christian life.

Key Features

• Designed to help understand the Bible afresh under the guidance of a leading Bible scholar
• Includes thoughtful discussion questions based on the biblical text
• Illustrates the contemporary relevance of the New Testament

Product Details

• Title: For Everyone New Testament Study Guides
• Editor: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Volumes: 19
• Pages: 1,504
• Resource Type: Bible Studies
• Topic: New Testament

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Matthew

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Jesus was someone who inspired many misconceptions. So how can we come to know who Jesus truly is? How can we learn that he is much more than a man who once had good ideas or who told us how to establish a better relationship with God? The Jesus whom Matthew reveals in his Gospel is somebody with authority over everything in the physical and spiritual worlds. This is a Jesus we can trust with every aspect of our lives. These twenty-five studies help us to discover a full, first-hand account of Jesus as Messiah, Teacher and Son of Man, who gave his life for us all.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Mark

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest and sharpest of the early stories about Jesus. There is a sense of urgency in the Gospel of Mark. We find the word immediately many times in the first two chapters and several times after that. Early in chapter 1 the main theme of Jesus’ ministry is articulated: God’s kingdom is arriving. The kingdom of God is at hand (1:15). Something momentous is happening. God promised his kingdom, but it would not be the political, military kingdom they expected. The kingdom would come through the Messiah but not through the kind of Messiah anyone expected.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Luke

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2011
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Who was Luke? Was he one of Paul's companions? Was he a doctor? We do know that he was educated and cultured, writing for people far away from where Jesus lived. In his Gospel, we find the foundation of our Christmas stories and the best-loved parables, those of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. We see Jesus' concern for the poor and the marginalized, especially women and children. And it's Luke who tells us of the repentant thief on the cross and of the risen Jesus accompanying the people on the road to Emmaus. In these twenty-six studies, we discover Luke's aim - to present the good news of Jesus as clearly and unambiguously as he can.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: John

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Often in detective stories, a seemingly irrelevant detail is the essential clue to solving the mystery. Tom Wright suggests that the writer of John's Gospel had a similar idea in mind; nothing is there by accident. All the details in this most profound of the Gospels work together to tell an amazing story and reveal an astonishing secret: nothing less than the story of God and the world. These twenty-six studies on John show us not just the story of one character in one place and time but the Creator God acting in a new way within his beloved creation.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Acts

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

The mysterious presence of Jesus haunts the whole story of Acts. Jesus is announced as King and Lord, not as an increasingly distant memory but as a living and powerful reality, a person who can be known and loved, obeyed and followed, a person who continues to act within the real world. We call the book "The Acts of the Apostles" but we should think of it as "The Acts of Jesus: Part Two" These studies help us to do so, and to see how Jesus' acts through the apostles inform and empower our acts today. The guides in this series by Tom Wright can be used on their own or alongside his New Testament for Everyone commentaries. They are designed to help you understand the Bible in fresh ways under the guidance of one of the world's leading New Testament scholars.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Romans

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Paul's letter to the Romans, as well as the merest glance at our world, shows this clearly. The Church shares in the suffering, groaning in the tension between the 'already' of possessing the fruit of the Spirit and the 'not yet' of our present existence. Paul, however, also makes it abundantly clear that God doesn't stand apart from the pain. Rather, he entered it through Jesus and dwells in the middle of it in the Spirit. These studies present the whole picture of a suffering, sinful world and God's deep love, still working today to reconcile that world to himself.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: 1 Corinthians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

What is Christianity? A philosophy? A set of ideas? A path to spirituality? A rule of life? Is it even a political agenda? Christianity is none of these things, yet it includes and, indeed, gives energy to them all. Christianity is a way of life. It is rooted in the good news revealed by an event that rocked the world. And those who believe this good news and live by it experience deep and lasting change. This is Paul's message to the Corinthians - and to us today. These studies on 1 Corinthians encourage us truly to engage in leadership, love and worship, as those who are being transformed by the resurrected Jesus.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: 2 Corinthians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 64

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

2 Corinthians Illness and suffering in the ancient world were regularly regarded as signs of divine displeasure. Sometimes we think the same thing today. In 2 Corinthians, we see evidence of Paul's own suffering. The difficulties and pain he endured could be interpreted as God's punishment. Not so, says Paul. Trials come not because God is angry; rather, he requires us to trust him completely. Paul was breaking new ground here. He wanted the Corinthians to understand the comfort to be found in the suffering, death and resurrection life of Jesus.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Galatians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 64

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

What are God's people about? Unity in diversity or ethnic rivalry? Internal freedom or external control? The answers to these questions are at the heart of Galatians. Paul, a Pharisee, knew what it was to use religion to exclude and coerce others. Then he discovered the astounding good news of freedom and unity in Jesus Christ. His letter to the Galatians is a strong corrective message to those who would try to impose religious rules and regulations and take away God's gifts of freedom and unity from the people. It is a letter that demands to be read, studied and proclaimed to reinforce the great good news ushered in by Jesus' death and resurrection.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Ephesians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

When you have a story at the back of your mind, have you noticed how it sometimes keeps coming up, even if you're talking about something else? Throughout his exhortation, prayers and instructions for living in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul can't contain his joy and amazement at God's plan to save us in Jesus the Messiah. These eleven studies from Tom Wright help us to see the significance of our role in God's grand narrative, and encourage us to live fully as people who are lavishly loved by God.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Philippians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Things don't always go the way we intend. It's easy to feel discouraged when we cannot achieve what we hope for or when other people seem to make life difficult. Paul, writing to the Philippians from prison, certainly knew what it was like to have his plans thwarted. Yet, as this most joyful of letters conveys, he maintained a robust confidence in God's power and love. Paul's circumstances make this letter especially poignant, revealing as it does a man enduring huge difficulties and hardships. These eight studies on Philippians encourage us to face our problems with a Pauline fortitude, trust and hope.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Colossians and Philemon

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

When people become Christians, God implants into them a new sense of his presence and love, his guiding and strengthening. This sense needs nurturing and developing. New Christians need to understand what’s happening to them, and how they must cooperate with the divine life that’s gently begun to work in them. This is Paul's goal his letter to the Church at Colossae.

Paul’s own personal circumstances make these two short letters especially poignant, and give us a portrait of a man facing huge difficulties and hardships and coming through with his faith and hope unscathed. But what he has to say to the young church is even more impressive. Already, within thirty years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul has worked out a wonderful, many-colored picture of what Jesus achieved, of God’s worldwide plan, and of how it all works out in the lives of ordinary people.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: 1 and 2 Thessalonians

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

These two letters to the Thessalonian Church are among the very earliest documents we possess from the beginning of the church’s existence. They are already full of life, bubbling with energy, with questions, problems, excitement, danger, and, above all, a sense of the presence and power of the living God, who has changed the world through Jesus and is now at work in a new way by his Spirit. Those same qualities can touch us as well as we delve more deeply into them.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

When you need to know how to do something, a manual is the best place to start. 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus could be called the 'Teacher's Manual' because these letters contain so much advice about the kind of teaching Christian leaders should - and shouldn't - be giving. Just as Timothy and Titus needed help to lead their young churches in the midst of powerful cultural forces, we need guidance for leading and living well in our own context. These studies of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus point us in the right direction. They bring us to a greater understanding of ourselves and show us the way through the challenges we face.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Hebrews

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

For many Jewish Christians of the first century, living in the light of the gospel was challenging. Having accepted Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, they were regarded by still-skeptical family, friends and neighbors as dangerous, misguided and even disloyal to all that God had said earlier on. The letter to the Hebrews was written to show that you can't go back to an earlier stage of God's purposes but must press on eagerly to the one that is yet to come. In these studies, we find encouragement and assurance that pressing on, even in the face of such close and constant pressure to fall back, is its own reward. The guides in this series by Tom Wright can be used on their own or alongside his New Testament for Everyone commentaries. They are designed to help you understand the Bible in fresh ways under the guidance of one of the world's leading New Testament scholars.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: James

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 80

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Faith was always more complicated than just belief. Works may not save, but the relationship between faith and works is something that all Christians must come to terms with. James works to introduce this essential balance to the ancient church and Tom Wright helps readers today engage with these same issues in a manner that is both practical and spiritual. Throughout the letter James talks about faith. Faith that works and praying in faith which surrounds all that we are and do as followers of Jesus. Everything that James says flows from the astonishing fact that his older brother, Jesus himself, had embodied new life and forgiveness.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: 1 and 2 Peter and Judah

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 80

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Both Peter and Judah note that there are tough things which must be faced in the Christian life. But with our new identity, and with the powerful mercy of God keeping us safe, there is such a thing as sustained and lasting growth in Christian character, faith and life. Tom Wright emphasizes from Peter and Judah's own words that it is the Christian's privilege and birthright, as a follower of Jesus, that to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: The Letters of John

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 80

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

In the first two letters, John writes against deceivers, false prophets, antimessiahs. We can’t be sure exactly who these people were that John was challenging because there were so many religious movements, as well as political ones, in the first century. But in several places John emphasizes the physicality of Jesus—that he had a body—and warns his readers to reject those who say Jesus did not come in the flesh. Such a belief looks suspiciously like one religious movement that came to be known as Gnosticism. John emphasizes that the Spirit enables us to bear witness to what the Father has done in sending the Son. He reminds us forcefully that such witness must of course come not in word only but also in deed, as we read in 1 John 3:18. Our love must come in the flesh, just as God’s love did in Jesus.

For Everyone Bible Study Guide: Revelation

• Author: N.T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 80

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Many people today regard Revelation as the hardest book in the New Testament. It is full of strange, lurid, and sometimes bizarre and violent imagery. As a result, many people who are quite at home in the Gospels, Acts and Paul find themselves tiptoeing around Revelation with a sense that they don’t really belong there. But they do! Revelation, in fact, offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God’s ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and of the way in which the powerful forces of evil. The world we live in today is no less complex and dangerous than the world of the late first century when this book was written, and we owe it to ourselves to get our heads and our hearts around Revelation’s glorious pictures as we attempt to be faithful witnesses to God’s love in a world of violence, hatred and suspicion.

About N.T. Wright

N.T. Wright is a professor of New Testament and early Christianity at St. Andrews University. Previously, he was the bishop of Durham. He has researched, taught, and lectured on the New Testament at McGill, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities. He is best known for his scholarly contributions to the historical study of Jesus and the New Perspective on Paul. His work interacts with the positions of James Dunn, E.P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wright has written and lectured extensively around the world, authoring many books and numerous articles in scholarly journals and popular periodicals. He is best known for his Christian Origins and the Question of God series, of which four of the anticipated six volumes are finished.