16 Quotes by Richard B. Hays

The question that Luke-Acts puts to the church – then and now – is not “Are you reforming society?” but rather “Is the power of the resurrection at work among you?

The radical move that Paul makes is to proclaim that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, stand equally condemned under the just judgment of a righteous God.

The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God’s redemptive purposes in the world.

I would propose the following minimal guideline: extrabiblical sources stand in a hermeneutical relation to the New Testament; they are not independent, counterbalancing sources of authority. In other words, the Bible’s perspective is privileged, not ours. However tricky it may be in practice to apply this guideline, it is in fact a meaningful rule of thumb that discriminates significantly between different approaches to New Testament ethics.

First, we should guard against falling into a habit of reading New Testament ethical texts in one mode only. If we read the New Testament and find only laws, we are obviously enmeshed in grave hermeneutical distortion. Likewise, if we read the New Testament and find only timeless moral principles, we are probably guilty, as Barth warned, of evading Scripture’s specific claims upon our lives.

The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world.

To use Matthew’s own language, turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if it really is true that the meek will inherit the earth, if and only if it really is true that those who act on Jesus’ words have built their house on a rock so that it will stand in the day of judgment. Turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.