Russ Ramsey - The Mission of the Body of Christ

Click to view the newest and trending titles in

Click below to view more books in these categories

For a list of IVP email newsletters please visit ivpress.com/newsletters.

I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. The details in the pages of Scripture tell a riveting story. Since the Bible was not written during a time when reams of paper and junk drawers full of pens were readily available, we can trust that Scripture was written in thrift. The details on the page are there to help us see things we might have missed otherwise.

For the first two books in this Retelling the Story series, I covered quite a range of biblical text: the entire Old Testament in twenty-five chapters for The Advent of the Lamb of God, and a forty-chapter synthesis of the four Gospels for The Passion of the King of Glory. This book, The Mission of the Body of Christ, presented a different challenge. It centers on a single biblical book, the Acts of the Apostles, but also draws from the narrative details peppered throughout the New Testament Epistles.

It is not always clear how the Epistles references to people and events connect to the timeline in Acts. Before I wrote a word of this book, I created some spreadsheets in an attempt to map out the events of the book of Acts. I wanted to get a birds eye view of what happened, when, and to whom. I wanted to see how Pauls missionary journeys lined up with the letters he wrote. I wanted to follow the story on a map. I wanted to try to keep track of characters who stepped in and out of the story along the way. I wanted to understand the passage of time. So I charted as much of this as I could, with as much certainty as I could, based on my own study of Scripture and scholarly works.

I did not write The Mission of the Body of Christ to be a substitute for reading the Bible. I want this book to serve as a faithful servant of Scripture. Ive included hundreds of Scripture references in this manuscript. Let me explain why. Throughout this book I paraphrase in order to maintain a unified voice. Rarely do I quote Scripture directly or at length. This applies to dialogue as well. If a character says something and theres a Scripture reference attached in the endnotes, that doesnt necessarily mean Im quoting the original text. Im probably not. More than likely Im paraphrasing and distilling a larger moment in Scripture to work within the scope of this book. The references I include are there to lead you to the stories Scripture unfolds with perfect sufficiency.