God's Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal

Summary

A defining major work from today’s leading Bible scholar: N. T. Wright traces the biblical promise of God’s care for the future, offering authentic hope in a chaotic age.

Many devout believers have been lured into the classic misunderstanding that Christianity teaches how we must leave earth and go somewhere else to be with God. But this outlook dangerously suggests that God created a world he loves only to abandon it. Nothing could be further from the scriptural truth, N. T. Wright contends. In God’s Homecoming, Wright excavates the forgotten story of God’s original purpose to dwell with us and make his home—and ours—in this new creation.

In his groundbreaking Surprised by Hope, Wright dismantled the “going to heaven” narrative. In God’s Homecoming, he returns with a panoramic pilgrimage tracing God’s homecoming promise from Genesis through Revelation. When we read the Bible as a whole, Wright argues, we do not find a narrative of souls ascending a spiritual ladder to heaven, but of God coming down to dwell with us.

Revolutionary and grounded in biblical research, Wright leads readers through the movements of the promise: God created heaven and earth to be his own home, he filled the temple with his presence, then the church with the Holy Spirit, and promises that the all creation will again be filled with his glory. He traces how the popular Christian reading got it wrong—as well as the radical transformation that awaits us and the church today if we return to God’s original vision.

Until we recover this forgotten story, Wright warns, we will keep distorting the Bible’s message. Yet, he argues, its recovery could be the key to revitalizing every aspect of Christian life as we know it: prayer, mission, evangelism, pastoral practice, and personal devotion.