QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
ON THE NEW TESTAMENT

1. Have you ever been given or achieved something you had sought for a long time, only to find yourself disappointed? When? Why were you disappointed? Is there anything in this world worth desiring that is not that way?

2. What is the main argument of the four Gospels?

3. What does Christ mean? What does Messiah mean?

4. Explain the riddle of the Old Testament. Explain how Christ alone solves that riddle.

5. As we have seen, Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, came to devour the enemy, sin. How was this lion able to devour this enemy?

6. What do the New Testament Epistles, generally speaking, attempt to accomplish?

7. What does it mean to refer to Christ as our “priest”? How does he act as our priest?

8. As we have seen, Christians are counted as perfectly righteous today, even though we are by no means perfect. Is this a contradiction? How does this work?

9. Earlier, we considered the kind of people who try to protect their hearts by hoping only for things that they have the power to control or make happen. Then we saw that Christianity calls for the exact opposite. How? Why?

10. Why is it significant that the heavenly city is shaped like a cube?

11. As we have considered, some of the very things you hope for right now are what God in his great love wants to pry from your fingers so that you can receive what is better from him. What might he want to pry from your fingers? What dream, hope, ambition, demand, expectation, possession, or person are you tightly clutching that he might ask you to surrender?

12. Surrendering the things we long for requires a kind of death—the death of a desire. And willfully choosing that death is hard to do. It requires us to believe—really believe!—that what God promises is even better. Can you remember a time in your life when God proved himself faithful to his promise of something better? Do you think he would do otherwise next time?

13. The end of Lewis’s The Last Battle is marvelous, isn’t it? A stanza in John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace” evokes a similar sentiment when it begins, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun . . .” Take a few moments to consider: what will all the things that have seemed so important to you over this last week look like in ten thousand years? Ten thousand years from now, what do you think you will want to have done this coming week?

14. In sixty seconds or less, explain the good news of Christianity.