Knowing Christ

This modern spiritual classic by Frank Sheed, the renowned author, publisher and lecturer, is brought back into print for the benefit of new generations of readers to develop a deeper, more profound knowledge of Jesus Christ. Sheed's concern with the Gospels is to come to know Christ as he actually lived among us, interacted with all the various people he encountered from his infancy to his passion and death--the God-man who was like us in all things except sin. Sheed has tried especially to see Our Lord in his effect upon others--seeing how they saw him, trying to see why they saw him so. There is much about Mary and Joseph in their task of bringing up a baby who was literally adorable; about John the Baptist; about Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalen; about Nicodemus; about people we meet only for a moment, like the man born blind and the owners of the drowned swine; and why the Pharisees, not only the worst of them but some of the best, would not accept Christ. Faith, doctrine, prayer, worship--all the content and consequences of Christian belief--rest on the person of Christ Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. In this classic study, Frank J. Sheed employs wide learning, theological sophistication, spiritual insight, and a lucid style to bring the reader to a personal encounter with the living Lord. To Know Christ Jesus has been justly called "one of the most satisfying studies of the Gospel ever made." Frank J. Sheed had a distinguished career as a publisher, lecturer, street-corner evangelist, and popular writer. He and his wife Maisie Ward were the founders of the publishing house Sheed & Ward. His many books include Christ in Eclipse, What Difference Does Jesus Make?, Theology and Sanity, and A Map of Life. "My concern with the Gospels is to see the Face which through all the centuries has looked out from them upon men. The object is not to prove something but to meet someone--that we should know Christ Jesus, know him as one person may know another. As Christians we love him, try to live by his law, would think it a glory to die for him. But how well do we know him?" -Frank Sheed, from the Foreword

A Compelling Defense of the Faith for Our Time Addressing the central question facing the church today—Is the Gospel true?—Dallas Willard offers an impassioned argument that Christian spiritual ideals are a reliable source of wisdom that should be granted the same authority as other intellectual disciplines such as science or philosophy. He shows how faith and reason are complementary and confronts the difficult issues of Christian pluralism (the challenge of other faiths) and how we can know God exists.

Alister McGrath, a widely acknowledged master of contemporary spirituality, has written a profound meditation on one of the most deceptively simple-sounding tenets of the Christian faith, the centrality of Christ in the life of his followers, in Knowing Christ. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to Christians of all denominations, Knowing Christ aims to stimulate a more direct and intimate relationship between Christ and the reader by engaging not just the intellect but, more important, the heart and imagination. It is a work of spirituality saturated with biblical texts and themes, but it also draws on the rich tradition in art and literature of Christian reflection on the centrality of Christ throughout the ages. The result is a lively, engaging, and always inspiring book of twenty-first century spirituality from one of the world's most popular and respected Christian writers, a book that will strengthen the faith of all who read it.

The first rule of combat is: know your enemy. We don’t talk a lot about sin these days. But maybe we should. The Puritans sure did—because they understood sin’s deceptive power and wanted to root it out of their lives. Shouldn’t we want the same? Though many books have been written on the “doctrine of sin,” few are as practical and applicable as this one. In Knowing Sin, Mark Jones puts his expertise in the Puritans to work by distilling the vast wisdom of our Christian forebears into a single volume that summarizes their thought on this vital subject. The result isn’t a theological tome to sit on your shelf and gather dust, but a surprisingly relevant book to keep by your bedside and refer to again and again. You’ll come to understand topics like: Sin’s Origin Sin’s Grief Sin’s Thoughts Sin’s Temptations Sin’s Misery Sin’s Secrecy and of course . . . Sin’s Defeat! None of us is free from the struggle with sin. The question isn’t whether we’re sinful, it’s what we’re doing about it. Thanks be to God, there is a path to overcoming sin. And the first step on that path to victory is knowing what we’re up against. Start Knowing Sin today!

This classic book asks what it is to know Jesus. It will enable thinking Christians to ask new questions about their faith, their reading of the New Testament, and the theology of redemption.

A timely and challenging collection of essays on Jesus Christ through the perspective of the slaves and the struggles of African Americans today.

We cannot know Jesus without knowing his story. Today the debate over who Jesus is rages on. Has the Bible bound Christians to a narrow and mistaken notion of Jesus? Should we listen to other gospels, other sayings of Jesus, that enlarge and correct a mistaken story? Is the real Jesus entangled in a web of the church's Scripture, awaiting liberation from our childhood faith so he might speak to our contemporary pluralistic world? To answer these questions we need to know what story Jesus claimed for himself. Christopher Wright is convinced that Jesus' own story is rooted in the story of Israel. In this revised and updated book he traces the life of Christ as it is illuminated by the Old Testament. And he describes God's design for Israel as it is fulfilled in the story of Jesus.