Books I keep returning to. Studies I've put together. Things I'm building. Occasional thoughts written down.
Roberts writes for teachers and preachers, and the Story of God series structure — Listen to the Story, Explain the Story, Live the Story — keeps application in view without shortcutting the exegesis. He reads Ephesians as Paul's vision of the church as God's new humanity, reconciled across the deepest dividing lines, and consistently locates that vision inside the larger biblical narrative. Strong for lesson prep.
Campbell brings his expertise in Greek linguistics and Pauline theology to bear on Ephesians. His commentary is attentive to the letter's structure, its theological argument, and its implications for the church's identity and mission. Reformed, but otherwise strong.
Stott's volume in the Bible Speaks Today series does what Stott always does best: clear, theologically rich exposition that bridges the academic and the devotional. His treatment of Ephesians captures the cosmic scope of Paul's vision for the church while remaining practically grounded.
Middleton dismantles the popular assumption that the Bible teaches an otherworldly hope — souls escaping to heaven — and recovers the scriptural vision of cosmic renewal. Drawing from Genesis to Revelation, he argues that God's redemptive purpose has always been the restoration and transformation of creation, not its abandonment. Essential reading for healthly eschatology.
Bates makes a compelling case that the Greek pistis — typically translated "faith" — is better understood as allegiance to Jesus as king. This reframes the gospel not as a transaction but as a proclamation of Jesus's enthronement, and pistis as the embodied loyalty that responds to that proclamation. A paradigm-shifting read for anyone wrestling with the relationship between faith and works.
Sloan argues that Jesus's conflicts over the law were not attacks on legalism, nationalism, or empty externalism — the categories scholarship has long reached for — but interpretive disputes conducted from within Second Temple Judaism, framed by his announcement that Israel's covenantal restoration had arrived. He reads the temple action and the crucifixion in that same restorationist key, then traces the continuity forward into Acts and Paul's letters. A careful corrective to a good deal of inherited assumption about Jesus and Torah.