Publisher's Description: "Be thankful" (Colossians 3:15) is a recurring exhortation in the letters of the apostle Paul. No other New Testament writer gives such a sustained emphasis on thanksgiving--and yet, major modern studies of Paul fail to wrestle with it.

David Pao aims to rehabilitate this theme in this comprehensive and accessible study, a New Studies in Biblical Theology volume. He shows how, for Paul, thanksgiving is grounded in the covenantal traditions of salvation history. To offer thanks to God is to live a life of worship and to anticipate the future acts of God, all in submission to the lordship of Christ. Ingratitude to God is idolatry. Thanksgiving functions as a link between theology, including eschatology, and ethics.

Here Pao provides clear insights into the passion of an apostle who never fails to insist on the significance of both the gospel message and the response this message demands.

212 Pages
Published October 2002

About the Author: Pao (Ph.D., Harvard University) is assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has also written Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus (Mohr Siebeck/Baker).

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About This Series: New Studies in Biblical Theology is a series of monographs that address key issues in the discipline of biblical theology. Contributions to the series focus on one or more of three areas: (1) the nature and status of biblical theology, including its relations with other disciplines (e.g. historical theology, exegesis, systematic theology, historical criticism, narrative theology); (2) the articulation and exposition of the structure of thought of a particular biblical writer or corpus; and (3) the delineation of a biblical theme across all or part of the biblical corpora.

Above all, these monographs are creative attempts to help thinking Christians understand their Bibles better. The series aims simultaneously to instruct and to edify, to interact with the current literature, and to point the way ahead. In God’s universe, mind and heart should not be divorced: in this series we will try not to separate what God has joined together. While the notes interact with the best of scholarly literature, the text is uncluttered with untransliterated Greek and Hebrew, and tries to avoid too much technical jargon. The volumes are written within the framework of confessional evangelicalism, but there is always an attempt at thoughtful engagement with the sweep of the relevant literature.