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The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective
When was the last time you heard a sermon on the theological importance of play? What do rest, eating, studying, and sex have to do with the kingdom of God? Strangely, although these activities generate a great deal of interest and take up a considerable portion of our lives, they seldom receive detailed theological or ethical discussion from a biblical point of view.
In The Rest of Life Ben Witherington explores these subjects in the light of biblical teaching about the kingdom of God and the Christian hope for the future, showing why the normal activities of life should reflect kingdom values. In other words, "all of our activities should be doxological -- to the glory of God and for the edification of others." This topical study focuses on practical, everyday issues in six accessible, concise chapters, making it ideal for individual study and small-group discussion.
In The Rest of Life Ben Witherington explores these subjects in the light of biblical teaching about the kingdom of God and the Christian hope for the future, showing why the normal activities of life should reflect kingdom values. In other words, "all of our activities should be doxological -- to the glory of God and for the edification of others." This topical study focuses on practical, everyday issues in six accessible, concise chapters, making it ideal for individual study and small-group discussion.
158 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
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About the author
Ben Witherington III
129 books151 followersBen Witherington III (PhD, University of Durham) is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and is on the doctoral faculty at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author or coauthor of more than thirty books, including The Jesus Quest, The Paul Quest, and The New York Times bestseller The Brother of Jesus. He has appeared on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 12, 2020
Such good stuff! Be forewarned, because this is in a series, at times the author goes off on what feel like book reviews (Tonstad and Bell for instance), but overall, this is well thought out, and helpful (though academic).
Notes and quotes:
What Paul and NT writers call us to is to live in the light of the future, the kingdom that has come, is coming, and shall come, and this should shape how we live out the normal activities of a Christian life.
The author purports that sabbath keeping is now longer valid in the new covenant, and in light of the coming kingdom, yet rest and sleep and play/recreation are necessary and gifts of God. (We need rest and restoration but this does not require keeping Sabbath)
To a real extent, a person’s theology of rest is going to be determine or affected at least by his/her theology of work.
Connection between Genesis 2:1-2 and Jesus: “It is finished”. On the cross, Jesus’ death finished correcting what was wrong, just as at creation the finishing of what was right and good has happened.
Study that shows those who work with a large mental component (writers, thinkers, philosophers, etc) use 40%+ of their calories for brain work are likely to need far more rest and sleep than those who do manual labor (carpenters, stonemasons, landscapers).
Rest has an ordinary sense and theological sense. We have peace from living in Christ’s presence that gives rest from worry about salvation (freedom of though around needing to secure it one’s self, etc).
When we die our bodies no longer need rest in the mundane sense. It’s ironic that we put RIP on gravestones. Christians haven’t laid down to pleasant dreams, they have gone on into the living presence of God and have become much more alive, indeed eternally so. Nor are the saints snoozing in the afterlife. There is no doctrine of soul sleep in the NT (Rev. 6).
You’ll find plenty in the Bible about rest and sleep, but nothing about retirement, at say 65 from lifelong vocation. John Wesley, Lord don’t let me live to be useless. Retirement is a modern, Western, industrialized-nation, post-world war II idea. And it’s a bad idea.
The kingdom is not just about rest, it’s about restoration and restitution. The question is, What have we done not merely to find rest, but to give it, not merely to experience restoration but to share, not merely to obtain forgiveness but to grant it, not merely to know wholeness and holiness, but to share it? Are we like Christ, wounded healers?
Worship as defined by jesus is not about sacred space or times or days but about worship in spirit and truth, whenever and wherever; for every day, in the proper sense, is the Lord’s day, and the wall of partition between the sacred and secular has been broken down by the death and resurrection of Jesus. All of life is to be hallowed, all of our activities should be doxological (for the glory of God) and for the edification of others. Thus, our resting time is also our sacred time.
Remember your mortal frame, your weakness, your vulnerability, your creaturely needs, Remember you are not God in your life, nor Lord over your life.
Jurgen Moltmann stresses that in playing we anticipate our liberation, a time when we study war no more…Play foreshadows the joy of the eschaton where all manner of drudgery and disease and decay and death will be left behind. Play is a celebration of life lived to the fullest.
Worship’s function is not to entertain, nor to rev up the troops, or provide an interlude between tedious and turgid discourses. Its function is to help us all be caught up in love and wonder and praise of God, so that our whole selves are worshiping. Thus, worship is a form of play (music, visual arts, dance, drama)
Play is not just a sign of the future, but a symbol of it, participating in advance in that to which it points (Peter Berger). There is much reason to celebrate, even now, in advance of the fullness of the Kingdom’s coming. Playing, singing, dancing, is tuning up and practicing for eternity, for kingdom come, for becoming God’s very music, and in small measure we experience the joy and ecstasy and music of that great communion with the One who is our joy, in advance when we do so.
Regarding food, we are to take care of ourselves, proper diet and exercise, care about the poor, do something practical about that sense of compassion, and be a good witness to others that the body is a gift from God and indeed the dwelling place of God’s spirit.
We need Christians who consciously think through their lives and de-enculturate themselves from many of the values of the dominant Western culture, including consumerism and conspicuous consumption, not to mention the disease of the health and wealth gospel.
There will be eating and drinking in the Kingdom. Why? Because meals are one of the main ways communion and koinonia happen and intimate relationships are built. Eating was meant to be a social activity.
Study affects one’s spiritual health! (Hebrews 5-6)
He says “orthotomuounta” doesn’t mean rightly dividing, but cutting straight to the point in one’s preaching, not beating around the bush, but proclaiming the straight stuff.
In an age where people don’t want to read, we ought to go back to memorization and recitation methods; stop entertaining congregations and make sure they have actually learned the script of the scriptures.
Song of songs is a moderately steamy love poem about a royal ruler and his love for his girl. If this embarrasses us, then it tells us that we are out of line with the biblical view of sex.
The idolater is like a man who visits prostitutes, he wants the pleasure without the responsibility. To worship but reserve the power to live as he pleases.
Sex is for the bonding of husband and wife in one-flesh union, propagation of the species, and enhance the pleasure and joy of fulfilling the creation order mandate and doing one’s conjugal duty or privilege. In the Kingdom, since decay and death, suffering and sin, loneliness and anxiety will be gone, all the usual impediments to union and communion between persons will be removed, and between God and humans. We will live in the presence of God and never doubt that we are loved, never again feel unloved, never feel a need for a re-bonding, as we will never feel apart from each other anymore. Intercourse will be superseded by something ever more wonderful.
If we have the Kingdom perspective, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, even when all is not going well, humanly speaking.
Notes and quotes:
What Paul and NT writers call us to is to live in the light of the future, the kingdom that has come, is coming, and shall come, and this should shape how we live out the normal activities of a Christian life.
The author purports that sabbath keeping is now longer valid in the new covenant, and in light of the coming kingdom, yet rest and sleep and play/recreation are necessary and gifts of God. (We need rest and restoration but this does not require keeping Sabbath)
To a real extent, a person’s theology of rest is going to be determine or affected at least by his/her theology of work.
Connection between Genesis 2:1-2 and Jesus: “It is finished”. On the cross, Jesus’ death finished correcting what was wrong, just as at creation the finishing of what was right and good has happened.
Study that shows those who work with a large mental component (writers, thinkers, philosophers, etc) use 40%+ of their calories for brain work are likely to need far more rest and sleep than those who do manual labor (carpenters, stonemasons, landscapers).
Rest has an ordinary sense and theological sense. We have peace from living in Christ’s presence that gives rest from worry about salvation (freedom of though around needing to secure it one’s self, etc).
When we die our bodies no longer need rest in the mundane sense. It’s ironic that we put RIP on gravestones. Christians haven’t laid down to pleasant dreams, they have gone on into the living presence of God and have become much more alive, indeed eternally so. Nor are the saints snoozing in the afterlife. There is no doctrine of soul sleep in the NT (Rev. 6).
You’ll find plenty in the Bible about rest and sleep, but nothing about retirement, at say 65 from lifelong vocation. John Wesley, Lord don’t let me live to be useless. Retirement is a modern, Western, industrialized-nation, post-world war II idea. And it’s a bad idea.
The kingdom is not just about rest, it’s about restoration and restitution. The question is, What have we done not merely to find rest, but to give it, not merely to experience restoration but to share, not merely to obtain forgiveness but to grant it, not merely to know wholeness and holiness, but to share it? Are we like Christ, wounded healers?
Worship as defined by jesus is not about sacred space or times or days but about worship in spirit and truth, whenever and wherever; for every day, in the proper sense, is the Lord’s day, and the wall of partition between the sacred and secular has been broken down by the death and resurrection of Jesus. All of life is to be hallowed, all of our activities should be doxological (for the glory of God) and for the edification of others. Thus, our resting time is also our sacred time.
Remember your mortal frame, your weakness, your vulnerability, your creaturely needs, Remember you are not God in your life, nor Lord over your life.
Jurgen Moltmann stresses that in playing we anticipate our liberation, a time when we study war no more…Play foreshadows the joy of the eschaton where all manner of drudgery and disease and decay and death will be left behind. Play is a celebration of life lived to the fullest.
Worship’s function is not to entertain, nor to rev up the troops, or provide an interlude between tedious and turgid discourses. Its function is to help us all be caught up in love and wonder and praise of God, so that our whole selves are worshiping. Thus, worship is a form of play (music, visual arts, dance, drama)
Play is not just a sign of the future, but a symbol of it, participating in advance in that to which it points (Peter Berger). There is much reason to celebrate, even now, in advance of the fullness of the Kingdom’s coming. Playing, singing, dancing, is tuning up and practicing for eternity, for kingdom come, for becoming God’s very music, and in small measure we experience the joy and ecstasy and music of that great communion with the One who is our joy, in advance when we do so.
Regarding food, we are to take care of ourselves, proper diet and exercise, care about the poor, do something practical about that sense of compassion, and be a good witness to others that the body is a gift from God and indeed the dwelling place of God’s spirit.
We need Christians who consciously think through their lives and de-enculturate themselves from many of the values of the dominant Western culture, including consumerism and conspicuous consumption, not to mention the disease of the health and wealth gospel.
There will be eating and drinking in the Kingdom. Why? Because meals are one of the main ways communion and koinonia happen and intimate relationships are built. Eating was meant to be a social activity.
Study affects one’s spiritual health! (Hebrews 5-6)
He says “orthotomuounta” doesn’t mean rightly dividing, but cutting straight to the point in one’s preaching, not beating around the bush, but proclaiming the straight stuff.
In an age where people don’t want to read, we ought to go back to memorization and recitation methods; stop entertaining congregations and make sure they have actually learned the script of the scriptures.
Song of songs is a moderately steamy love poem about a royal ruler and his love for his girl. If this embarrasses us, then it tells us that we are out of line with the biblical view of sex.
The idolater is like a man who visits prostitutes, he wants the pleasure without the responsibility. To worship but reserve the power to live as he pleases.
Sex is for the bonding of husband and wife in one-flesh union, propagation of the species, and enhance the pleasure and joy of fulfilling the creation order mandate and doing one’s conjugal duty or privilege. In the Kingdom, since decay and death, suffering and sin, loneliness and anxiety will be gone, all the usual impediments to union and communion between persons will be removed, and between God and humans. We will live in the presence of God and never doubt that we are loved, never again feel unloved, never feel a need for a re-bonding, as we will never feel apart from each other anymore. Intercourse will be superseded by something ever more wonderful.
If we have the Kingdom perspective, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, even when all is not going well, humanly speaking.
September 12, 2022
I really appreciated what this book had to say about each subject. It helps bring both needed balance and correction depending on your own struggles that I know I found beneficial to the point that I’m thankful to have found this book.
These topics include things such as allowing yourself to “play” through a hobby you have (I’ve always struggled with guilt on that and his argument on the important of play majorly helped that!), or caring for your body through eating right, getting proper sleep, etc.
The book also mentions about how people would have learned God’s Word in the time of Jesus and the early church. That part was so helpful and made me think over my own appreciate to studying the Scriptures.
The book does pull from Rob Bell’s Sex God in the fifth chapter, but as far as I can tell, the notes and quotes from it are ones that are biblical and/or correction is brought to those that are not. So I would say, don’t let that turn you off reading this book because it’s not worth skipping it for that reason at all! I was surprised to glean so much from this chapter too despite this.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book!
These topics include things such as allowing yourself to “play” through a hobby you have (I’ve always struggled with guilt on that and his argument on the important of play majorly helped that!), or caring for your body through eating right, getting proper sleep, etc.
The book also mentions about how people would have learned God’s Word in the time of Jesus and the early church. That part was so helpful and made me think over my own appreciate to studying the Scriptures.
The book does pull from Rob Bell’s Sex God in the fifth chapter, but as far as I can tell, the notes and quotes from it are ones that are biblical and/or correction is brought to those that are not. So I would say, don’t let that turn you off reading this book because it’s not worth skipping it for that reason at all! I was surprised to glean so much from this chapter too despite this.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book!
February 14, 2025
In conclusion, we need more theological reflections on the rest of life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex, watching Movies, Cooking, Cleaning, Exercising, and everything else we do between now and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Just look at Netflix. You have shows on cleaning, fixing old cars, any activity can be made in reality TV. So I think it’s possible for us to have a theological reflections on every manner of activities.
And today’s book offers us a start towards an extraordinary perspective on our ordinary life.
Full Review: https://readingandreaders.com/podcast...
Just look at Netflix. You have shows on cleaning, fixing old cars, any activity can be made in reality TV. So I think it’s possible for us to have a theological reflections on every manner of activities.
And today’s book offers us a start towards an extraordinary perspective on our ordinary life.
Full Review: https://readingandreaders.com/podcast...
September 20, 2022
Scattered but mostly insightful
Book reads a little bit like a series of essays…but the topics of those essays (mentioned in the sub-title) are unique and understudied overall in Christianity. Sometimes he’s ultra-orthodox and others he’s oddly brusque. But again, it’s a 4-star read so it was worth the time…especially for the treatment of Multmann’s nearly lost work, The Theology of Play.
Book reads a little bit like a series of essays…but the topics of those essays (mentioned in the sub-title) are unique and understudied overall in Christianity. Sometimes he’s ultra-orthodox and others he’s oddly brusque. But again, it’s a 4-star read so it was worth the time…especially for the treatment of Multmann’s nearly lost work, The Theology of Play.
July 16, 2018
Some interesting discussion on the 5 topics listed in the subtitle. In the chapter on sex, he spends, interestingly, the first half of the chapter interacting with Rob Bell's Sex God. He writes in his chapter on eating: "... eating seems to have been ‘declassified’ as an ethical issue among most modern Christians"; then he seeks to reclassify it. Easy writing style.
February 10, 2020
The chapter on rest is an attack of a Seventh Day Adventist scholar. The chapter on play is a glorification of sports. The chapter on study is an admonition to memorize the Bible. The chapter on eating was a condemnation of obesity. And the chapter on sex is a summary of Bell’s “Sex God” and some other random thoughts. Occasionally pedantic. Often demeaning. Rarely insightful.
June 23, 2024
1.5-2 stars.
I only finished about 75% of the book. Didn’t think it would be worth my time to continue to push through.
In my opinion, the only good part of the book was the section on Play. That section was actually really good. I appreciated it greatly.
So, I would suggest reading that section, but idk about the rest loll
I only finished about 75% of the book. Didn’t think it would be worth my time to continue to push through.
In my opinion, the only good part of the book was the section on Play. That section was actually really good. I appreciated it greatly.
So, I would suggest reading that section, but idk about the rest loll
October 4, 2017
Skimmed through most of this and mostly focused on Witherington's chapter on sex. It is a strange combination of a review of Rob Bell's book on sex (Sex God) and exegesis of the Pastoral Epistles, particularly the qualifications for bishops and deacons.
Read
May 1, 2020A nice little book that touches on subjects often neglected by theologians.
If thought of as a set of essays, I'd say his chapters on play and studying were the best. The sex chapter was good in parts but poorly organized.
If thought of as a set of essays, I'd say his chapters on play and studying were the best. The sex chapter was good in parts but poorly organized.
September 2, 2023
The chapter on Play was REALLY good! Everything else, however, was not as good. There are two lengthy portions of the book which basically amounts to Witherington's commentary on another book. Then the majority of what he says is either basic or something I find myself disagreeing with.
January 12, 2025
An excellent introductory biblical doctrine on the subject matters of rest, play, eating, studying, and sex. Easy enough to read and follow and would whet your appetite to dig deeper and read other resources fully dedicated to each of the topics tackled by Witherington.
August 6, 2017
Really enjoyed this book. It shed light on some important topics in Christian light with plenty of reference to scripture. This author knows what he is talking about.
Currently reading
October 16, 2017I just finished chapter one, and I reviewed it over at therealdaniel.wordpress.com
May 5, 2022
Jumbled, mostly full of the authors opinion, and lacked a clear through line that would have held the book together
February 26, 2013
This is a very good book that is best summarized in Witherington's own words, "We must ... live our lives in this age with one eye on the horizon, letting the eschatological light of the Kingdom reflect back on how we view the normal activities of life, and allowing that light to transfigure and transform both the way we think about all these normal activities of life, and the way we act when we carry out these activities" (151).
Witherington has written a great theological survey of topics we typically don't think theologically about - rest, play, eating, studying, and sex. He offers great insight and a Kingdom perspective to aspects of life one might consider mundane.
I'm not sure this is a book for the average person in the pew. It gets quite technical at times, delving into Hebrew and Greek word usage and long exegetical arguments. This is great fodder for sermon or Bible study material for pastors looking to get their congregations thinking with a Kingdom-oriented theology toward all of life.
We are planning to use The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective for the basis of an upcoming sermon series.
Witherington has written a great theological survey of topics we typically don't think theologically about - rest, play, eating, studying, and sex. He offers great insight and a Kingdom perspective to aspects of life one might consider mundane.
I'm not sure this is a book for the average person in the pew. It gets quite technical at times, delving into Hebrew and Greek word usage and long exegetical arguments. This is great fodder for sermon or Bible study material for pastors looking to get their congregations thinking with a Kingdom-oriented theology toward all of life.
We are planning to use The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective for the basis of an upcoming sermon series.
November 17, 2013
Good book overall, but there is great switching in styles of writing from that aimed at laity to much deeper discussions of biblical interpretation and theology. I enjoyed the book and was quite informed by it, though at times it drug unnecessarily on about topics (see long argument that chapter 1 consist of). I'd recommend it with the caution to stick with it because overall it's a needed work by an admired author/doctor of The Word.
December 31, 2015
Unfortunately, not as good as I thought it would be. A collection of diverse essays on 'the rest of life' which didn't hinge together as well as I thought. I ended up skimming the book. I will likely still read his book on work, however.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews