In this accessible introduction to Christian ethics, the author advances a liberative, grace-centered, and justice- and peace-oriented vision of Christian life. Responding to key ethical questions, he applies the moral meaning and implications of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ to 21st century life, characterized by fluidity, fragmentation, division and violence. The book introduces covenant as the central drama and storyline of Scripture that culminates in the New Covenant of Jesus. It presents shalom (wholeness and flourishing of creation) as God's ultimate purpose and covenant as God's organizing mechanism of community
that mediates God's work of liberation and restoration. He proposes a creative model of Christian ethics based on this and its organizing patterns, reconstructing key categories of ethics (agency, norms, authority of Scripture, ethical discernment, etc.) and drawing out four practices-communicative engagement, just peacemaking, grassroots organizing, and nonviolence. The resulting new model of Christian ethics is inclusive, egalitarian, ecological, and justice- and peace-oriented, which overcomes the limitations of traditional covenantal ethics. He then systematically applies New Covenant ethics to the most urgent, controversial social issues of our time: democratic politics, economic ethics, creation care, criminal justice, race, sex and marriage, medicine, and war and peace. Through his deep inquiries into these topics, the author demonstrates a pattern of covenantal moral reasoning that undercuts the dominant neoliberal ethos of individualism and transactional relationship that influences Christian moral decisions. He concludes that as covenant has been at the heart of modern democracy, human rights, civil society, and civic formation, a renewed understanding of covenant centered in Jesus can help heal our broken society and imperiled planet and reorganize the fragmented human life in the era of globalization and digitization.