The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

by Jared C. Wilson

The problem with this perspective is evident when one actually reads the pages of the Gospels. In these pages we find Jesus equating lust with adultery and hatred with murder, promising to bring a sword instead of peace, commanding people to love those who are trying to kill them, telling a guy to skip his father’s funeral, calling men to quit their jobs, and cursing random fig trees. Most people understand that Jesus was shaking things up, but most people assume he was doing so to disrupt those other people. (He had a few things to say about that kind of thinking too.) There is virtually no part of Jesus’s life and ministry that isn’t vastly misunderstood. We have turned the incarnation into a once-a-year precious moment, the parables into moralistic fables, the miracles into production values. We’ve managed to somehow turn the message of the cross into one of mere martyrdom (which scandalizes almost nobody) and the reality of the resurrection into a metaphor for turning over a new leaf (which convinces fewer still).