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February 27 - December 26, 2021
the Christian teaching about moral goodness that derives from the principles laid down by Jesus does have a historical, theoretical, and practical claim to constitute the true body of moral knowledge. This is not said to encourage blind acceptance but precisely the opposite. It is said to encourage the toughest of testing for those teachings in all areas of thought and real life.
It is their confidence in Jesus that has placed them into a living union with The Kingdom Among Us. Their union with Jesus allows them now to be a part of his conspiracy to undermine the structures of evil, which continue to dominate human history, with the forces of truth, freedom, and love.
To “overcome evil with good,” in the apostle Paul’s words, is not just something for an individual effort here and there, is actually what will come to pass on this earth. The power of Jesus’ resurrection and his continuing life in human beings assures of this.
The visible side of your life will involve highly significant events that cannot be explained in terms of the visible world. The “spiritual” person is understood by no one, as Paul says (1 Cor. 2:15). That is because they are operating from the reality that is “in secret.”
repeated over and over, will gain the desired effect. The word battalo-gasate, translated “vain repetition” in the familiar King James Version (6:7), refers to senseless repetition, like that of one who stammers or is babbling. It has nothing to do with thoughtfully used liturgy.
the Sermon on the Mount we are not looking at laws, but at a life: a life in which the genuine laws of God eventually become naturally fulfilled.
Similarly, nothing he is teaching rules out the use of written prayers or liturgy. You can be just as “man pleasing” and “fleshly” in extemporaneous and informal religious exercises as in preestablished and formal ones—perhaps even more so—especially if you are proud of being informal.
“My food is to do what the One who sent me wants done and to accomplish his purposes” (John 4:34). Here, as with so many of the biblical statements keyed to the realities of God’s full world, we have to decide whether or not these are just “pretty words.” No doubt they mean something, many will say, but really nothing more than, possibly, some vaguely devout human condition or state of mind.
it seems to be a general law of social/historical development that institutions tend to distort and destroy the central function that brought them into existence. A
if we do value “mammon” as normal people seem to think we should, our fate is fixed. Our fate is anxiety. It is worry. It is frustration.
Eternity is, in part, what we are now living.
Soberly, when our trust is in things that are absolutely beyond any risk or threat, and we have learned from good sources, including our own experience, that those things are there, anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting things—like human approval and wealth—that were certain to let us down. Now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry, while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving.
The “world” (kosmos), as used in such New Testament statements, does not refer to the planet Earth and physical reality but to the historically developing organization of natural human abilities into the social and cultural structures within which we all must live. It does not refer to individuals as such. Of course Jesus was greatly loved by multitudes of individuals, as were his immediate and his later followers. But they were murdered nonetheless. And that is not uncommon today.
The “Western” segment of the church today lives in a bubble of historical illusion about the meaning of discipleship and the gospel. We are dominated by the essentially Enlightenment values that rule American culture: pursuit of happiness, unrestricted freedom of choice, disdain of authority. The prosperity gospels, the gospels of liberation, and the comfortable sense of “what life is all about” that fills the minds of most devout Christians in our circles are the result. How different is the gritty realization of James: “Friends of the world (kosmou) are enemies of God” (James 4:4) And John:
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For as the Master of knowledge, he here deals with personal and moral reality as it really is, and it really does have an order. We omit that order at our peril.
Third, the “correcting” to be done is not a matter of “straightening them out.” It is not a matter of hammering on their wrongness and on what is going to happen to them if they don’t change their ways. It is a matter of restoration. The aim in dealing with the one “caught” is to bring them back on the path of Jesus and to establish them there so their progress in kingdom character and living can continue. Nothing is to be done that is not useful to this specific end.
Anger and condemnation like vengeance, are safely left to God. We must beware of believing that it is okay for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things. It is not so simple as all that. I can trust Jesus to go into the temple and drive out those who were profiting from religion, beating them with a rope. I cannot trust myself to do so.
The decision to step aside from it, neither giving it nor receiving it, is a major turning point in one’s life.
If, as Christians often say, we really are “different” as followers of Christ, this is a point where it should be most obvious. We would not condemn, nor would we “receive” condemnation directed upon us.
But it really doesn’t matter much now what “caused” it and who “started” it. The fact is, we are now saddled, as a people, with a conceptualization of youth against age and age against youth, of generation against generation. There is a mixture of blame, misunderstanding, mistrust, condemnation, and even shame between age groups. We now have names that more or less strongly incorporate this mixture, such as “boomers,” “busters,” “Xers,” and so forth. And we have many other ways of clustering people into mutual condemnation groups. Heartfelt acceptance of the gospel of the Beatitudes alone can
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Condemnation is the board in our eye.
We do not have to—we cannot—surrender the valid practice of distinguishing and discerning how things are in order to avoid condemning others.
But that is a complicated task at best: not only because we may not know how to do it, which is often the case, but also because those we appraise may not know how to take our appraisal in any other way than as an attack on their person.
There is before God, Paul says, “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). And as for the condemnation we may receive from others, I endeavor not to receive it, to just ignore or drop it. I have learned to look at it only while simultaneously holding in full view the fact that Jesus, so far from condemning me, died for me and is right now intervening on my behalf in the heavens. This helps me stay out of countercondemnation, with its pain and anger.
“Who is this one condemning me,” I ask, “when set beside that One who does not condemn me?” I think I shall not be depressed about this condemnation of me, then, especially since I know that “nothing can separate me from the eternal love of Christ”
What we are actually doing with our proper condemnations and our wonderful solutions, more often than not, is taking others out of their own responsibility and out of God’s hands and trying to bring them under our control.
What is the wisdom of the snake? It is to be watchful and observant until the time is right to act. It is timeliness. One rarely sees a snake chasing its prey or thrashing about in an effort to impress it. But when it acts, it acts quickly and decisively. And as for the dove, it does not contrive. It is incapable of intrigue. Guile is totally beyond it. There is nothing indirect about this gentle creature. It is in this sense “harmless.” The importance scriptural teaching places on guilelessness is very great. One of the traits of the small child, greatest in the kingdom, is its inability to
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As I listen, they do not have to protect themselves from me, and they begin to open up. I may quickly begin to appear to them as a possible ally and resource. Now they begin to sense their problem to be the situation they have created, or possibly themselves. Because I am no longer trying to drive them, genuine communication, real sharing of hearts, becomes an attractive possibility. The healing dynamic of the request comes naturally into play. And this is the final illustration, the positive
To understand Jesus’ teachings, we must realize that deep in our orientations of our spirit we cannot have one posture toward God and a different one toward other people.
He was such an attractive person and such a powerful speaker that, from the human point of view, the leaders of the day killed him out of envy of his popularity
He was a master of humor and often used it to drive home the truths he imparted, as any good speaker does.7 But few today would put him on their guest list for a party—if it were really going to be a party. Just as we don’t think of Jesus as intelligent, so we don’t think of him as pleasant company, someone to enjoy being around. Is it any wonder that someone would rather not be his student?
think there is perhaps no other scene in all scripture that so forcefully illustrates the community of prayerful love as this response to Peter. How earnestly Jesus longed for Peter to come out right in his time of testing! But he left him free to succeed or fail before God and man—and, as it turned out, before all of subsequent human history. He used no condemnation, no shame, no “pearls of wisdom” on him. And he didn’t use supernatural power to rewire his soul or his brain. It was just this: “I have requested, concerning you, that your faith might not die.” And it corresponds perfectly to
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It assumes that our natural concerns will be naturally expressed, and that God will hear our prayers for ourselves as well as for others.
prayer is a matter of coming to a person other than oneself and asking that they do something that one cannot do oneself. It is coming to One who has repeatedly invaded human history and continues to do so. It is intelligently working with him to accomplish ends that fulfill his purposes in creation and in fostering human life upon the earth for a short while.
in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God.
To suppose that God and the individual communicate within the framework of God’s purposes for us, as explained earlier, and that because of the interchange God does what he had not previously intended, or refrains from something he previously had intended to do, is nothing against God’s dignity if it is an arrangement he himself has chosen.
So far from fitting the classical pattern of God as “the Unmoved Mover,” the God shown in the historical record is “the Most Moved Mover.”
this experience-based assurance that is expressed in the great psalms, such as 23, 34, 37, and 91. These and similar passages in the scriptures trouble many people because they seem to promise too much—to be, frankly, unrealistic. But they do not promise that we will have no trials, as human beings understand trials. They promise, instead, totally unbroken care, along with God-given adequacy to whatever happens.
Who teaches you? Whose disciple are you? Honestly. One thing is sure: You are somebody’s disciple. You learned how to live from somebody else.
Today, especially in Western cultures, we prefer to think that we are “our own person.” We make up our own minds. But that is only because we have been mastered by those who have taught us that we do or should do
The narrow gate is not, as so often assumed, doctrinal correctness. The narrow gate is obedience—and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it.
his preferred way is to speak, to communicate: thus the absolute centrality of scripture to our discipleship. And this, among other things, is the reason why an extensive use of solitude and silence is so basic for growth of the human spirit, for they form an appropriate context for listening and speaking to God.
So the kingdom of the heavens, from the practical point of view in which we all must live, is simply our experience of Jesus’ continual interaction with us in history and throughout the days, hours, and moments of our earthly existence.
Heaven, we have seen, is right now, right here, around our bodies, hovering beside our heads—“in Him we live and move and have our being.” Eternity is not something waiting to happen, something that will commence later. It is now here. Time runs its course within eternity.
It is noteworthy that, when he first sent them out to announce and to manifest, he did not charge them to teach.
We ask to see him, and not just as he is represented in the Gospels, but also as he has lived and lives through history and now, and in his reality as the one who literally holds the universe in existence.
And if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
with the disappearance of Jesus as teacher—replaced by the mere sacrificial Lamb or else the prophet of social and personal “liberation”—the prospects for the making of disciples to him become very dim indeed. You cannot have students if you have no teacher.
The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us.
It is now understood to be a part of the “good news” that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins.
