Quotes from Gregory Boyd

The kingdom of God is not a Christian version of the kingdom of the world. It is, rather, a holy alternative to all versions of the kingdom of the world, and everything hangs on kingdom people appreciating this uniqueness and preserving this holiness.

The most important anchor, and therefore our "greatest help and blessing," St. Teresa noted, is the fact that in Christ God became a man, hence someone we can concretely envision in our minds when we pray.

The way to focus our minds in prayer, therefore, is to picture mentally the one to whom we pray and the matter about which we pray.

This is the foundation of all sin: the lie that God is untrustworthy, the lie that God is not altogether loving and that he doesn't have our best interests in mind.

An honest examination of Scripture leads to the conclusion that the Bible is thoroughly inspired but also thoroughly human. The human element in Scripture reflects the limitations and fallibility that are a part of all human perspectives and all human thinking. This human element can be clearly seen in at least three areas of Scripture.

If we only love those who agree with us, we are in fact not loving others at all; we are only loving the (assumed) "rightness" of our own ideas!

The challenge, then, is not first and foremost to love like Christ. The challenge is to live in Christ's love, for only then can we love as Christ loved. And as with everything else about our lives, this can only be done in each present moment.

our knowledge of God, our salvation, and our spiritual growth all depend on our keeping our eyes fixed singularly on Jesus Christ.

Whenever people are separated by racism, the church is to work to manifest the one new humanity Jesus died to create (Eph 2:14).

Love is the all-or-nothing of the kingdom of God. Above all we are to love (Col. 3:14; 1 Peter 4:8). Everything we do is to be done in love and, thus, communicate love (1 Cor. 16:14). We are to imitate God by living in Christlike love (Eph. 5:1—2), and if we do this, we fulfill the whole law (Matt. 22:37—40; Rom. 13:8—10). If we lack this, everything else we do is devoid of kingdom value, however impressive it might otherwise be (1 Cor. 13:1—3).

All acts of God proceed from the transcendent Father, through his Son or Word or Image, in the power of  his immanent Holy Spirit. And this is true both during the Incarnation.

This means that to be considered a child of the Father in heaven by Jesus, one had to be willing to break the OT commands to retaliate.