Quotes from Scot McKnight

Pinchas Lapide, toward the end of his book that develops what he calls a theo-politics of loving small steps, finds in these words of Jesus six pillars that can help each of us reshape our culture from hate toward love: (1) Jesus is a realist who knows a world of evil; (2) Jesus has a faith that humans can change; (3) Jesus humanizes haters and their hatred; (4) Jesus calls us to imitate God; (5) Jesus knows this is a battle to fight; and (6) this theo-politics moves in small steps:

There is no kingdom mission apart from submitting to Jesus as King and calling others to surrender before King Jesus.

The church is the place to get the kind of help you need" and to "love you to wholeness.

There are four elements to our passage, and they need to be put in outline form perhaps to see how this passage is put together: First, the claim of fulfillment (5:17). Second, an elucidation of the claim (5:18). Third, the consequences of the elucidated claim (5:19). Fourth, an elucidation of the consequences (5:20).

Here's a more concrete, straightforward outline: First, Jesus fulfills the Torah and Prophets (5:17). Second, everything in the Torah is true (5:18). Third, everything therefore must be observed (5:19). Fourth, your obedience therefore must surpass the experts (5:20).

level than observing democratic institutions, it is Jesus' foreignness to sin that permits him to have a perfect conviction of the unique tragedy of our sinfulness. Since Jesus has perfectly clear eyes to see the tragedy of sin, his confession is utterly true.

Martin Luther King Jr., closing down one of his sermons in the early days in Montgomery, speaks of what it means to be a witness: Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, "Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?

No, his repentance parts the water so that our (weak) repentance can stand up in that water.

This idea, that we are to live in a way that reflects who God is, fills the pages of the New Testament (see 1 John 4:7—12). God's love—seen in sun and rain—is showered on all humans, both "the evil and the good" or "the righteous and the unrighteous," which stands for the "observant" and "nonobservant.

Jesus often wetted his finger to find the direction of the acceptable winds, and instead of going with them, headed straight against them.

In fact, Luther says the "great idol Mammon" has anointed "three trustees—rust, moths, and thieves"—that ought to remind us of the temporality of possessions.12

The Sermon on the Mount is the moral portrait of Jesus' own people. Because this portrait doesn't square with the church, this Sermon turns from instruction to indictment. To those ends—both instruction and indictment—this commentary has been written with the simple goal that God will use this book to lead us to become in real life the portrait Jesus sketched in the Sermon.