Quotes from Scot McKnight

Deceit finds its way into every religion, including Christianity. In fact, deceit was at work from the very beginning. Two sorts of deceit are found in our verses: some leaders deceive the people of God (7:15—20), while some deceive themselves (7:21—23).

Calling God "Father" (Abba) is not unique to Jesus,15 and neither is it a revelation of a religious profundity that Judaism had not yet comprehended (what can be more intimate than Hosea 1—2 or 11:1—4?). Instead of its being unique, "Father" is characteristic of Jesus but would not have been at all offensive in Judaism.

These common approaches fail the words of Jesus because in the Sermon Jesus calls his followers to do what he teaches. Those who don't do what he says, in fact, are condemned as foolish.

Let your life speak.

Thus, see Old Testament texts like Pss 68:5; 103:13—14; Isa 63:15—16; Jer 31:9, 20, the famous avinu malkeinu ("Our Father, our King") lines in classic Jewish prayers, like Ahabah Rabah and The Litany for the New Year, and texts like 4Q372 fragment 1:16.

As Tom Wright describes it, Mary's Song is the "gospel before the gospel" and it "goes with a swing and a clap and a stamp." Mary's Song is an expression of gratitude for God morphing her bad reputation into a messianic vocation. But her past is even more than this unfortunate label.

The martyrs who sing the new ode of Moses sing a song not of their own liberation from Egypt or their own salvation but of the impact of their witness on the world around them. Their witness led a mass of people to praise the God on the throne and his Lamb. John's ode is like Moses's ode, but it's also altogether new at the same time.

as life is a story, so also is spiritual formation a story—a journey from earth to heaven.

even Jesus was resurrected with his wounds." I like that: we, too, are raised to a vocation with the wounds of our past intact, visible, and a witness to what God can do.

The ways of reading Revelation that spend time speculating about the questions When will all this happen? and Who is the antichrist? fail the church in discipleship. Instead of a discipleship that teaches us to discern Babylon among us and shows us how to live in Babylon as dissidents instead of conformists, these speculative questions teach Christians how to wait for the escape from Babylon.

John's core chapters (6—19) tell us, and this concludes our observations, that the three times seven judgments are disciplines designed by God to woo people from the way of the Dragon to the way of the Lamb.

1) If disciples really trust God, they will live as if treasures in heaven really matter; (2) those whose perspective is distorted by materialism are blinded to God's truth; and (3) one either loves God or money, and those who think they can love both are idolaters.