Quotes from Scot McKnight

There is one reason the gate is "narrow": it is demanding discipleship.

the "small" gate7 that leads to a narrow road in 7:14. The gate is narrow because it requires a person to turn from sin to follow Jesus, to do the will of God as taught by Jesus.

It is impossible for us to indwell this Story and not assume that narrative's perspective. Again, that perspective is God's perspective. It is not our perspective; it is God's perspective. It is God's perspective on us, not our perspective on others.

The test results also suggest that, even though we like to think we are becoming more like Jesus, the reverse is probably more the case: we try to make Jesus like ourselves. Which means, to one degree or another, we are all Rorschachers; we all project onto Jesus our own image.

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.

foreignness that gave him the ability to see the distinctiveness of America.

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.

What grabs us is the shocking disproportion between what we perceive to be the sin (anger) and its consequences (eternal punishment). In the words of R. T. France, "ordinary insults may betray an attitude of contempt which God takes extremely seriously.

Revelation "is not about a rapture out of this world but about faithful discipleship in this world.

The church God wants is one brimming with difference,

To love enemies breaks through the self barrier into divine space.

Second, there is a clear eschatological focus in the word "blessed."9 If a focus of the Old Testament was on present-life blessings for Torah observance, there is another dimension that deconstructs injustice and sets the tone for Israel's hope: the future blessing of God in the kingdom when all things will be put right; no text in the Old Testament fits more here than Isaiah 61.10 This second dimension shapes the Beatitudes because Jesus' focus is on future blessing.

Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.

I love my wife, Kris; I do not love Kris's words. I encounter Kris through her words, but I am summoned to love her, not her words. Sometimes I say to her, "I love what you say to me," but that is a form of expression. What I'm really saying is, "I love you, and your words communicate your love for me.