Quotes from Scot McKnight

We in the Western world are obsessed with our individual relationship with God, which leads us to read the Bible as morsels of blessings and promises and as Rorschach inkblots. But reading the Bible as Story opens up a need so deep we sometimes aren't aware we need it: oneness with others under the King who rules his Kingdom.

This has to be emphasized, because today too many of us emphasize kingdom but ignore the Holy Spirit and Pentecost and church—as if kingdom meant nothing more than justice and peace and love in the world (or in their country or in their state or in their local village).

It is far too easy for Protestants to take the sting from Jesus' words by thinking what Jesus was really saying was not that his followers had to do more, but that they were to trust in the righteousness of Christ while the scribes and Pharisees were trusting in themselves. Or to say the Pharisees were externally righteous only. For this view, "surpasses" is really about kind of righteousness and not degree.

Oneness cannot be achieved just between God and self; rather, oneness involves God, self, and others, and the world around us.

One of my favorite kingdom preachers is Minneapolis pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church, Efrem Smith.

As Dale Allison correctly points out, "We have here [in the Beatitudes] not commonsense wisdom born of experience but eschatological promise which foresees the unprecedented: the evils of the present will be undone and the righteous will be confirmed with reward."12 This blessing, while its focus is future, begins now (Matt 11:6; 13:16).

Until we learn to read the Bible as Story, we will not know how to get anything out of the Bible for daily living.

God's kingdom happens when human beings are empowered by God's Spirit to do God's kingdom work in the shape of a new community.

Jesus is probing into the heart of his followers to ask them if they value life more than kingdom and righteousness.

In his incarnate life, when he becomes one with us, Jesus recapitulates, or relives, Israel's (our) history. He becomes one of us. In fact, he becomes all of us in one divine-human being. Jesus is all Adam and Eve were designed to be, and more; he loves the Father absolutely and he loves himself absolutely and he loves others absolutely and he loves the world absolutely. He is the Oneness Story in one person.

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. Bible readers, especially pastors (and commenters on blogs), inevitably begin to think like God about ourselves and others.

Of the many ways to describe or articulate the Torah, two are pertinent in our text: one can either multiply laws so as to cover all possible situations, or one can reduce the law to its essence.

This otherness problem is what the gospel "fixes," and the story of the Bible is the story of God's people struggling with otherness and searching for oneness.

Jesus himself was law observant, but what distinguished his praxis was that he did so through the law of double love. To do the Torah through love is to do all the Torah says and more.

Here's how to determine God's will for your life: Go wherever your gifts will be exploited the most.

Yet we cannot fail to observe that the Golden Rule of 7:12 officially closes the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon and summarizes the essence of the Sermon.

The only thing that "exploits your gifts" or that taxes you to the limits or that fills your soul or that challenges you to live the dream the most is following Jesus. Some days you may do pretty well; other days you may flub up.

Sometimes in our zeal to "apply" a text, we fail to read the text in its context. And more often than we may all care to admit, our frustrations over how to apply a text can be completely resolved with a more accurate interpretation.

Prayer is not informing God of something unknown but drawing oneself in the divine life of the Trinity and into the very mission of God in this world — this God loves us and invites us into his presence with our petitions.

For Jesus the word kingdom meant "God's dream for this world come true.

There is nothing complex about this most simple of moral maxims; its difficulty is in the doing, not in the knowing.

Every Jew in Galilee and everywhere else, and I mean every one of them, when they heard Jesus say "the kingdom," looked for three things: king, land, citizens.

As the priest and Levite thought they could follow the Torah and not offer aid to the stranded, dying man (Luke 10:25–37), so Isaiah's community thought they could abstain from food and pass by the needs of others on their way to God. Fasting never stands alone. Fasting, if it is genuine, brings us into a communal spirituality because it is a response to the lack of justice in the community.

If we add all this together, we get something like this: a "blessed" person is someone who, because of a heart for God, is promised and enjoys God's favor regardless of that person's status or countercultural condition.