- Author: Dallas Willard and John Mark Comer
- Full Title: The Scandal of the Kingdom
- Tags: #Inbox #books
Highlights
- The “scandal of the kingdom” is God’s seemingly irrational outpouring of love and mercy on sinful humanity (Ephesians 2:4–7). (Location 353)
- As I explored the reasons for these differences, I gradually found that in many of our Christian circles, we substituted the message of Christ with a message about Christ. (Location 380)
- We shut this down when we turn his teaching into legalism. If we don’t understand how he taught, legalism will run rampant because we will interpret what he was saying as laws. This is a very common mistake, especially with the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. (Location 567)
- Culture is what people believe without thinking and act on without explanation or justification. (Location 594)
- Sometimes the behaviors Jesus used in his teaching are misinterpreted as commands when they were only intended as examples to reverse a prevailing presumption. For example, when he said, “Give to everyone who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42, paraphrased), he was not stating a general command for every situation. (Location 615)
- The result is that Jesus’ teachings are set aside because they are read as if he were giving a law. Instead, he is challenging our thinking by giving us an illustration of what a kingdom heart might do in that situation. (Location 621)
- Notice the two aspects of receiving the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens: the ability to hold on to what we have received (capacity) and our willingness to hear the message (receptivity). (Location 685)
- “Should we just give up on them?” And Jesus’ answer is, “No, we will give them what they can receive.” (Location 737)
- The parables and paradoxes Jesus presented required processing time. They helped people warm up to ideas they might have initially resisted. He gave them something they could keep working on without getting into a confrontational struggle. (Location 747)
Chapter 3 Why Parables?
- we are not going to understand God or his Word by being clever, intelligent, and scholarly, or even by studying very hard because the interaction of God with us through his Word is a personal matter. It depends on the condition of our hearts, our minds, and our lives. (Location 799)
- An essential investment of our life with God is to take care of our minds by cultivating our thoughts. The unkempt mind becomes obsessive, and then the will works from those frenzied thoughts.‡ (Location 896)
- When tempted, you have to say to yourself, There are some thoughts I will not think! (Location 898)
- In the stony ground, the people hear the Word and say, “Whoopee, this is wonderful!” But they don’t receive the Word at the deep level of their soul where it can penetrate the depths of their personality. (Location 924)
- The way our thoughts are directed affects our feelings before and apart from the point where they settle into the habits of our body and our social relationships. (Location 929)
- The expression “division of soul and spirit” is one of those delicious phrases that invites further study. The soul is fundamentally the life principle that is in the individual person, given to them by God, which makes their body and mind function. The spirit is the element that is especially given by God to hold the soul and body together. (Location 1080)
- We could say we have every reason not to be confident as we see murder, theft, and exploitation around us. Yet in the face of all that, we offer people the kingdom of God. There is no other hope. None. Jesus did not live in a world that was much different from ours. In many ways, it was more brutal than ours. And yet he spoke about the kingdom of God. (Location 1190)
- Grace is not opposed to effort (that’s an action), but rather to earning (that’s an attitude). (Location 1200)
- This means we don’t have to carry the load of making “it” happen. This is one of the most important things to understand. We don’t have to try to force people to do anything; we just speak the Word of the gospel, live as a disciple, lovingly teach, and be with people—and the growth will come. (Location 1205)
Chapter 5 The Greatest Opportunity Behold,
- One of the main ways we exalt ourselves is by blatantly or subtly letting our good qualities and our good deeds be made known. It can be a very poisonous thing. This is an area where the discipline of secrecy can be extremely helpful for (Location 1290)
- In all of these cases, these folks offered small, questionable obstacles, easily remedied, in order to say no to a great opportunity. It appears that each of them had something they thought was more important to do. What you can see, above all, is that they didn’t care about the person who was inviting them. This brings us to the basic question of fundamental importance: Do we love God and the kingdom of God? It may (Location 1362)
- One of the main things this parable is saying is that it’s the small but good things that defeat us. (Location 1381)
- Our problem is that we don’t truly see the greatness of Christ. In his book Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips laid his finger on the chronic problem of failing to grasp how big God is and our failure to understand the greatness of Christ.11 When Christians talk about Jesus, they struggle because they have a tiny Christ, a puny Christ who doesn’t compare well with others. (Location 1441)
- The reality is that everyone is following somebody. But people are typically not thinking about what is guiding their lives. Good questions for each of us to ask are, Who am I really following? Who do I look up to? Who are my role models? (Location 1447)
- To be Jesus’ disciple means learning from him how to lead my life as he would lead it if he were I—in my vocation, relationships, health, and status. (Location 1455)
- Discipleship to Jesus is not supposed to be miserable. Everything he commanded us to do is good for us and brings a good return for us. Yes, there are things we will have to give up, but remember the other side of the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price: we benefit immensely from the relationship. To “count the cost” doesn’t mean we just look at what we pay; we also look at what we gain. (Location 1460)
Chapter 6 Growing Together in the Kingdom Go
- Disciples of Jesus Christ wish to be like him, and they arrange and rearrange the details of their lives so they may be like him. (Location 1588)
- We aren’t doing justice to the facts when we just suppose that somehow Judas temporarily got off track when he decided to betray Jesus. He was there to embezzle funds (John 12:6) and probably to force a political uprising. (Location 1683)