The Divine Conspiracy: Chapter Five

~ Chapter Five ~

The Rightness of the Kingdom Heart:

Beyond the Goodness of Scribes and Pharisees

“Having illustrated concretely, in situations of grimy realism (Matt. 5:20-44), what it is like to be a really good person—one who has found the kingdom and is living in its ways—Jesus then proceeds, in the immediately following verses, to give his overall picture of moral fulfillment and beauty in the kingdom of the heavens. It is one of heartfelt love toward all, including those who would be happy if we dropped dead. This love does not consist of acts and projects but is a pervasive condition of vision, joy, and love in which we habitually reside. It is a love of the same quality as God’s love (Matt. 5:45-48). We are to be ‘perfect’ or whole as our Father, the one in the heavens, is perfect and whole.” [145-146]

“The aim of the Sermon [on the Mount] is to help people come to hopeful and realistic terms with their lives here on earth by clarifying, in concrete terms, the nature of the kingdom into which they are now invited by Jesus’ call: ‘Repent, for life in the kingdom of the heavens is now one of your options.’ The separate parts of the discourse are to be interpreted in the light of this single purpose. They are not to be read as one disconnected statement after another. One must discern the overall plan of life within which the separate parts of the discourse make sense. So far from being additional laws to crush us or show us we can’t make it on our own (of course we can’t!), the separate parts are distinct perspectives on the sweet life of love and power, of truth and grace, that those who count on Jesus can even now lead in his kingdom. ‘The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus the Anointed’ (John 1:17). His teachings illustrate how those alive in the kingdom can live, through the days and hours of their ordinary existence, on their way to the full world of God.” [149-150]

“Is it… hard to do the things with which Jesus illustrates the kingdom heart of love? Or the things that Paul says love does? It is very hard indeed if you have not been substantially transformed in the depths of your being, in the intricacies of your thoughts, feelings, assurances, and dispositions, in such a way that you are permeated with love. Once that happens, then it is not hard. What would be hard is to act the way you acted before.” [204]

On the Law

“[The] law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.” [158]

“[Jesus] avoids the futility… of making law ultimate. Wrong action, he well knew, is not the problem in human existence, though it is constantly taken to be so. It is only a symptom, which from time to time produces vast evils in its own right. Going to the source of action is a major part of what he has in mind by saying that one must ‘go beyond the goodness of scribes and Pharisees.’ One must surpass humanly contrived religious respectability ‘if one is to mesh their life with the flow of the kingdom of the heavens’ (5:20).” [156]

“What we are looking at in the contemporary Western world is precisely what [Jesus] foretold. We have heard him. For almost two millennia we have heard him…. But we have chosen to not do what he said. He warned that this would make us ‘like a silly man who built his house on a sand foundation. The rain poured down, and the rivers and winds beat upon that house, and it collapsed into a total disaster’ (Matt. 7:26-27). We today stand in the midst of precisely the disaster he foretold, ‘flying upside down’ but satisfied to be stoutly preaching against ‘works’ righteousness. If people in our Christian fellowships today were to announce that they had decided to keep God’s law, we would probably be skeptical and alarmed. We probably would take them aside for counseling and possibly alert other responsible people in the group to keep an eye on them. We would be sure nothing good would come of it. We know that one is not saved by keeping the law and can think of no other reason why one should try to do it.” [157]

“[Jesus] knew that we cannot keep the law by trying to keep the law. To succeed in keeping the law one must aim at something other and something more. One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. The apple tree naturally and easily produces apples because of its inner nature. This is the most crucial thing to remember if we would understand Jesus’ picture of the kingdom heart given in the Sermon on the Mount…. It is the inner life of the soul that we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally and easily follow. But not the reverse.”  [159, 161]

On Matt 23:25-26 and Luke 6:43-45. “Actions do not emerge from nothing. They faithfully reveal what is in the heart, and we can know what is in the heart that they depend upon. Indeed, everyone does know. That is a part of what it is to be a mentally competent human being. The heart is not a mystery at the level of ordinary human interactions. We discern one another quite well.” [161]

A Postmillennial Thought. “A time will come in human history when human beings will follow the Ten Commandments and so on as regularly as they now fall to the ground when they step off a roof. They will then be more astonished that someone would lie or steal or covet than they now are when someone will not. The law of God will then be written in their hearts, as the prophets foretold (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 10:16). This is an essential part of the future triumph of Christ and the deliverance of humankind in history and beyond.” [159]