Quotes about Jesus

Jesus often wetted his finger to find the direction of the acceptable winds, and instead of going with them, headed straight against them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

There are no options here: Jesus calls his followers to be people of reconciliation. In fact, he warns his followers of final destruction if they walk away from that path.

Jesus is the gospel-shaped King. There is no other messianic story like the one Jesus told and lived.

Perhaps it is easiest to define "meek" by saying Jesus was meek: "for I am gentle [same word as our beatitude] and humble31 in heart" (11:29). Moreover, in entering Jerusalem on a donkey, Jesus fulfilled an Old Testament expectation of the meek king (21:5).