Chapter 5: THE RIGHTNESS OF THE KINGDOM HEART;
BEYOND THE GOODNESS OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES
Master of Moral Understanding.
Jesus did not approach good and evil theoretically. He gave practical examples.
Historically Profound Moral Understand. Jesus is widely recognized as the moral force behind western morality.
The Talk on the Hill. It is important to read “the Talk” as a complete whole which has a single purpose in mind. “The aim of the sermon—forcefully indicated by its concluding verses—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 Brilliance of Jesus: One Final Look. Jesus is not often of as being smart. But in fact he was brilliant.
Outlining the “Sermon”. “It sounded to them as if Jesus had set the law aside. However, “the law” they had in mind and that they rubbed up against every day was not the law of God. It was a contemporary version of religious respectability, very harsh and oppressive in application, that Jesus referred to as “the goodness of scribes and Pharisees” The next part of the “discourse on the hill” talks about fulfillment of the law looks like. DW presents an outline of the discourse.
The Sequential Order in the Discourse Must Be Respected. “The various scenes and situations that Jesus discusses in his Discourse on the Hill are actually stages in a progression toward a life of agape love.”
The Law and the Soul
The “Beyond" of Actual Obedience. “We have heard him. For almost two millennia we have heard him, as already noted. 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 Centrality of God’s True Law to Human Life. God’s law is inherently good.
The Deeper “Beyond” from Which Actions Come.
A Lesson from the Dishwasher and the Farmer. “It is easy to clean the outside of a cup without washing the inside, but it is hard to wash the inside thoroughly and leave the outside dirty. Washing the inside has as its natural accompaniment the cleansing of the outside. Only a spot here or there may be left.”
Dikaiosune. How to be a good person. “The best translation of dikaiosune would be a paraphrase: something like “what that is about a person that makes him or her really right or good.” For short, we might say “true inner goodness.”
Six Contrasts of the Old and the New Moral Reality. For example, when is irritated with associates, the old dikaiosune said do not murder. The new dikaiosune says be helpful and do not be angry.
In the Caldron of Anger and Contempt
The Primacy of Anger in the Order of Evil. Eliminating anger and contempt are the first and fundamental step toward a kingdom heart.
What Anger Is. Anger is primarily a function of the human will.
Anger and the Wounded Ego. “Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego.”
Anger As Now Practiced and Encouraged. “It is a simple fact that none of the 25,000 murders, or only a negligible number of them, would have occurred but for an anger that the killers chose to embrace and indulge.” There is nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it.
Contempt Is Worse Than Anger. “And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is withering to the human soul. But when expressed in the contemptuous phrase—in its thousands of forms—or in the equally powerful gesture or look, it stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. It can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy. Its power is also seen in the intensity of the resentment and rage it always evokes.”
“You Fool!” Discussion of Jesus comment about calling someone a fool and the fires of Gehenna.
These Three Prohibitions Are Not Laws. “… we need to put the idea of laws entirely out of our minds. Jesus is working, as already indicated, at the much deeper level of the source of actions, good and bad.”
Positive Illustrations of the Kingdom Heart. First, stopping a sacrifice in order to reconcile with a brother. “When a cultic act is stopped for the sake of one’s brother, as Jesus requires, cultic ideology has been fundamentally overcome.” Second, how to deal with adversary in court cases.
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The Destructiveness of Fantasized Desire
The Poison of Sexual Desire Indulged and Fantasized. Jesus uses the commandment against adultery to talk abot desire.
Job’s Eyes. Job made a covenant with his eyes to avoid lusting with them.
Adultery "in the Heart”. Lusting for a woman is the same as committing adultery.
But Actual Adultery is Worse. “It is almost inconceivable today that the rightness or wrongness of sexual intercourse would have nothing whatsoever to do with what now passes for romantic love. Yet that is the biblical view generally: the rightness of sex is tied instead to a solemn and public covenant for life between two individuals, and sexual arousal and delight is a response to the gift of a uniquely personal intimacy with the whole person that each partner has conferred in enduring faithfulness upon the other.”
Anger and Contempt in Sex.
But Merely to Think or Desire Is Not Wrong.
Not Enough Just to Avoid Adultery in the Heart.
Reductio Ad Absurdum of Rightness in Terms of Acts. Jesus is making the point that one cannot make laws that cover the behavior.
Beyond the Divorce Papers. “When Jesus himself comes to deal with the rightness of persons in divorce, he does not forbid divorce absolutely, but he makes it very clear that divorce was never God’s intent for men and women in a marriage.”
The Principle of Hardness of Heart. “… we must resist any attempt to classify divorce as a special, irredeemable form of wickedness. It is not. It is sometimes the right thing to do, everything considered.”
Forced into “Adultery”. What Jesus meant by saying the divorcing a woman was forcing into adultery.
Is It Then Better Not to Marry? “Divorce, if it were rightly done, would be done as an act of love. It would be dictated by love and done for the honest good of the people involved. Such divorce, though rare, remains nonetheless possible and may be necessary. If it were truly done on this basis, it would be rightly done, in spite of the heartbreak and loss it is sure to involve.”
Transparent Words and Unquenchable Love
A Yes That Is Just a Yes.
Responding to Personal Injury. As believers, we have dealt with anger and contempt, so responding to personal injury starts from a different perspective.
Some Cases of Nonresistance. Four of them. Turn the other cheek; let him have your shirt; Go with him two; and give to him who asks of you.]
Reversing the Presumption. “In every concrete situation we have to ask ourselves, not “Did I do the specific things in Jesus’ illustrations?” but “Am I being the kind of person Jesus’ illustrations are illustrations of?”
Shifting the Scene. “In every concrete situation we have to ask ourselves, not “Did I do the specific things in Jesus’ illustrations?” but “Am I being the kind of person Jesus’ illustrations are illustrations of?”
What to Do with Enemies? Love them, and pray for them.
Goodness Is Love
Completing the Picture of the Kingdom Heart: Agape Love. The idea is catch love and live it. Then all the things that Paul talks about in 1 Cor. 13 will come as a result.
Are These Things Hard to Do? “Is it then 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.”
The Intellectual Vacuum of Current Moral Thought.
Quotes from: Dallas Willard. “The Divine Conspiracy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-divine-conspiracy/id360632495