Reading Quotes: The Sermon on the Mount

As He revealed Himself as the divine Messiah in a completely different kingdom there was an inevitable and constant conflict with religion.

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When Jesus was "proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom" (Matt. 4:23), He was speaking of a spiritual reality that was as different from the Jewish expectation of the kingdom as day and night. Since natural men, religious men, cannot understand spiritual things (I Cor. 2:14), they could not understand that Jesus was not referring to a kingdom that was essentially a physical time and space realm, but to a kingdom that was essentially spiritual and eternal, yet lived out in physical time and space.

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"The kingdom has come" (Matt. 12:28), Jesus said, for it is inherent in My presence and being and action. The kingdom Jesus came to bring was the dynamic and ontological reign of His life as Lord and King in the lives of those who received Him by faith. Wherever Jesus was the spiritual kingdom could function.

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Religion does not have a solution for spiritual poverty, so they emphasize social programs to attempt to alleviate physical and material poverty.

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Those in the kingdom of Christ who are willing to renounce all their rights of self-assertion, who refuse to defend themselves and are patient under attack, will discover that by such a Christian attitude they will "overcome" and "inherit the earth" (Isa. 37:11).

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Religion hungers and thirsts after power and influence, blessings and experiences, knowledge and witnessing skills, and righteousness by meritorious performance, but they seem to know nothing of the intense desire for the character of divine righteousness.

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As the spiritual "Bread of life" (John 6:35) and "living water" (John 4:11-14), Jesus satisfies our spiritual hunger and thirst.

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Those in whom Christ reigns as Lord and King will often stick out like a sore thumb, stand out as the odd-man out, and provide a salty seasoning to a society that does not want to be preserved from its rottenness.

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Although religion sometimes causes its adherents to "stand-out" by their weird expressions of piety, by becoming social nuisances in their evangelistic zeal, or by insistence on engagement in their causes, Christians will stand out by their expression of godly character and activity.

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We are salt and light because Christ in us is the One who preserves the world from rottenness and exposes the darkness of the world by His light (John 8:12).

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In the old covenant God had given the Law to Moses for man's benefit so that he could recognize the character of God and his own inability to enact such.

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Though not wanting to raze the Law, He did want to raise the Law to its eternal and essential purpose by bringing to full fruition all that the Law pointed to pictorially and custodially. Jesus fulfills the Law not only by historically fulfilling the promises and the prophecies thereof, but even more importantly by completing, actualizing and consummating the Law by personally becoming its full intended content.

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If our spiritual identity is united with Jesus Christ and all of our worth is found in Him, then we have nothing to protect or defend. We do not have to react in violent self-defense and retaliatory revenge in order to "save face" and protect our personal rights and personal reputation, even if we are wronged and violated. Bonhoeffer calls this "freedom from the tyranny of our own ego." Kingdom living should evidence a carefree detachment from personal reputation, money, things, and impositions.

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God's kingdom has a radically different modus operandi whereby the total provision for godly and righteous behavior is derived from God in Christ by His grace, as Christ reigns as Lord in our lives.

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Bonhoeffer noted the paradox of how "our activity must be visible, but never be done for the sake of making it visible," and how "we have to take heed that we do not take heed of our own righteousness."3 The concern of kingdom participants should only be what God thinks of us and whether we are available to all that He wants to be and do in us. The effects of His expressions are to be hidden from ourselves and disregarded, so that our behavior continues to be the spontaneous expression of the life of Jesus Christ, "no longer I, but Christ living in me" (Gal. 2:20).

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When the visible expression of the righteous character of God is top priority in our kingdom living, God will take care of all other needs we might have. This is not fatalism or passivism, but the recognition of all sufficiency in Jesus Christ. "My grace is sufficient for you" (II Cor. 12:9).

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Religion is inevitably rampant with judgmentalism which justifies its own behavior while condemning others. They are engaged in the "good and evil" game first played in the garden of Eden when man set himself up as his own center of reference determining that his opinions and actions were the "good" and the "right," and all others were "evil" and "wrong." From that self-centered vantage point self-oriented religion has judged others with a critical spirit attacking dissenters with harsh verdicts for failing to conform.

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Those in the kingdom must realize that they are in no position to chastise and condemn other's faults for God graciously accepts us in the midst of our faults. His love in us does not "keep a record of wrongs" or "delight in evil" (I Cor. 13:5,6). Constantly we must examine ourselves (Gal. 6:4; I Cor. 11:28) and test ourselves in order to recognize that we are who we are only because Jesus Christ is in us (II Cor. 13:5).

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The attitude of kingdom participants must always be that of receptivity. God wants to give everything to us ontologically and dynamically in His Son, Jesus Christ. His grace must be received in faith as we "ask, seek and knock." We do not try to "lay hold" of God by "storming the gates of heaven" as religion has advocated, thinking that we have a right to manipulate God by demanding and commanding what we want.