Insight revisited: Bible is a set of instructions for a spiritual person to live in a physical world instead of the other way around

DIVINE CONSPIRACY BY DALLAS WILLARD

Introduction

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not Pg XIII

Chapter 1: Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now

1) [Worldview concept] Idea of “flying upside down” in ideology. He defines it as “What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound.” Pg 10

2) Perhaps the most dangerous bane of our society is that evil is now trivialized. Ravi Zacharias from online lecture

3) Willard explains part of what he means by the Divine Conspiracy: “The major problem with the invitation [an invitation to make a pilgrimage—into the heart and mind of God] now is precisely overfamiliarity. Familiarity breeds unfamiliarity—unsuspected unfamiliarity, and then contempt. People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it—or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all. Genius, it is said, is the ability to scrutinize the obvious. Written everywhere, we may think, how could the invitation be subtle, or deep? It looks like the other graffiti and even shows up in the same places. But that is part of the divine conspiracy.” Pg 11

4) And what is it, really, that explains the enduring relevance of Jesus to human life? I think we finally have to say that Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. To be the light of life, and to deliver God’s life to women and men where they are and as they are, is the secret of the enduring relevance of Jesus. Suddenly they are flying right-side up, in a world that makes sense. Pg 13

5) The drive to significance that first appears as a vital need in the tiny child, and later as its clamorous desire for attention, is not egotism. Egotistical individuals see everything through themselves. They are always the dominant figures in their own field of vision. Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny. Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity’s enduring response to Jesus. Pg 15

6) To gain deeper understanding of our eternal kind of life in God’s present kingdom, we must understand what a kingdom is. Our “kingdom” is simply the range of our effective will. Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our kingdom. And our having the say over something is precisely what places it within our kingdom. Pg 21

7) The sense of having some degree of control over things is now recognized as a vital factor in both mental and physical health and can make the difference between life and death in those who are seriously ill. Anyone who has raised a child, or has even supervised the work of others, knows how important it is to let them do it—whatever that “it” may be—and to do so as soon as that is practically feasible. Obviously, having a place of rule goes to the very heart of who we are, of our integrity, strength, and competence.

8) By contrast, attacks on our personhood always take the form of diminishing what we can do or have say over, sometimes up to the point of forcing us to submit to what we abhor. In the familiar human order, slaves are at the other end of the spectrum from kings. Their bodies and lives are at the disposal of another. Prisoners are, in most cases, several degrees above slaves. And, as the 20^th century has taught us, thought control is worst of all. It is the most heinous form of soul destruction, in which even our own thoughts are not really ours. Pg 22

9) The “gospel” of the Old Testament was simply “Our God reigns!” (Isa 52.7; Pss 96, 97, 99) [also the Shema too…] Pg 26

10) When Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of daily existence. Pg 26

11) Within His overarching dominion God has created us and has given each of us, like Him, a range of will—beginning from our minds and bodies and extending outward, ultimately to a point not wholly predetermined but open to the measure or our faith. His intent is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdom of others. Love of neighbor, rightly understood, will make this happen. But we can only love adequately by taking as our primary aim the integration of our rule with God’s. That is why love of neighbor is the second, not the first, commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom, or rule, of God. Pg 26

12) New Testament passages make plain that this kingdom is not something to be “accepted’ now and enjoyed later, but something to be entered now (Matt 5.20; 18.3; John 3.3, 5). Pg 28

Chapter 2: Gospels of Sin Management

13) “We have so persistently dissembled the power of the Gospel…that it is pardonable if those who judge of it by us should doubt whether it is anything more efficacious and inspiring than the pathetic guesses which adorn the writings of philosophy” quote by Canon B. F. Westcott in The Gospel of the Resurrection (unknown page reference) pg 35

14) Willard makes a tantalizing statement: suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it. Pg 40

15) When we examine the broad spectrum of Christian proclamation and practice, we see that the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individual’s sins. On the left it is removal of social or structural evils. The current gospel becomes a “gospel of sin management.” Transformation of life and character is no part of the redemptive message. Pg 41

16) What right and left have in common is that neither group lays down a coherent framework of knowledge and practical direction adequate to personal transformation toward the abundance and obedience emphasized in the New Testament, with a corresponding redemption of ordinary life. What is taught as the essential message about Jesus has no natural connection to entering a life of discipleship to him. Pg 41-42

17) Associated with this agreement (the agreement between the right wing side that argues over Lordship salvation) that the issue in salvation is only ‘heaven or hell’ is a further agreement that being saved is a forensic or legal condition rather than a vital reality or character. No one is in this ‘saved’ condition until declared to be so by God. The debate then is about what must be true of us before God will declare us to be in the saved condition. Finally, the two sides agree that getting into heaven after death is the sole target of divine and human efforts for salvation. It is what such efforts are aimed at, rather than a by-product or natural outcome of something else that is the target. But we get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from the kingdom of heavens now—the eternal kind of life—as the target. Pg 47

18) Certainly forgiveness and reconciliation are essential to any relationship where there is an offense, and also between us and God. We cannot pass into a new life from above without forgiveness. Certainly it is Christ who made possible such a transition, including forgiveness, through His life and death. We must be reconciled to God and He to us if we are going to have a life together. But such a reconciliation involves far more than the forgiveness of sins or a clearing of the ledger.

19) What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through Him—trusting only His role as guilt remover. Pg 48-49

20) When all is said and done, the “gospel’ on the theological right is that Christ made “the arrangement” that can get us into Heaven. In the Gospels, by contrast, “the gospel” is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through reliance on Jesus the Anointed. Accordingly, the only description of eternal life found in the words from Jesus found in John 17.3 [Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.] But the biblical “know” always refers to an intimate, personal, interactive relationship. Pg 49

21) Some will substitute ritual behavior for divine reality and personal integrity; others may be content with an isolated string of “experiences” rather than transformation of character. Pg 55

22) Where we spontaneously look for ‘information’ on how to live shows how we truly feel and who we really have confidence in. Pg 55

23) Must not all who speak for Christ constantly ask themselves these crucial questions:
A) Does the gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus?
B) Would those who believe it become His apprentices as a natural ‘next step’?
C) What can we reasonably expect would result from people actually believing the substance of my message?

24) The condition so eloquently deplored by numerous leaders is nothing but the natural consequence of the basic message of the church as it is heard today. It would be foolish to expect anything else than precisely what we have got. A saying among management experts today is, “Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.” Pg 58

25) And so we have the result noted: the resources of God’s kingdom remain detached from human life. There is no gospel for human life and Christian discipleship, just one for death or one for social action (the “gospel” message of the theological left). The souls of human beings are left to shrivel and die on the plains of life because they are not introduced into the environment for which they were made, the living kingdom of eternal life. Pg 58

26) His message must come to us free of deadening legalisms, political sloganeering, and dogmatic traditionalisms long proven by history to be soul-crushing dead ends. Pg 59

27) [Why do we not regularly hear sermons specifically devoted to the theme of the Kingdom of God?] I find this silence rather surprising because it is universally agreed by New Testament scholars that the central theme of the teaching of Jesus was the Kingdom of God. Pg 59

Chapter 3: What Jesus Knew: Our God-bathed world

28) To trust in God, we need a rich and accurate way of thinking and speaking about Him to guide and support our life vision and our will. Pg 65

29) [My own thought…if we don’t think about God, we fill in our definitions of words like love and ascribe God to them.]

30) [Referring to the Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven] The two phrases in question refer to the same reality in some contexts, but they always refer to it in different ways and communicate importantly different things about it. Pg 73-74

31) [Some people see God as the “old man in the sky” being sitting in a location very remote from us. Others see God as not in space at all but instead He is “in our hearts”] “In my heart’ easily becomes “in my imagination.” If He is not in space at all, He is not in human life, which is lived in space. Pg 74

32) I am a spiritual being who currently has a physical body. I occupy my body and its proximate space, but I am not localizable in it or around it. You cannot find me or any of my thoughts, feelings, or character traits in any part of my body. That very unity of experiences that constitutes a human self cannot be located at any point in or around this body through which we live, not even in the brain. Yet I am present as agent or causal influence with and about my body and its features and movements. In turn, what my body undergoes and provides influences my life as a personal being. And through my body, principally, through my face and gestures, or “body language,” but also verbally, I can make myself present to others. Pg 75

33) “Spiritual” is not just something we ought to be. It is something we are and cannot escape, regardless of how we may think or feel about it. It is our nature and our destiny. Pg 79

34) In biblical language the will is usually referred to as “heart.” This it is that organizes all the dimensions of personal reality to form a life or person. The will, or heart, is the executive center of the self. Thus the center point of the spiritual in humans as well in God is self-determination, also called freedom and creativity. Pg 80

35) To understand spirit as “substance” means that spirit is something that exists in its own right. Thoughts, feelings, willings, and their developments are so many dimensions of this spiritual substance, which exercises a power that is outside the physical. Space is occupied by it, and it may manifest itself there as it chooses. This is how Jesus sees our world. It is part of His gospel. Pg 82

36) As we increasingly integrate our life into the spiritual world of God, our life increasingly takes on the substance of the eternal. We are destined for a time when our life will be entirely sustained from spiritual realities and no longer dependent in any way upon the physical. Pg 82

37) According to the wisdom of Jesus every event takes on a different reality and meaning, depending on whether it is seen only in the context of the visible or also in the context of God’s full world, where we all as a matter of fact live. Pg 88

38) The idea of an all-encompassing, all-penetrating world of God, interactive at every point with our lives, where we can always be totally at home and safe regardless of what happens in the visible dimension of the universe, is routinely treated as ridiculous. Pg 90

39) The words from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited of the protagonist, Charles Ryder who is comments on the religion of the other central character:

“Sebastian’s faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which I felt particularly concerned to solve….the view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and others not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at worst it was the province of “complexes” and “inhibitions”—catchwords of the decade—and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigent historical claims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested.” These words perfectly express the crushing weight of the secular outlook that permeates or pressures every thought we have today. Pg 92

Chapter 4: Who is Really Well Off?—The Beatitudes

40) Major presupposition for Dallas Willard: What we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount is a concise statement of Jesus’ teachings on how to actually live in the reality of God’s present kingdom available to us from every space surrounding our bodies. Pg 97

41) If all we need to be blessed in the kingdom of the heavens is to be humble-minded through recognizing our spiritual poverty, then let’s just do that and we’ve got bliss cornered. We escape the humiliation of spiritual incompetence because, strange to say, we have managed to turn it into spiritual attainment just by acknowledging it. Here we have a full-blown, if not salvation by works, then possibly salvation by attitude. Pg 103

42) The Beatitudes are not teachings on how to be blessed. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings. They single out cases that provide proof that, in Him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope. Pg 106

43) [Referencing the rich young ruler and that it was easier for a rich man….] Jesus then commented to His students on how hard it was for the rich to put themselves under the rule of God, to enter the kingdom. Pg 108

44) We define who our neighbor is by our love. We make a neighbor of someone by caring for him or her. Pg 111

45) (Teaching principle) The secret of the great teacher is to speak words, to foster experiences, that impact the active flow of the hearer’s life. Pg 114

46) (Teaching principle) By showing to others the presence of the kingdom in the concrete details of our shared existence, we impact the lives and hearts of our hearers, not just their heads. Pg 114

47) They [the beatitudes] serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all humanity through reliance upon Jesus Himself. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as the most helpless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens. This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with His care and deliverance. Pg 116

48) The gospel of the kingdom is that no one is beyond beatitude, because the rule of God from the heavens is available to all. Pg 122

49) [Beatitudes: on why Jesus said to fulfill the Law] The Law and the Prophets had been twisted around to authorize an oppressive, though religious, social order that put glittering humans—the rich, the educated, the “well-born,” the popular, the powerful, and so on—in possession of God. Jesus’ proclamation clearly dumped them out or their privileged position and raised ordinary people with no human qualifications into the divine fellowship by faith in Jesus. That is a powerful message, enough to thoroughly confuse a simple people who lived with their noses to the grindstone and knew no order other than the one imposed upon them by religious experts zealously defending their own privileges. So Jesus cautions them to respect the Law—to fulfill it, not to abolish it. Pg 127

Chapter 5: The Rightness of the Kingdom Heart: Beyond the Goodness of Scribes and Pharisees

50) [Presupposition] The Sermon on the Mount should be read as a sermon, as one unified discourse. It is organized around one purpose and develops along a single line of thought. Pg 132

51) {Sermon on the Mount} 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.” Pg 133

52) [Sermon on the Mount] 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. They progressively presuppose that we know where our well-being really lies. Pg 139

53) The law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness. The law of God marks the movements of God’s kingdom. When we keep the law, we step into His ways and drink in His power. Pg 142

54) How can one 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 deeds from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. The apple tree naturally and easily produces apples because of its inner nature. Pg 142-142

55) [Sentence paraphrased] Jesus helps to understand the connection between the inner dimensions of personality and the outward revelations of it in action. Pg 143

56) 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. Pg 144

57) The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance before I even have time to think about it. Pg 148

58) Anger embraced is inherently disintegrative of human personality and life. All our mental and emotional resources are marshaled to nurture and tend the anger, and our body throbs with it. Energy is dedicated to keeping the anger alive: we constantly remind ourselves of how wrongly we have been treated. And when it is allowed to govern our actions, its evil is quickly multiplied in heart-rending consequences and in the replication of anger and rage in the hearts and bodies of everyone it touches. Pg 149-150

59) To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this deep need. Like anger, contempt does not need 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 destroys 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. Pg 153

60) [Definition of a fool] The fool, in biblical language, is a combination of stupid perversity and rebellion against God and all that sensible people stand for. He is willfully perverted, rebellious, knowingly wicked to his own harm. Pg 154

61) For all their necessity, goodness, and beauty, laws that deal only with actions, such as the Ten Commandments, simply cannot reach the human heart, the source of actions. [ref Gal 3:21 Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. NASB] pg 155

62) We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them. Pg 157

63) [Important reminder] In charting one’s course in life, it is important never to forget that many things that cannot be called wrong or evil are nevertheless not good for us. Pg 164

64) [Referencing Sermon on the Mount Matt 5.29-30] Jesus is saying that if you think that laws can eliminate being wrong you would, to be consistent, cut off your hand or gouge out your eye so that you could not possibly do the acts the law forbids. In their view, the law could be satisfied, and thus goodness attained, if you avoided sinning. You are right if you have done nothing wrong. You could avoid sinning if you simply eliminated the bodily parts that make sinful actions possible. Then you would roll into heaven a mutilated stump. But so far from suggesting that any advantage before God could actually be gained in this way, Jesus’ teaching in this passage is exactly the opposite. The mutilated stump could still have a wicked heart. The deeper question always concern who you are, not what you did do or can do. What would you do if you could? Eliminating bodily parts will not change that. [Just another form of sin management!] Pg 167

65) [Referencing Sermon on the Mount Matt 5.39-42] All is changed when we realize that these are illustrations of what a certain kind of person, the kingdom person, will characteristically do in such situations. They are not laws of ‘righteous behavior’ for those personally imposed upon or injured. They are not laws for the obvious reason that they do not cover many cases. Additionally, if you read then as laws you will immediately see that we could ‘obey’ them in the wrong spirit. For example, as it is often actually said, “I’ll turn the other cheek, but then I’ll known your head off.” Though we are not talking about things one must do to ‘be Christian’ or ‘go to heaven when we die,’ we are looking at how people live who stand in the flow of God’s life now. We see the interior rightness of those who are living beyond the rightness of the scribe and Pharisee. Pg 178

66) [Referencing Sermon on the Mount] There is a ‘great inversion’ between human order and the kingdom order. In light of this inversion of realities, we can now understand the corresponding reversal of presumptions governing human action. Pg 178

67) [Referencing Sermon on the Mount] Of course in each case I must determine if the gift of my vulnerability, goods, time, and strength is, precisely, appropriate. That is my responsibility before God. As a child of the King, I always live in His presence. By contrast, the way of the law avoids individual responsibility for decision. It pushes the responsibility and possible blame onto God. That is one reason why people who must have a law for all their actions lead such pinched and impoverished lives and develop very little of genuine depth in godly character. Pg 179

68) 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?” Pg 180

69) [Referencing 1 Cor 13:4-8 and Matt 5.43-48] Is it then hard to do the things with which Jesus illustrates the kingdom heart of love? 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 it is not hard. What would be hard is to act the way you acted before. He calls us to Him to impart Himself to us. He does not call us to do what He did, but to be as He was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what He did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in Him. Pg 183

70) [The fallacy of the Pharisee] The Pharisee takes his aim keeping the law rather than becoming the kind of person whose deeds naturally conform to the law. Pg 184

71) [Thought derived from text] When God says to us to “try Him” it means that any serious inquirer can validate the Christian message about the human heart and social conditions in his or her own experience.

Chapter 6: Investing in the Heavens: Escaping the Deceptions of Reputation and Wealth

72) Of course we surly know that we are not to be in bondage to external forms, or their absence. The form could be wrong and the heart be right, or the form right, and the heart wrong. The fact that I call someone “father” as a formality does not mean I regard that person as my father, just as my taking an oath before giving testimony in court does not mean I am trying to manipulate my hearers. My wily heart could even use my refusal to take an oath in court as a way of going beyond yes and no. What matters are the intentions of our heart before God. Pg 189

73) [Referencing Matt 6.1] Not are we seen doing a good deed, but we are doing a good deed in order to be seen. Our intent is determined by what we want and expect from our action. When we do good deeds to be seen by human beings, that is because what we are looking for is something that comes from human beings. God responds to our expectations accordingly. When we want human approval and esteem, and do what we do for the sake of it, God courteously stands aside because, by our wish, it does not concern Him. Pg 190

74) [Paraphrase] Prayer is intelligent conversation about matters of mutual concern. Pg 194.

75) He teaches us how to be in prayer what we are in life and how to be in life what we are in prayer. Pg 195

76) His teaching leads to a discipline, not a law, and a discipline that prepares us, precisely, to act in a way that fulfills the law of whole-person love of God. Pg 201

77) Clyde Reid wrote a discussion of how church activities seem to be structured around evading God. His “law of religious evasion” states, “we structure our churches and maintain them so as to shield us from God and to protect us from genuine religious experience.” “There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.” Pg 201

78) [Paraphrase] the heart is the seat of our will, the center of being from which our life flows. It is what gives orientation to everything we do. A heart rightly directed therefore brings health and wholeness to the entire personality. Pg 206

79) The person who treasures what lies within the kingdom sees everything in it true worth and relationship. The person who treasures what is ‘on earth,’ by contrast, sees everything from a perspective that distorts it and systematically misleads in practice. Pg 206

Chapter 7: The Community of Prayerful Love

80) [Definition of prayer] talking to God about what we are doing together. Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what He too is concerned about in my life. Pg 243

81) The importance thing for each individual is that he or she should find some way that is effective and not assume that it does not matter how one approaches prayer. In any case, when we pray we must take time to fix our minds upon God and orient our world around Him. Pg 257

82) [Reference to ‘Hallowed by thy name’] In the biblical world, names are never just names. They partake of the reality that they refer to Pg 258

83) Reference to ‘Thy kingdom come’] The kingdom of God is from everlastingly earlier to everlastingly later. It does not come into existence, nor does it cease. But in human affairs other ‘kingdoms’ may be for a time in power, and often are. This second request ask for those kingdoms to be displaced, wherever they are, or brought under God’s rule. Pg 260

84) Culture is seen in what people do unthinkingly, what is ‘natural’ to them and therefore requires no explanation or justification. Everyone has a culture—or, really, multidimensional cultures of various levels. These cultures structure their lives. Culture is the place where wickedness takes on group form. We therefore pray for out Father to break up these higher-level patterns of evil. Also we ask Him to help us see the patterns we are involved in. We ask Him to help us not cooperate with them, to cast light on them and act effectively to remove them. Pg 260

Chapter 8: On Being a Disciple, or student, of Jesus

85) It is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching. This is a harrowing task, and sometimes we just can’t face it. But it can also open the door to choose other masters, possibly better masters, and one Master above all. Pg 272

86) More generally, the provisions He made for His people during this period in which we now live are provisions made for those who are, precisely, apprentices to Him in kingdom living. Any one who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person’s account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically. Pg 273

87) The effect of such continuous study under Jesus would naturally be that we learn how to do everything we do ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Col 3.17); that is, on His behalf or in His place, as if He Himself were doing it. And of course that means we would learn ‘to conform to everything I have commanded you’ (Matt 28.20). In His presence our inner life will be transformed, and we will become the kind of people for whom His course of action is the natural (and supernatural) course of action. Pg 273

88) Dallas Willard understands Matt 4.17 (From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." NASB) as really meaning, “Rethink your life in the light of the fact that the kingdom of heavens is now open to all.” Pg 274

89) The kingdom of heavens, from the practical point of view in which we all must live, is simply our experience of Jesus’ continual interaction with us in history and throughout the days, hours, and moments of our earthly existence.

90) A disciple, or apprentice, is someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or become what that person is. How does that apply to discipleship to Jesus? The answer is found in the Gospels: He Lives in the Kingdom of God, and He applies that kingdom for the good of others and even makes it possible for them to enter it for themselves. The deeper theological truths about His person and His work do not detract from this simple point. It is what He calls us to by saying, “Follow me.” Pg 283

91) And as a disciple of Jesus I am with Him, by choice and by grace, learning from Him how to live in the kingdom of God. That means how to live within the range of God’s effective will, his life flowing through mine. I am not necessarily learning to do everything He did, but I am learning how to do everything I do in the manner that He did all that He did. Pg 283

92) My discipleship is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. And it covers everything ‘religious’ or not. Pg 284

93) If we restrict our discipleship to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of the kingdom in our lives. Pg 287

94) Eternity is not something waiting to happen, something that will commence later. It is now here. Time runs its course within eternity. Pg 288

95) [Paraphrase] Jesus expected His disciples to teach in the same general manner as He did, by showing forth the nature of rule of God in and from the things of ordinary life. They were to teach the truth revealed, but in a context of what had actually happened to them. They would compare the realities of God invading their lives with commonplace activities, such as sowing seed, fishing, etc. Pg 289-290

96) [Referencing Luke 14.26-27,33: If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. NASB] The entire point of this passage is that as long as one thinks anything may really be more valuable than fellowship with Jesus in His kingdom, one cannot learn from Him. People who have not gotten the basic facts about their life straight will therefore not do the things that make learning from Jesus possible and will never be able to understand the basic points in the lessons to be learned. Pg 293

97) [Referencing Luke 14.28: "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?] What this passage in Luke is about is clarity. It is not about misery, or some dreadful price that one must pay to be Jesus’ apprentice. The point is simply that unless we clearly see the superiority of what we receive as His students over everything that might be valued, we cannot succeed in our discipleship to Him. We will not be able to do the things required to learn His lessons and move deeper into a life that is His kingdom. Pg 293-294

98) But in the last analysis we fail to be disciples only because we do not decide to be. We do not intend to be disciples. It is the power of the decision and the intention over our life that is missing. Pg 298

99) A major part of this important work [making disciples and changing belief systems] is coming to understand what the people we are dealing with really believe, and not pretending that they believe what they don’t believe at all. In a setting where a social premium has been placed upon believing certain things for the sake of group solidarity, we must face the fact that human beings can honestly profess to believe what they do not believe. They may do this for so long that even they no longer know that they do not believe what they profess. But their actions will be in terms of what they actually believe. This will be so even though they do not recognize it, and they will lose themselves in bewilderment about the weakness of their ‘faith.’ Pg 308

100) In the context of our particular family or group or congregation, to present the kingdom of heavens will mean that we must teach about the nature of belief (which is the same as faith) and how it relates to the rest of our personality. Pg309

101) The truth about obedience in the kingdom of Jesus is that it really is abundance. They are not two separate things. The inner condition of the soul from which strength and love and peace flow is the very same condition that generously blesses the oppressor and lovingly offers the other cheek. These Christ-like behaviors are expressions of a pervasive personal strength, not of weakness, morbidity, sorrow—or raw exertion of will—as is so often assumed. And all those ‘options’ that we might think should be kept in reserve, just in case they turn out to be ‘necessary,’ will not even be missed. Pg 312-313

102) We have to come to terms with the fact that we cannot become those who ‘hear and do’ without specific training for it. Pg 313

103) One must recognize that numerous programs in local congregations and wider levels of organization are frequently spoken of as discipleship programs. However, the emphasis all too often is on some point of behavior modification. This is helpful, but it is not adequate to human life. It does not reach the root of the human problem. That root is the character of the inner life, where Jesus and His call to apprenticeship in the kingdom place the emphasis. Pg 315

104) In our culture one is considered educated if one ‘knows the right answers.’ Our task in ourselves and in others is to transform right answers into automatic responses to real-life situations. Pg 317

105) For example, nearly every professing Christian has some information about the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and other standard doctrines. But to have the ‘right answers’ about the Trinity and to actually believe in the reality of the Trinity is all the difference in the world. The advantage of believing in the reality of the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving the ‘right answer.’ Remember, to believe something is to act as if it were so. Hence, the advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity is real. And thus believing, our lives naturally integrate themselves, through our actions, into the reality of the Triune universe. In faith we rest ourselves upon the reality of the Trinity in action—and it graciously meets us. For it is there. And our lives are then enmeshed in the true world of God. So, a great deal of what goes into ‘training them (or us) to do everything I said’ consists in bringing people to believe with their whole being the information they already have as a result of their initial confidence in Jesus. Pg 318

106) You often hear being a disciple of as if it were advance spiritual condition. The disciple has made a major step forward, to be sure, but may in fact still have a solid hold on very little of kingdom reality. Jesus’ disciples are simply those who have chosen to be with Him so they can be like Him. All they have necessarily realized in the outset of their apprenticeship to Him is Jesus is right. He is the greatest and best. That initial faith is God’s gift of grace to them. So they have Him. They do not have it. Living as apprentices, they are increasingly getting it. Pg 318-319

107) To enter His kingdom, we believe in Him. To be at home in His kingdom, learning to reign with Him there, we must share His beliefs. Pg 319

108) As His apprentices, we pass through a course of training, from having faith in Christ to having the faith of Christ (Gal 2.16-20). Pg 320

109) Special experiences, faithfulness to the church, correct doctrine, and external conformity to the teaching of Jesus all come along as appropriate, more or less automatically, when the inner self is transformed. But they do not produce such a transformation. Pg 320

110) The first primary objective is to bring apprentices to the point where they dearly love and constantly delight in that ‘heavenly father’ made real to earth in Jesus and are quite certain that there is no ‘catch,’ no limit, to the goodness of His intentions or to His power to carry them out. Pg 321

111) The second primary objective of a curriculum for Christlikeness is to remove our automatic responses against the kingdom of God, to free the apprentices of domination, of ‘enslavement’ (John 8.34: Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin; Rom 6.6 : knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. NASB) to their old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action. These are ‘automatic’ patterns of response that were ground into the embodied social self during its long life outside The Kingdom Among Us. They make up ‘the sin that is in my members’ which, as Paul so brilliantly understood, brings it about that ‘wishing to do the good is mine, but the doing of it is not’ (Rom 7.18). Pg 322

112) It is not enough just to announce and teach the truth about God, about Jesus, and about God’s purposes with humankind. Very little of being lies under the direction of our conscious minds, and very little of our actions runs through our thoughts and consciously chosen intentions. If we are to be transformed, the body must be transformed, and that is not accomplished by talking to it. The training that leads to doing what we hear from Jesus must therefore involve the purposeful disruption of our ‘automatic’ thoughts, feelings, and actions by doing different things with our body. Pg 322

113) How do we help people love what is lovely? We cause them, ask them, help them to place their minds on the lovely thing concerned. Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved. Pg 323

114) A popular saying is ‘take time to smell the roses.’ What does this mean? To enjoy the rose it is necessary to focus on it and bring the rose before our senses and mind as possible. To smell a rose you must get close, and you must linger. When we do so we delight in it. We love it. Taking time to smell the roses leaves enduring impressions of a dear glory that, if sufficiently engaged, can change the quality of our entire life. This simple illustration contains profound truth. If anyone is to love God and have his or her life filled with that love, God in His glorious reality must be brought before the mind and kept there in such a way the mind takes root and stays fixed there. Pg 323-324

115) We need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our actions flow, and it projects the possible courses of action available to us. The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind—as well as what we can and cannot think of. Pg 324

116) But we are rarely thoughtful. Thus a part of the call of God to us has always been to think. And when we come to the task of developing disciples into the fullness of Christ, we must be very clear that one main part, and by far the most fundamental, is to form the insights and habits of the student’s mind so that it stays directed toward God. When this is adequately done, a full heart of love will go out toward God, and joy and obedience will flood the life. [Ref Ps 16.5-11] Pg 325

117) There are three main ways in which God comes before the mind, where we can lose ourselves in love of Him. Through them the lovely God wins the love of the disciple. He comes to us (1) through creation, (2) through public acts on the scene of human history, and (3) through individual experiences of Him by ourselves and others. Pg 326

118) The acid test for any theology is this: is the God presented one that can be loved heart, soul, mind and strength? It does not really matter how sophisticated intellectually or doctrinally our approach is. If it fails to set a lovable God—a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being—before ordinary people, we have gone wrong. Pg 329

119) Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it. Because this is so they remain routinely and seriously unable and unwilling to do the good they know to do, as Paul so accurately describes [reference Romans 7]. They remain governed by or ‘slaves’ of sin. Their lives are dominated by fear, greed, impatience, egotism, bodily desires, and the like, and they continue to make provision for them. Pg 342

120) What the ‘sin in our members’ is. To make a good beginning [in discipleship] we must have it very clearly fixed in our minds that what dominates the individual in the course of ‘normal human existence’ is not some invincible, overpowering cosmic force. If we think we are facing an irresistible cosmic force of evil, it will invariably lead to giving in and giving up—usually with very little resistance. If you can convince yourself that you are helpless, you can then stop struggling and just ‘let it happen.’ That will seem a great relief—for a while. You can once more be a ‘normal human being.’ But them you will have to deal with the consequences. Pg 342-343

121) Now, in fact, the patterns of wrongdoing that govern human life outside the kingdom are usually quite weak. They are simply our habits, our largely automatic responses of thought, feelings, and action. Typically, we have acted wrongly before reflecting. And it is this that gives bad habits their power. It is rare that what we do wrong is the result of careful deliberation. Instead, our routine behavior manages to keep the deliberative will and the conscious mind off balance and on the defensive. That leaves us constantly in the position of having to deal with what we already done. And the general pattern of wrongdoing that takes over in that case is to defend what we have already done by doing further wrong: by denying, misleading, and rationalizing—or even killing someone, as King David did. Pg 343

122) This is the true situation: nothing has power to tempt me or move me to wrong action that I have not given power by what I permit to be in me. And the most spiritually dangerous things in me are the little habits of thought, feeling, and action that I regard as ‘normal’ because ‘everyone is like that’ and it is ‘only human.’ Pg 344

123) Our training and experience must bring us to peace with the fact that if we do not follow our habitual desires, do not do what ‘normal’ people would do, it is no major thing. We won’t die, even though at the beginning our outraged habits will tells us we are sure to. The sun will come up and life will go on. Rightly understood, the ‘death to self’ of which scripture and tradition speak is simply acceptance of this fact. Pg 344-345

124) Patterns of anger, scorn, and looking to lust vividly illustrate the basic triviality of the drive to wrongdoing. ‘The look’ is only a habit. One looks to lust or to covet upon certain cues. Anyone who bothers to reflect on his or her experience will be able to identify what those cues are. And generally speaking, those who say they ‘cannot help it’ are either not well informed about life or have not decided to do without ‘it.’ But the really good news is that the power of habit can be broken. Habits can be changed [our cues can be rewired]. Pg 345

125) There has emerged here a truth that is fundamental for our curriculum for Christlikeness. The training required to transform our most basic habits of thought, feeling, and action will not be done for us. And yet it is something that we cannot do by ourselves. Life in all its forms must reach out what is beyond it to achieve fulfillment, and so also the spiritual life. Pg 345-346

126) The familiar words of Jesus are “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15.5). But these must be balanced by the insight that, in general, if we do nothing it will certainly be without Him. Pg 346

127) We cannot ‘put off the old person and put on the new’ on our own. The transition and transformation are the result of several factors at work along with our inward and outward efforts [ref Philippians chapter 2]. We have received life of the kingdom through the word of the gospel and the person of Christ. That life we have is a gift. But once we have it, there is something for us to do, for the person we become cannot be the effect of what someone else does. Obviously, the effects of training in any area cannot be transferred into us from another person and rarely, if ever, will it be injected into our lives. Another person cannot learn Spanish for me, nor can someone else lift weights to improve my muscles. Therefore, we are to ‘work our’ the salvation we have (Phil 2.12). The word here, katergazesthe, has the sense of developing or elaborating something, bringing it to the fullness of what in its nature it is meant to be. But we do not do this as if the new life was simply our project. God also is at work in us, ‘choosing and acting on behalf of His intentions’ (Phil 2.13) Pg 346

128) The function of the Holy Spirit is, first, to move within our souls, and especially our minds, to present the person of Jesus and the reality of His kingdom. This is through the word of the gospel, in contrast to the realities of life without God. Our confidence in Jesus as the One is always a response elicited and supported by the spiritual movements of God. Thus, as Paul says, “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus is accursed"; and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor 12.3 NASB) Pg 348

129) After we receive the new life, the Spirit continues to move upon and within us to enable us to do the kinds of works Jesus did (through ‘gifts’ of the Spirit) and to grow the kind of inward character that manifests itself in the ‘fruit’ or outcome of the Spirit in their outward life: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and similar traits of Christ (Gal 5.22-23). Pg 348

130) But reliance upon what the Spirit does to us or in us, as indispensable as it truly is, will not by itself transform character in its depths. The action of the Spirit must be accompanied by our response, which cannot be carried out by anyone other than ourselves. This active participation on our part has two aspects. (see next note) Pg 348

131) First, we must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in as the place of God’s kingdom and blessing. God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being ‘right,’ we will simply have no place to receive His kingdom into our life. For those situations and moments are our life. Pg 348-349

132) It is absolutely essential to our growth into the ‘mind’ of Jesus that we accept the ‘trials’ of ordinary existence as the place where we are to experience and find the reign of God-with-us as actual reality. We are to see every event as an occasion in which the competence and faithfulness of God will be confirmed to us. Pg 350

133) Our plan for a life of growth in the life of the kingdom of God must be structured around disciplines for the spiritual life Pg 353

134) What are the spiritual disciplines? They are disciplines designed to help us be active and effective in the spiritual realm of our own heart, now spiritually alive by grace, in relation to God and His kingdom. They are designed to help us withdraw from total dependence on the merely human or natural (and in that sense to mortify the ‘flesh,’ kill it off, let it die) and to depend also on the ultimate reality, which is God and His kingdom. Pg 353

135) We will be able to do what He says to do as we are inwardly transformed by following Him into His life practices of solitude, service, study, and so forth. This is an essential part of what Paul calls, ‘offering our bodies as living sacrifices’ (Rom 12.2). It will result in the mark of the disciplined person, who is able to do what needs to be done when and as it needs to be done. Pg 355

136) Intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit—just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word. Pg 356

137) Why are the disciplines of abstinence [solitude and silence] so central to the curriculum for Christlikeness? Remember the second primary objective of the curriculum is to break the power of our ready responses to do the opposite of what Jesus teaches: for example, scorn, anger, verbal manipulation, payback, silent collusion in the wrongdoing of others around us, and so forth (rest on next note) Pg 357

138) These responses mainly exist at what we might call the ‘epidermal’ level of the self, the first point of contact with the world around us. They are almost totally ‘automatic,’ given the usual stimuli. The very language we use is laden with them, and of course they are the ‘buttons’ by which the human surroundings more or less control us. They are not ‘deep’; they are just there, and just constant. They are the area where most of our life is lived. And in action they have the power to draw our whole being into the deepest of injuries and wrongs. Now it is solitude and silence that allow us to escape the patterns of epidermal responses, with their consequences. They provide space to come to terms with these responses and to replace them, with God’s help, by different immediate responses that are suitable to the kingdom environment. Pg 358

139) We hear the cries form our strife-torn streets: ‘Give peace a chance!’ and ‘Can’t we all just get along? But you cannot give peace a chance if that is all you give a chance. You have to do the things that make peace possible and actual. When you listen to people talk about peace, you soon realize in most cases that they are unwilling to deal with the conditions of society and soul that make strife inevitable. They want to keep them and still have peace, but it is peace on their terms, which is impossible. Pg 358

140) And we can’t all just get along. Rather, we have to become the kinds of persons who can get along. As a major part of this, our epidermal responses have to be changed in such a way that the fire and the fight doesn’t start almost immediately when we are ‘rubbed the wrong way.’ Pg 358

141) Solitude and silence give us a place to begin the necessary changes, although they are not a place to stop. They also give us some space to reform our inmost attitudes toward people and events. They take the world off our shoulders for a time and interrupt our habit of constantly managing things, of being in control, or thinking we are. Pg 358

142) Study is by no means simply a matter of gathering information to have on hand. Intensive internalization of the kingdom order through study of the written word and learning from the living Word establishes good epidermal responses of thought, feeling, and action. And these truths integrate us into the flow of God’s eternal reign. We really come to think and believe differently, and that changes everything. Pg 362

143) In worship we are ascribing greatness, goodness, and glory to God. It is typical of worship that we put every possible aspect of our being into it, all our sensuous, conceptual, active, and creative capacities. We embellish, elaborate, and magnify. Poetry and song, color and texture, food and incense, dance and procession are all used to exalt God. And sometimes it is the quiet absorption of thought, the electric passion of encounter, or total surrender of the will. In worship we strive for adequate expression of God’s greatness. But only for a moment, if ever, do we achieve what seems like adequacy. Worship nevertheless imprints on our whole being the reality that we study. Pg 363

Chapter 10: The Restoration of All Things

144) [Cultures concept of the future] It rests on the picture of the natural world, the physical cosmos, as a closed system, with a future determined entirely from its own internal resources. Even those who say it ‘popped’ into existence do not think it will ‘pop’ out of existence. And they dream of humanity’s securing its future by moving to other planets in other systems. Endlessly. Thus, even the individual achieves a shadowy, vicarious future, for the future of humanity is implicitly treated as ‘our’ future. ‘We’ will go on. [see next note for contrast] Pg 377

145) The biblical tradition, centered on the teaching of Jesus, stands in sharp contrast. For it, personality is primary in every respect. It presents the universe as a created system that responds to and is pervaded by what is not part of it but of which it is a part or product. Therefore the cosmos is not a closed system off to itself. And it is determined in its present and future course by personal factors—sources of energy and direction—that cannot be discerned by means of the physical senses or dealt with by the physical sciences. These factors are God and His kingdom among us. They have announced themselves definitively in human history in the person and word of Jesus, but especially in His transfiguration and resurrection. Pg 377

146) His plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe. Pg 378

147) Stated in other words, the intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom He can set free in His universe. But character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible. This explains the meaning of the words of the prophet Daniel, utilized by Jesus to conclude one of His great parables of the kingdom [Mat 13:43 " Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear. NASB. COMPARE WITH Dan 12:3 "Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. NASB] But we should understand that brightness always represents power, energy, and that in the kingdom of our Father we will be active, unimaginably creative. Pg 379

148) The superficial view that dominates our culture holds reality to be limited to what can be discovered by scientific observation and explanation. Pg 383

149) We wonder about the meaning of historical events and personages, or even of human history itself. And it is always true that meaning is found, when it is found, in some larger context. From Jesus we learn the ultimate context, God and His kingdom. Jesus insisted upon the present reality of the ‘kingdom of the heavens’ and made that the basis of His gospel. But He also recognized that there was a future fullness to the kingdom, as well as an everlasting enjoyment of life in God far transcending earth and life on it. We are greatly strengthened for life in the kingdom now by an understanding of what our future holds, and especially of how that future relates to our present experience. For only then do we really understand what our current life is and are we able to make choices that agree with reality. Pg 387

150) When we pass through the stage normally called ‘death’ we will not lose anything but the limitations and powers that specifically correspond to our present mastery over our body, and to our availability and vulnerability to and through it. Pg 394

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