Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

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[JESUS & HONESTY] 8. Forgiveness & Forbearance (POJ 2.4, 2.5) Jan 18, 2023

Show notes

"Peter is insisting that he's not going to betray Jesus. We know from the parallel passages that Peter keeps on insisting. The next thing Jesus says, after 'Will you really lay down your life for me?', is, 'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.' We have a chapter break there, and we often assume that that chapter break is in the original, but it's not. It's seamless. Jesus is actually dealing with Peter trying to create an earthly home for himself. That's where Peter is going with his insistence. It's a perfect example of Jesus not trying to win in his honesty."

"Jesus is so thoughtful in his love."

"A lifestyle of forgiveness functions like a check on the amount of honesty that comes out of us. Probably the biggest face of that is forbearance. Peter is almost certainly about to blast someone. He's forgiven and forgiven and forgiven and he's reached his limit. Jesus is saying there is no limit. There's no point at which you ever stop forgiving and then he goes ahead and tells the parable of the man who owes 10,000 talents."

[JESUS & HONESTY] 7. Good Jealousy (POJ 2.3) Jan 04, 2023

Show notes

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus' honesty.

"The phrase 'speaking truth to power' is often shared as kind of almost glib kind of thing. But speaking truth to power is really at the heart of the prophetic tradition that we see in the hebrew prophets, and all through Scripture. It's permeated civilizations that have really embraced Christianity. It's really neat to look back at Jesus and watch him do it.

"What you're seeing here in Jesus is the beauty of jealousy."

"Jealousy, like anger or sexual desire, is a neutral quality. When we hear jealousy we often think negatively just like when we hear anger but Jesus is jealous for his Father's house. He's jealous for the Gentiles. Anyone who's a lover is protective of the object of their love. They are jealous for that person and so he is consumed by his Father's loves and to not be jealous is to not care, to be indifferent."

[JESUS & HONESTY] 6. A Time to Shut Up (POJ 2.4) Dec 13, 2022

Show notes

"Sometimes we're strangely surprised when we've given someone an honest word and they don't say 'Oh, thank you for that rebuke. I have felt pride welling up in my heart all morning and I've just been waiting to be humbled. Thank you, you've really blessed me.'"

"Peter keeps on insisting, but Jesus is quiet. What you're looking at there is Jesus' dependence on his heavenly Father."

"One of the features of modern culture is a tendency for people, when they've been sinned against, to demand that that the other person have a full and complete confession. It can lead to small wounds becoming big wounds. It's a demand that the other person have a complete understanding of everything evil they've done to you. But here, Jesus actually kind of crafts a poem."

[JESUS & HONESTY) 5. Good Irritation (POJ 2.4) Nov 30, 2022

Show notes

"In almost every case, Jesus' anger is focused on 1 or 2 things – a blocking of love or a blocking of faith. It's striking. And these two are Paul's primary criteria metrics for every church. Almost all of the epistles begin with Paul's mentioning 'I've heard of your faith' or 'I've heard of your love.'"

"It's just lovely to see Jesus irritated."

"There are at least three ways his irritation is different from our typical irritations. First, his focus is on others, and in our irritations, we tend to think about ourselves. Second, he takes positive action. He says something about it. He's dealing with stuff openly in the community. Third, while we tend to hold on to our irritation and nurse it, he lets go of it. He moves on."

[JESUS & HONESTY] 4. Good Anger (POJ 2.3) Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus' honesty.

"The fully human Jesus was in step with the Spirit and the Spirit can lead you in these really complex situations. He's loving people who see themselves above Jesus and those who are below in the same story. It's neat to see that high bar for love. When you get in these overwhelming situations where you don't know how to love, you can pray your way through and ask he Spirit to lead."

"The gospels are really odd for a stoic."

"For the Greek stoics everything was about emotion management. The beauty of Jesus is he's fully alive—he's alive to what's good and he's not trying to suppress who he is to manage life. The consequences of his good anger will be his own death. He's the true warrior, the true hero who goes into the face of evil."

[JESUS & HONESTY] 3. No Pretense (POJ 2.2) Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus' honesty, looking in particular at what we can learn about Jesus and honesty from the disciples he chooses.

"Jesus is savoring that right about Nathaniel when he could have bristled at it or reacted in some other way, but instead he's savoring the honesty of it."

"Judging is honesty twisted – where you've not really taken the time to discern what's going on in the situation."

"The worst kind of judgment is hidden judgment. When you begin to put judgment out in a community, it's actually helpful. I'm not saying that you go around judging people. But if you've been stuffing something, it's really good for you to get that out. Sin always grows in the dark. Ideally, you're sharing it with a friend and saying, 'am I off here?' "

[JESUS & HONESTY] 2. Honesty & Our Cultural Context (POJ 2.1) Oct 19, 2022

Show notes

"How do you balance care for a person and care for truth? It is extraordinarily complex. In any relationship where you hit some speed bumps, you immediately encounter that complexity. I am not a neutral truth speaker. I am a sinner saved by grace, who is a saint at my core, but I've got my flesh to deal with…"

"It's not like you graduate out of prayer and get good at honesty. What happens is you get quicker to go to prayer, so that your honesty can be shaped with gentleness and wisdom."

"What Jesus is getting at in the Sermon on the Mount about judging is honesty that's been unreflective. You need to do 'beam research' in your own eye, you need to slow down, apply the Golden Rule, be reflective before you speak. Think about your heart, your motivation, your behavior. The Golden Rule slows you down. That self-reflection frames your honesty."

[JESUS & HONESTY] 1. The Gift of Honesty (POJ 2.1) Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

We're at the start of a new podcast series called "Jesus & Honesty." In these episodes, we'll be focusing on Jesus' stunning, others-centered honesty. In today's conversation, we start by looking at this strange "Gift of Honesty."

"What Jesus says here in Luke 7 is actually really very kind. That kindness is a characteristic of his honesty. He will often deal with obvious things in front of him that the rest of us will just be quiet about and have sideways conversations about later on."

"Jesus' honesty enlarges the world of these dinner guests. It is good advice, and it invites them to live in light of eternity."

"Sometimes in stories like these, we assume that Jesus just showed up and decided in the moment what he was going to do. We can miss his dependent prayer life on the Father before, during, and even after these moments. That is where he gets the wisdom to know what to do."

[ROUND-UP] 2. J-Curve, Radioactive Gophers, and "Flexing" as Modern Boasting Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Jon, Paul and Liz round up some J-Curve related conversations and themes. These excerpts are from items Jon shared in the conversation.

"The common idea of the Christian life is that Jesus saves us, and then, we don't technically believe this, but somehow, we live as if the power that raised him kind of goes and burrows into the ground like a gopher and pops up at the very end when Jesus returns again. So, it almost feels like a power that's underneath the ground, like radioactivity."

"The students would say, 'Ah, he's flexing. He's on the flexing chart.' And just like that, they renamed the 'failure-boasting chart.' "

"I realize more and more that while we sometimes complain about the younger generation, we underestimate them, what the Lord is doing in them, and what he will do through them. I'm not typically an optimistic person. I'm more of a glass half-empty person, but over the years, I'm becoming more and more of an optimist or at least a realist in terms of the reality of resurrection power in the midst of a dying world."

[ROUND-UP] 1. Prayer in the Old Testament, Praying Our Questions, & the Influence of Secularism Aug 24, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, recorded late last Spring, Paul, Jon and Liz reflect on some aspects of the "A Praying Church" material that resonated in recent conversations and events.

"We bring our bad praying and our secularism to the Old Testament and so we miss some of the richness of prayer there. One practical reason is because while in the New Testament prayer is generally just called 'prayer,' in the Old Testament, you have this really rich variety of language that covers the range of what it is to be human before God."

"Prayer is not central. God is central."

"Secularism is pervasive. It's a mindset that makes functionally prayer as a window dressing… I love to pray these gigantic kingdom prayers and ask questions, because it lets you see the story unfold. It's just fascinating what God does. It's just a lot more interesting though than what I would come up with."

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