carlos marquez
Member
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2007
- Messages
- 158
Few of us manage to go through life without collecting a group of individuals who would not be sorry to learn we have died.By far most of the people who have lived on earth have been confronted with certain kinds of other people-other "tribes"-who would gladly kill them.There is a standard list of "enemies"in the daily news,which in fact hardly scratches the surface of the reality of standing hatreds that define people as enemies over and against one another in this world.
The final illustrative contrast between the old rightness and the rightness of the kingdome heart has to do with our attitude toward our enemies:those with standing contempt and hatred for us who regularly fantasize our pain and destruction.Here the old "rightness"was very simple.It was really just another application of the lex talionis.They seek our destruction, so we seek theirs in the same way.They hate us,so we hate them.It is only right to do so(Matt.5:43).Jesus, on the other hand,tells us to love our enemies and to carry that love through with the highest act of love,prayer."Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you.in this way you take on the nature of your Father,the one in the heavens,who routinely gives good things,such as sunshine and rain,to both the evil and the good,to those who are godly and to thse who spit in his face"(Matt.5:44-45).
Loving those who love us and lavishing care and honor on those of our own group is something that traitorous oppressors,the Mafia,and terrorist do. How ,then,could that serv to distinguish the goodness of someone born into God's family or the presence of a different kind of reality and life?Even those with no knowledge of God at all,"the gentiles,"do it.
But,Jesus says to his disciples,because you are living from God as citizens of the kingdome,have the kind of wholeness,of full functionality,that he has."Be perfect[teleioi]in the way your Father,the one in the heavens ,is perfect"(Matt.5:48).
The Devine Conspiracy
By Dallas Willard
pg.181,182
The final illustrative contrast between the old rightness and the rightness of the kingdome heart has to do with our attitude toward our enemies:those with standing contempt and hatred for us who regularly fantasize our pain and destruction.Here the old "rightness"was very simple.It was really just another application of the lex talionis.They seek our destruction, so we seek theirs in the same way.They hate us,so we hate them.It is only right to do so(Matt.5:43).Jesus, on the other hand,tells us to love our enemies and to carry that love through with the highest act of love,prayer."Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you.in this way you take on the nature of your Father,the one in the heavens,who routinely gives good things,such as sunshine and rain,to both the evil and the good,to those who are godly and to thse who spit in his face"(Matt.5:44-45).
Loving those who love us and lavishing care and honor on those of our own group is something that traitorous oppressors,the Mafia,and terrorist do. How ,then,could that serv to distinguish the goodness of someone born into God's family or the presence of a different kind of reality and life?Even those with no knowledge of God at all,"the gentiles,"do it.
But,Jesus says to his disciples,because you are living from God as citizens of the kingdome,have the kind of wholeness,of full functionality,that he has."Be perfect[teleioi]in the way your Father,the one in the heavens ,is perfect"(Matt.5:48).
The Devine Conspiracy
By Dallas Willard
pg.181,182
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