Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

"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....

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...

"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 fea...

"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 di...

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...

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 discer...

"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 g...

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 th...

  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 w...

  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...

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their discussion of Jesus' compassion, looking at what he teaches in the 'golden rule.' "In the Golden Rule, Jesus flips our natural tendency to self-care – he doesn't deny the value of self-care, but he says let that be a window into the world of love for you." "Be attentive to others in the same way you want people to be attentive to you." " 'Not that we should live on...

We've been focusing on compassion and how it's a movement toward people that begins with looking. We've looked at enemies of compassion: judging, self-righteousness and legalism. And now we'll return to compassion and unpack a bit more of how it works. "What we're going to look at today is the verb 'incarnate' which comes from the noun 'incarnation.' We are used to thinking of Jesus' incarnation,...

Paul, Jon and Liz continue the conversation about Jesus & Compassion and take another look at the problem of legalism they discussed in the last episode. "There's no better place to explore the law than the Sermon on the Mount. One way to look at it is to see how the law functions as a frame around grace. And if you don't have that frame, then grace spins off like a dust devil, it has no content t...

We continue our discussion of Jesus & Compassion and explore how legalism affects our relationships. "Legalism is a fascinating thing to study, particularly in our modern world where you've got competing worldviews that have their own different legalisms. It seems like everyone is reacting to someone else's legalism! It's a great place to dive in and hear from Jesus." "What the law lacks is power,...

We continue our series on Jesus & Compassion by looking at two stories that highlight how we get legalistic in relationships — starting with Mary & Martha. "Martha is not saying 'Ok, my doing this job frees Mary to go to Bible study. That's wonderful!' At this moment in the story, Martha loves respect and efficiency, and she's not getting either. This leads to a demanding spirit, the harshness tha...

We continue our conversation looking at the story of Jesus and the dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7. "In receiving this woman's love and not condemning her, the disdain that Simon and likely others feel for the woman goes over to Jesus. The identical thing happens in the interaction with Zacchaeus, because Jesus goes to his house and has dinner with him." "Jesus is teaching Simon...

We continue our series on Jesus and Compassion, looking at the story of Jesus and the dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7. "What's so striking is Jesus' silence. It's not unlike multiple other scenes in Jesus' life where He does something that has the effect of creating space that other people fill. I think it's so striking for me, because I tend to fill space! Just this morning at...

In this episode, we continue looking at how Jesus and the disciples interact with the man born blind in John 9. "Jesus looks at this blind man and he looks long enough that the disciples ask him, 'Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents? Jesus says, 'Neither.' In other words, you're in the wrong paradigm or story. But let me just defend the disciple's story for a minute. Their story is that sin...

In this episode, we turn our attention to the story of how Jesus and the disciples interact with the man born blind in John 9. "You can see the contrast here between the disciples and Jesus: judging vs compassion. I think it's helpful to get a sense of what sins feel like, because when I'm impatient, I don't  feel  impatient. I just feel like there are a lot of slow people around! But you see how...

This week, we wrap up our discussion of The Prodigal Son in Luke 15 as we discuss the father's conversation with the elder brother. "The father's trying to help the elder brother see his brother and see his own heart. He's painting a picture of his younger brother that would invite the elder brother into compassion, because that that's missing." "It's harder to be a victim than it is to be a sinne...

This week, we continue our discussion of The Prodigal Son in Luke 15 as we reflect on the father's relationships with both the older son and the younger son. "Both sons struggled to go into the father's house. The elder brother thought he was too high; the younger, that he was too low. The father moves towards his older son, in his disgust and his pride, and towards his younger son, in his brokenn...

In Part 2 of The Prodigal Son (Luke 15), we focus on the son's repentance and the father's self-control. "Repentance is so different from our modern way of thinking of the self. 'I need to be in touch with my inner self' and so on. No, the problem is your inner self is out of touch with God. Repentance is a kind of restoring back to the original sanity." "We are only  ourselves  when we're in a li...

In this episode, we look at the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) with a focus on the father, considering the context of the story and the father's decision to grant the son his wish.   "It's fascinating to go through Proverbs and the Psalms and look at the number of references to paths… And Jesus tells his disciples to come follow me. The very first name for the early church was 'The Way.' When...

We're continuing our series that looks at Jesus as a person. This week, we talk about the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10. "It's remarkable that the Samaritan man pays for an extended time of care. Not a small amount of money. He hands over $300 to this innkeeper and says he's going to come back and pay any additional costs. This is a 9.9 of love!" "The point of the parable is not just to...

We're beginning a new series that will look at Jesus as a person, and along the way, we're picking up on some themes that go back to our earliest episodes. This week, we explain a bit about the back story of this series and talk about what we see in Jesus in the story of the widow of Nain in Luke 7. "It was in reading this story my thinking and awareness of Jesus as a person first began to open up...