Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

This episode begins a new series on Jesus' Passion by looking at how the disciples want to go higher, but Jesus is focused on going lower. "James and John get their mother to try to get them the number 1 and 2 places in the Kingdom. And the other disciples don't say 'You know I don't think that is Jesus way.' They are just mad that James and John beat them to it! They are all fighting for the top....

This episode wraps up our series on  J-Curve: Union with Christ by  looking at how the  J-Curve  helps in a mini-crisis. "The Apostle Paul introduces the  J-Curve  as a kind of a master story 'let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 2:5). And then he describes the downward journey of Jesus all the way to death on a cross." "Every community has a narrative." "The  J-Cur...

This episode continues our series on the  J-Curve,  looking at what it means to be "in Christ."  "When we think of idolatry we think about how it affects our relationship vertically with God and that is obvious and good but we're not necessarily attentive to how it affects the horizontal relationship with those around us." "Ministry is particularly subtle idol because it's got Jesus written all ov...

This episode continues our series on the  J-Curve,  looking at what it means to be "in Christ."  "You can see two different loves operating here. Field hockey is a lesser love, but it is still a valid love. It was taking more time and energy than my greater love for Emily to know Jesus. But nevertheless, that greater love was shaping how I responded to failures in the lesser love." "There's this w...

This episode continues our series on the  J-Curve,  looking at what it means to be "in Christ."  "My sister Rosanne got into Wellesley College and she came back on Thanksgiving vacation and said 'Paul, you could get into Harvard.' She didn't have to say that twice. I heard that once and I was planning my life..." "We are all 'in' something. 'In Christ' is mystical, but it's remarkably unmystical a...

This episode continues our series on the  J-Curve,  looking closer at what we tend to do instead of the  J-Curve : marketing ourselves and trying to climb the failure-boasting chart.  "The word "boast" the way Paul uses it in Philippians 3 is bigger than our English word. It also includes glory and rejoicing. So, when your favorite sports team wins, you glory in that sports team. The concept gets...

This episode explores the idea that gift-giving is deep in the structure of the universe... reflecting the heart of our gift-giving God.  "You're driving in heavy traffic, and someone coming from the opposite direction wants to make a left-hand turn in front of you. To let them do that might cost you missing a traffic light. You can see from their turn signal that they are requesting a gift. And,...

This episode continues our series on Paul's latest book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life.  "As Americans we have a whole declaration of no limitations, but the very nature of love is to have your freedom constricted. What we'll react to sometimes in a difficult relationship to the feel of the relationship—I have to be careful what I say around the person, it's unfair, it's un...

This episode begins a new series on Paul's latest book,  J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life.  "The American church is like me at the back of the plane, at many levels, thinking everything has gone wrong. And part of what has gone wrong is that we don't really have any teaching on dying and rising with Jesus." "We're missing a significant piece of Christianity." "One of the diffi...

This episode wraps up our conversation about how Jesus became a missing person. "Secular-liberalism itself is no longer aware of its Jesus roots. What it's done now is still hold on to Jesus, but no longer as a person, just his attributes." "Political correctness is simply Jesus' attributes, secularized." "One of the big passions of my life is for the church, and for our youth in particular, to ex...

This episode continues our conversation about how Jesus became a missing person. "In classical Greek literature, people are defined by their central characteristic. Achilles in the  Iliad  is swift; he is swift Achilles. Everything he does is swift. Erich Auerbach* compares that to Jacob. If you look at Jacob, in the first part of his life he's just a scoundrel. He's crafty. If he was in the  Ilia...

In this episode, we begin a conversation about why paying attention to how Jesus interacts as a person feels so strange and unfamiliar to many of us. "When it comes to repentance and holiness, it's almost like we're good at the dying—at sin identification—but the resurrection, the beauty formation, is weak. If we don't have a vision of the person of Jesus, then our beauty formation is without cont...

In this episode, we look at how Jesus greets Mary Magdalene in John 20. "Jesus is the same person pre-resurrection and post-resurrection. I think I could pick him out at a party. I'd look around and hunt for the person who is being quietly attentive to someone who is unimportant. That would be Jesus!" "'Mary!'" It's so Jesus to say that. It's pure poetry! It's so short, but yet filled with so much...

In this episode, we interview Tyler Johnson, Lead Pastor of Redemption Church in Arizona, about how seeing Jesus has made a difference in his life. "The biggest thing that pressing into Jesus has cultivated in me is the need to depend more on the Father through prayer…" "Jesus was the most dependent human being who ever lived." "If we saw a middle-aged man in Starbucks talking to his father, and s...

In this episode, we reflect on the two scenes studied thus far and begin to see some of the elements of Jesus' beauty that captivate us. "Jonathan Edwards said Jesus combines 'divine excellencies as otherwise would have seemed to us utterly incompatible in the same subject.' When you see opposites like compassion and honesty come together in a person, it's just striking and you're drawn to that. I...

In this episode, we continue our study of Jesus' conversation with Pilate in John 18. "Jesus enters Pilate's world. It's not like Jesus is just witnessing to Pilate. He is doing that, but it is inseparable from incarnating, entering his world." "Love moves toward people." "Jesus forbears. It's one of the fruits of the spirit, usually translated as patience, but a better translation would be forbea...

In this episode, we continue our study of Jesus' conversation with Pilate in John 18.

In this episode, we shift our focus to Jesus' conversation with Pilate in John 18. "Pilate asks Jesus, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' Almost everybody takes that at face value, but it is almost certainly a mock. Let's think about it. Everyone in this situation knows Jesus is not the King of the Jews ... Pilate is mocking Jesus. After this scene, the joke, 'Is Jesus King of the Jews?' goes all thr...

In this episode, we conclude our study of John 13 by looking at the theme of perfection.

In this episode, we return to our study of the foot-washing in John 13, focusing on Peter's response.

In this episode, Paul shares some reflections on friendship, on occasion of the death of his good friend David Powlison on June 7, 2019.

In this episode, we look at the footwashing in John 13. Paul draws our attention to a number of details in story, including Jesus' silence, the vivid details, and the effect of Jesus's beauty and humility on John even 50 years after the event. We then consider the ancient triad of goodness, truth and beauty, and how a deeper discovery of Jesus as a person might strengthen the church's witness in g...

In this episode, Paul Miller shares how a question from his wife, "Do you love me?" launched him into a study of the person of Jesus... and how what he saw changed him.