Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Paul, Robert, and Liz wrap up this study of Jesus by reflecting on what Jesus tells us about his glory... and what that means for how we follow him. "We would think the glory would be the resurrection, that it would start Sunday. But Jesus says the glory starts Friday… which is just so different than how we think of glory." "Most of the time you only see glory in retrospect. When you're enduring q...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about the resurrection of Jesus. "It was the apocryphal gospel of Peter that helped me to realize how much space Jesus left in this Resurrection scene. If you follow what the gospel of Peter says, Jesus comes back from the grave like King Kong - he fills up all the space. You can't even see his head, because it is literally up through the clouds!"...

Paul, Robert, and Liz begin looking at the first moments after the resurrection of Jesus, examining his interaction with Mary Magdalene. "Mary Magdalene is the first person we know of who turns away from two angels, because they aren't helping her. She's in pursuit, and the angels aren't helping her, so she starts looking around. We know from Luke that she had been demon-possessed, and Jesus had f...

Paul, Robert, and Liz finish their conversation about Jesus on the cross, slowly walking through his last seven statements. "Notice how short Jesus' sentences are on the cross. He has to push himself up on his feet to catch a breath and then to be able to exhale that breath without dropping… it makes it all that much harder to talk." "Everything about this person is supernatural!" "Jesus cries out...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their slow walk through the last hours of Jesus' life, looking at Jesus and the cross. "There are so many things that Jesus says that are memorable because they're pithy. 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do' is certainly one that has implanted itself in our memories. But it's very serious. Jesus is holding back the wrath of God. They don't realize th...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus before Pilate, looking at how close Jesus gets to Pilate's heart. "Jesus has taken Pilate from a mocking question into opening up his heart, then he's received more mocking from Pilate and taken him to truth. The whole thing is kind of a journey, and Pilate follows Jesus." "Jesus is very lamb-like, but there's a lion right behind the bu...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about how Jesus loves as the cross draws near, turning their attention to the trial scene with Pilate. "Pilate is one of the people in the Gospels who we tend to see through a fairly fixed definition. The scene where he washes his hands is iconic: 'Behold, the man!' So we actually don't have a feel for him as a person. What's this guy like? It was...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about how Jesus loves as the cross draws near, turning their attention to the scene when Judas arrives at the garden. "We can sometimes be fearful of the kind of honest command or these penetrating questions Jesus asks that unmask evil. Sin grows in the dark. And yet here they are coming in the cover of darkness, not realizing they were coming to t...

Paul, Robert, and Liz resume the Passion series, watching Jesus at Gethsemane. "What saved us from sin and brought joy to the world? It was Jesus' death on the cross. What makes Jesus' death possible? Well, it was his obedience to his father: doing his father's will. When did he set his will firmly? What was the ground zero of his obedience? It was facing the awful sadness at Gethsemane and not gi...

Paul, Robert, and Liz take a break from their conversations around the passion of Jesus to reflect on Christmas, and in particular, the story of the first live nativity, created by Francis of Assisi. "Francis of Asissi was probably the first person in the church to be completely enamored with, very particularly, the person of Jesus. It just ignited his whole life. He'd been a soldier and had a bre...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus in his passion, considering what his sighs teach us about being human. "A sigh says so much. We know from Romans 8 that the Spirit himself 'intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words' (Romans 8:26). A sigh, or a groan, expresses things that words can't quite capture. There are two ways we encounter the impact of fall all the ti...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation on Jesus' passion, looking at how Jesus begins to face his coming death. To celebrate the complete Person of Jesus series, we're offering $5 off of Unit 5: The Passion Leader's Manual ( digital version) when you use promo code: POD5 "Paul's line on that from Romans 5 is actually a very stoic-like passage where he says rejoice in your suffering, bec...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation on Jesus' passion, turning their attention to Judas' betrayal. In this episode, Paul mentions a talk he gave on Judas several years ago, as part of an audio study called "The Love Course." You can listen to that talk here (or download it to listen to later, if you click on the triple dots.) "How do you know someone is troubled? He was agitated, and...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about learning from Jesus in his passion. "Contrary to the typical pictures on a Sunday school wall, Jesus comes down the hill on Palm Sunday weeping – the word is actually closer to 'wailing.' In our experience of humanity, people who wail and warrior kings are never the same person, but Jesus is a wailing warrior king. His heart is filled sadness...

Paul, Robert, and Liz continue their conversation about seeing Jesus in his passion, turning their attention to what we learn from his sadness and grief over the people's rejection of him. "Jesus' words are so tender, 'Your house is left desolate.' We get a picture of broken intimacy or intimacy that never happened. It's paired with this really true and honest image of how brutal they are. 'You wh...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about the humility Jesus calls us to, looking at what taking the lower place might look like in an everyday moment. "Humility is when your heart is humbled, it's a virtue, a character trait. Humiliation is when your circumstances are humble. It's helpful to distinguish between the two, but having experienced some of the dying of humility in my life, I...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their discussion of Jesus' humility, looking at the foot washing scene in John 13. "This scene reads like a YouTube video. John gives us every move of Jesus, and the effect of it is riveting… especially since he does it all in silence. John's writing this probably 60, 50 years later, from what Eusebius tells us, and he remembered every single move Jesus made because he...

Paul, Jon, and Liz start a new series, talking through the  Passion  unit of our  Person of Jesus Study , which looks closely at how all the aspects of Jesus as a person that we've looked at before (his compassion, honesty, dependence on God, and faith) come together in the intense last few weeks of his life on earth. "Jealousy is a sin that is often hidden from the person who is jealous, because...

Paul, Liz, and Robert continue their conversation about the woman at the well, looking at the second half of their conversation. "Jesus has already said he has water. Now he says the character of the water is not just spring water. It's not well water that's been sitting there forever. It's not spring water – it's water that if you drink it, you'll never be thirsty again. This is like a super drin...

With the Discipleship series complete, we circle back to our Faith series (based on the Person of Jesus Faith Study) to cover a story we had not yet discussed: Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well. Paul Miller, Liz Voboril, and Robert Row look at how this story showcases Jesus' compassion, honesty, and dependence on the Father -- themes we've discussed in previous episodes. "The conversa...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their discussion of discipleship, talking about how the discipling process is a process of moving people out of lukewarm into hot or cold. "The discipling process is a process of moving people out of lukewarm into hot or cold, and that's a good process. You're calling them to greatness, and you want to move them to hot. You don't want them lukewarm." "In general, I woul...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their discussion of discipleship, talking about the history of discipleship practices. "By about 200 AD, every person who wanted to become a Christian went through a year of discipleship. They did this through a form of catechism, or questions and answers, and then the graduation was on Easter. That's when you were baptized. I think one of the reasons the church does th...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship. "At the heart of discipleship is not just seeing Jesus and becoming like him abstractly, but actually entering into the patterns of his life. One of the central principles of interpretation of the New Testament is that what happens to Jesus happens to us." "The goal of discipleship is Christ formation." "You can't separate a teachi...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship. "Two thousand years after Jesus' death, the Church of Jesus Christ is absolutely massive—there are three billion confessing Christians. If you're going to start the world's biggest, most enduring organization, how would you go about it? It's striking that Jesus doesn't go to the rabbinical schools or to the elites." "We laugh at th...

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about discipleship. "One caution with a focus on discipleship practices is that it can be like making an amusement park about going on a ride. But you don't just go on a ride at Disney, you are immersed in an experience. Discipleship without an overall goal of growing in Christ-likeness is just getting a lot more Christian information." "The whole pro...