The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard - My Book Notes - Part 4 - Who Is Really Well Off: The Beatitudes




Welcome to part 4 of my blog series on Dallas Willard's book "The Divine Conspiracy". Please look at the chapter list to move between the other parts of this series.

What I Learnt From This Chapter

The beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) of Jesus are often very misunderstood. Dallas does an amazing job of clearing up many misconceptions, and perhaps the greatest one for me was his statement about how we often take Jesus out of our treatment of the list. The beatitudes only work when we understand who Jesus is and his role in the availability of the kingdom of God.

Chapter List

Chapter 4 - Who is Really Well Off? - The Beatitudes
Chapter 5 - The Righteousness of the Kingdom Heart: Beyond the Goodness of Scribes and Pharisees
Chapter 6 - Investing in the Heavens: Escaping the Deceptions of Reputations and Wealth
Chapter 7 - The Community of Prayerful Love
Chapter 8 - On Being a Disciple, or Student, of Jesus
Chapter 9 - A Curriculum for Christlikeness
Chapter 10 - The Restoration of all Things

Chapter 4 - Who Is Really Well Off - The Beatitudes

The Puzzle of the Beatitudes

The two major questions of life:
1. Which life is the good life?
Beatitudes help clarify this first question.
2. Who is truly a good person?
Rest of sermon on the mount deals with second question.
Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Ethics, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill all preoccupied with these two questions.
George Herbert Palmer - "ethics is the study of life in it's fullness, not its restriction".

Pretty Poison?

Beatitudes have been seen as pretty poison - as a picture of the ideal christian.

Teaching from the Context

Should be seen in the light of the availability of the kingdom of the heavens - the main theme of the sermon on the mount.
It is in the midst of the mass of raw humanity that Jesus gives his discourse.
The discourse is preceded by his healing of the people.
The poor in spirit are blessed because of the availability of the kingdom.
Blessing is not because of the thing, but in spite of it.
Not an excuse for not changing things that need to be changed.

Staying in Charge

Most interpretations of beatitudes disregard Jesus himself. (i.e. it is through Jesus that we are blessed).
Not teachings on how to be blessed, or for situations that God looks upon favourably, or conditions for who will be on top; but explanation of the personal availability of the kingdom of heaven through Christ - otherwise they are not good news.

Dealing With the Soul in Depth, Jesus' Manner of Teaching

Parables = to lay one thing down beside another - placing something we are familiar with, with something we are not familiar with.

Teaching to Correct Prevailing Assumptions and Practices

The rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-34) - to them wealth meant being in God's favour.
He upset the prevailing opinion on God and riches.

Don't Have Your Relatives to Dinner?

Luke 14:1-35 - provide for more than our specific circle, and place ourselves in larger context of heavens rule.

The Case of the Good Samaritan

It was his heart that made him the good one.

How to Make a Neighbour

Assumptions about life must be changed

Why Jesus Teaches in this Manner

No value was placed on mere information in Jesus' day.

What Jesus Really Had In Mind With His Beatitudes, a Look at Luke's Version of the Beatitudes

Luke's beatitudes also drawn from people who are in his immediate audience.

Beatitude Under the Personal Ministry of Jesus

Luke 4:18-19 - read from Isaiah, these blessings come through him.
The Isaiah scroll read is a parallel of the beatitudes (people who are "out").
John sent message to Jesus, "are you the one?" (Luke 7:21-23).
More list of people who are out, even using phrase "blessed".

Making This Message Personal Today

Can you go to anybody in society and ensure that they can be blessed?
The silly, the serious, and the immoral.

These Are To Be the Salt of the Earth, Light of the World

Scythian = the barbarians barbarian - blessed are the scythians.
Make Your Church an Eco-Church, Download Your Free Guide Today

Comments

Post a Comment

Subscribe

* indicates required

Popular posts from this blog

If God is All Good and All Powerful, Why Does Suffering Exist?

Image
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga called the problem of suffering “the only good objection to God”. The often quoted argument goes:  “if God is all good (all benevolent) then God has the desire to end suffering, and if God is all-powerful (omnipotent) then God has the ability to end suffering. Therefore if God does not end suffering, then God is either not all good, or is not all-powerful, and is therefore not God”. As Christians, we need to be able to answer this objection to God, to enable us to “give a reason for the faith that we have in Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 3:15). To this end, I want to try and answer this question to help anybody who finds the problem of suffering to be a sticking point or an obstacle in their faith (an argument to explain the problem of suffering is called a “theodicy”). To begin with, I want to go back to the beginning of it all and look at God. Who is God and what is God like? It is worth noting here that this argument takes as given the f...
Keep reading

The Surprising Truth About The Differences Between The Temptation Narratives of Matthew and Luke and What They Teach Us About Overcoming Temptation

Image
  5 MINUTE READ We are now well into Lent , one of the two great fasts in the Christian Calendar ( along with Advent ). Lent is the time when we contemplate Christ’s sacrifice, along with Christ’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness. When we give up things for Lent we find ourselves tempted in similar, yet far less extreme, circumstances (Let’s be honest, who wants to hang out in the wilderness by themselves for 40 days and eat and drink nothing; I can barely handle giving up chocolate!). Much writing during this time consists of looking at the temptations of Jesus, and how Jesus overcame them as a template for our own overcoming of temptations. But in this post, I do not intend to look at the traditional views, but rather to look at the differences between how Matthew and Luke told the story of Christ’s temptation and what we can learn from these differences. Let’s look at them now. Why Differences are OK We do not like to discuss differences in ...
Keep reading

SANDWICHES - Enhance Your Reading of Mark's Gospel

Image
As followers of Christ, we look to the Bible as one of our main sources of inspiration and guides in our lives. So it follows that we all want our times reading the Bible to be as rich as possible. Learning more about the Bible is one way to help with this. It is particularly helpful when we know the types of things that the authors of the books used to aid us in this task. To this end I wanted to talk about something that has enriched my reading of the gospel of Mark: Markan Sandwiches (also called interpolations ). Essentially, what Mark does is get one story within his gospel, and inserts it inside another story ; this serves the purpose of giving both stories a greater sense of meaning. It’s purpose is to make the reader stop and think “Mark is trying to tell us something important here”. In practice it looks like this: Story 1 – Introduction Story 2 – Introduction & Conclusion Story 1 – Conclusion We can see where the idea of the sandwich com...
Keep reading