The Sermon on the Mount insists on an inside-out approach. Only the Sermon’s Preacher and those within whom he resides can practice what he preaches. The only way to live upside down is to live inside out. Jesus sits in the control center prompting outlandish individual and social behavior.
Exterior-only religion downplays or altogether discounts the innermost part of us. The human spirit is left out of most “Christian conversations” about what it means to be human.
God designed the whole of us and has designs on all of the parts of the whole; wherein spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23) are all in play. Trying to live like Jesus by simply denying the body and disciplining the soul, thus leaving our spirit almost entirely out of the process, is a sweaty business. But Jesus made it possible for God’s transforming power to inwardly invade us so that our innermost parts influence our outermost parts.
This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Morally, Socially, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
I’d appreciate your feedback on this post in order to make the final copy as faithful as possible to the message of Jesus.
barney wiget 