Heads Up

Halfway through the Disciples [Lord’s] Prayer in Matthew 6, we come to the fourth petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We turn from prayer for the advancement of God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will to prayer for our personal needs: (1) life’s necessities, (2) forgiveness of sins, and (3) deliverance from temptation…

“This, then, is how you should pray:” ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver…

There is a wonderful wholeness as well as a compelling organization to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and we come to appreciate it more and more as we move carefully through Christ’s teaching.

What about telling the truth? According to surveys, Americans lie all the time, often with no apparent reason. But in most other societies, both past and present, telling the truth has always been judged an important personal virtue. What was the problem in Jesus’ day then? It was exactly what we have been seeing all…

What Jesus taught about murder in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) he now teaches in a directly parallel way about adultery. He defines it first, teaching that lust or any other impure sexual thoughts are the equivalent of adultery, just as anger or scornful talk is the equivalent of murder. Then he teaches…

John H. Gerstner, a former professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, observed on one occasion that modern authors write as if they had never met a righteous man or a virtuous woman. If that is correct, it presents a serious problem for us: What, then, is righteousness? And where can righteousness be found?