Scot McKnight > Quotes

“‎Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it. The moment we think we’ve mastered it, we have failed to be readers of the Bible.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“Why do so many today want to wander off to South Africa or Kenya or India or Russia or Honduras or Costa Rica or Peru to help with justice issues but not spend the same effort in their own neighborhood or community or state? Why do young suburbanites, say in Chicago, want to go to Kentucky or Tennessee to help people but not want to spend that same time to go to the inner city in their own area to help with justice issues? I asked this question to a mature student in my office one day, and he thought he had a partial explanation: 'Because my generation is searching for experiences, and the more exotic and extreme the better. Going down the street to help at a food shelter is good and it is just and some of us are doing that, but it's not an experience. We want experiences.”
― Scot McKnight

“We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“The assumption that the gospel can be reduced to a note card is already off on the wrong track.”
― Scot McKnight

“What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him — trusting only his role as guilt remover.”
― Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited

“Grace is more than being lucky to be on God’s side. Grace is God’s goodness showered on people who have failed. Grace is God’s love on those who think they are unlovable. Grace is God knowing what we are designed to be. Grace is God believing in us when we have given up. Grace is someone at the end of their rope finding new strength. But there’s more to grace. Grace is both a place and a power. Grace is God unleashing his transforming power. Grace realigns and reroutes a life and a community. Grace is when you turn your worst enemy into your best friend. Grace takes people as they are and makes them what they can be. Grace ennobles; grace empowers. Grace forgives; grace frees. Grace transcends, and grace transforms.”
― Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together

“Too many people think repenting means feeling terrible about something someone has done. Feeling bad is fine, and it often accompanies repentance, but repentance is not so much about what we feel but the twofold prong of owning up to our own injustices and failures to love, and starting all over by living justly and lovingly.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. —ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL”
― Scot McKnight, Praying with the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today

“Any method of Bible study that doesn’t lead to transformation abandons the missional path of God and leaves us stranded.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“Here’s our problem today. Not only do we not like ultimatums, but we have too many Christians who have accepted Jesus into their hearts and who have been baptized and who have confessed their sins and who have joined the Church and who are in Bible studies and who are absolutely 100 percent convinced they are going to heaven, but who are not followers of Jesus. There are many who haven’t made it real. The mark of a follower of Jesus is following. The mark of a follower of Jesus is that she or he has given Jesus her or his heart. It’s that simple. It’s that demanding. It’s that serious. Jesus was a moral zealot and he expected his followers to become moral zealots too. He wanted them to live the Committed. Life.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“God was on the move; God is on the move; and God will always be on the move. Those who walk with God and listen to God are also on the move. Reading the Bible so we can live it out today means being on the move—always. Anyone who stops and wants to turn a particular moment into a monument, as the disciples did when Jesus was transfigured before them, will soon be wondering where God has gone.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“the movement that has long called itself “evangelical” is in fact better labeled “soterian.” That is, we have thought we were talking about “the gospel” when in fact we were concentrating on “salvation.”
― Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited

“What we are looking for in reading the Bible is the ability to turn the two-dimensional words on paper into a three-dimensional encounter with God, so that the text takes on life and meaning and depth and perspective and gives us direction for what to do today.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“We live in a world of evaluations, assessments, and measurements, but Jesus turns his gaze deeper because he knows that what is measurable can be faked.”
― Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount

“Community is like peace in that it is a result instead of an action. Peace results from acts of justice and behaviors of love. Community also emerges out of loving behaviors—like compassion and an embrace and forgiveness — and out of acts of justice.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“First we are to seek peace in our local fellowship, to end strife and to seek reconciliation with God and with one another, and out of this peace-shaped, kingdom-shaped church we spill over peace into the world.”
― Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church

“God gave the Bible not so we can know it but so we can know and love God through it.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“the way to inscribe the will of God on the hearts of people in this world is not by way of law or vote but by way of redemption through Jesus. Jesus’ kingdom vision is for his redeemed people and for them alone.”
― Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church

“When a male-based culture is re-formed into a male-and-female-based culture, it presents a truer picture of the character of God, who created all people as his image bearers. When the voices of women become customary, common, expected, and accepted, the church becomes more inviting, more inclusive, more empathetic, more compassionate, safer, and more secure—for everyone. We pray for that day. [1] Luke 4:18-19, NRSV, italics added. [”
― Scot McKnight, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing

“The Jesus Creed teaches us that a disciple’s responsibility is to love God by following Jesus. You only follow someone else when your own lights or sense of direction are not good enough.”
― Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others

“The longer you look at the idea that we read the Bible to find new meanings, the sillier it becomes. We read and return to the Bible not (just) to find something new but to hear something old, not to discover something fresh but to be reminded of something ancient.”
― Scot McKnight, Praying with the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today

“Simple acts are more valuable than extraordinary powers or spiritual gifts. For Jesus there is a categorical difference between charismatic giftedness and the ordinary fruit of love, compassion, and mercy. Perhaps we need to learn to ask ourselves, particularly if we are gifted leaders, if we value our gifts more than love, if we value the performance of a gift for the good of others or the gift of love for the good of others. When Jesus used “fruit” over against mighty charismatic gifts, he was getting at what mattered most. Do you show love to your neighbors, to your enemies, and to all those who happen to be on your path? Jesus is saying here that if you don’t do the latter, he doesn’t particularly care about your charismatic giftedness.”
― Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount

“Until we learn to read the Bible as Story, we will not know how to get anything out of the Bible for daily living.”
― Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

“By kingdom, Jesus means: God’s Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world. In our terms today, Jesus was ultimately talking about the Church as the partial and imperfect manifestation of the kingdom of God. What this means is so important: When Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God, he was thinking of concrete realities on the earth, he was thinking of the Church being the embodiment of the Jesus dream, and he was thinking of you and I living together in a community as we should.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“Peter’s Jesus of Nazareth, the one who lived and died and who was raised and ascended and enthroned, is both Messiah of Israel and Lord of the whole world. Those are the terms of the early gospeling in the book of Acts, and if we want to be faithful to the Bible, those should be our terms as well. Those titles for Jesus tell the gospel Story of Jesus.”
― Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited

“Jesus thought he was anointed by God to proclaim the gospel to the poor and to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovered sight for the blind and to set the oppressed free. This is why he came.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“Put differently, we’ve made the church into the American dream for our own ethnic group with the same set of convictions about next to everything. No one else feels welcome. What Jesus and the apostles taught was that you were welcomed because the church welcomed all to the table.”
― Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together

“Power has always been a temptation, and I want to argue that majority rule in America carries with it an empire temptation for many Christian citizens. Those of us who know our American history might be tempted to say, “That’s precisely the opposite of what our democracy, or representative democracy, stands for.” True enough, at one level, because giving everyone a voice vastly surpasses anything less. But take any heated political issue, from abortion to same-sex marriage to national health care to free-market enterprise to nuclear build-up for security, and you may glimpse what I’m trying to say. The political left takes one posture on issues while the political right draws swords from another posture. If we step back we see that each side seeks to impose its view on the minority. This is ruling over the other. Now to a few questions. Is this imposition of power over others consistent with following Christ? Do we ever wonder if the right to vote is the right to coerce and impose, the right to use the power of the majority against the minority?17 Is the power of the majority that different from the power of King Charles when the pilgrims and Puritans left England to establish the “city on a hill”? We would all agree that empowering the people improved the conditions, but I want to ask another question: Does it make the political process of voting the source of seeking for power over others? What is the best Christian response to the drive for power? I call this quest for power through the political process the “eschatology of politics”—that is, the belief that if we usher in the right political candidates and the right laws, then kingdom conditions will arrive. Every two years America goes through convulsions as one candidate after another promises (all but) the kingdom if he or she is elected. Every two years Americans go through the same convulsions as they lather up for the election because they believe if they get their candidate, not only will they win, but (all but) the kingdom will come. This is idolatry and yet another example of Constantinianism”
― Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church

“Give generously of what you have, and if you don’t have much, give little generously.”
― Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together