The “Radical” We Must Be

Life in the Kingdom is meant to be life at its fullest. Our problem is we settle for “good enough” when the Kingdom calls us to “God’s best.”

The demand of the Kingdom is this: God’s perfection. We don’t understand that, so we settle for “good enough.”

The moment we settle for “good enough,” we become Pharisees. That’s not just for conservative legalistic Christians. There are plenty of “liberal” Christian Pharisees, too.

We ALL have that danger, and that is what Jesus wants to show us. The freedom of the Kingdom is so much more, but we just don’t believe it.

The Sermon on the Mount is about freedom. Freedom from anxiety, from anger, from lust, from retaliation, from hatred. The invitation is live free of those very common maladies in our world. We just don’t think it’s possible, so we reduce our Christianity to what is “good enough” for “me.”

The “radical” we must be is the one who will finally break free and say, “I truly desire God’s best.”

That has a high call, but the Kingdom has provided all the power to get it done. The tools are all there. We just refuse to pick them up. We look at the tools in the tool box and think, “Wow. Nice tools.”

It never occurs to us to pick them up and use them in their intended purposes.

If we pull one out we know, we use it all the time. We have a hammer, and everything becomes a nail. We need a broader vision.

THAT is being radical.