MATTHEW 5 38-48

   🍃🕊️01/18 - GospeL Verses 🍃🕊️

(Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mountain” continued. It likely is representative of a few or many such occasions? So a sort of summary?) 38 - “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?’ 39 I say to you, don’t resist evil. If someone should slap you on the right cheek, turn to them the other as well. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your shirt, let them have your coat also. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two. 42 Give to the one who asks from you, and don’t refuse the one who would borrow.

     43 You have heard that it’s said, ‘You shall love your neighbor/fellow person, and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say, love your enemies and pray for those who misuse you! 45 So you may be sons and daughters of your Father who’s in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise upon both evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust. 46 Because if you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?” [Irony, Matthew, the author, was a tax collector before following Jesus.]

     47 “And if you greet only your brethren and friends, what more are you doing than others? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect” {GOD’s work in us, and “he is faithful to complete the work” of making perfect} “as your heavenly Father” {who iS life} “is perfect”.

     {Perfect - means the question is, what is God doing, and how? And most importantly why.. It also means the ‘end’ result can only be the best, most perfect one possible. (The Greek word translated - the end, more closely means the “end-aim”.) He also, as life/the very life force, lives through all things that ever occur. And he endowed thinking and reasoning ability (to man and angel) anyway! All are bound to stray sooner or later.. Which can never work. Imperfect is entropy, this slow gehenna.) How do you create genuinely able to think and reason beings, aNd, keep paradise/perfection intact?

     “The lion will eat straw like the ox and the bear will graze with the cow” Isaiah 11:7. All creation and humanity will be “sealed” with God’s Spirit/Presence. But first Isaiah 24:20, Rev.10:4.}

                      ~ * ~

🗝️ [  ] - word/language insights, usually from biblehub dot com - peering through translator partial unbelief; facts, cross references, etc.

      {  } - thots

Tomorrows verses - Matthew 6:1-21

By Necessity Paraphrased

A Daily ‘Enter the Story’ Gospel Reading & Study