{"id":1256,"date":"2025-09-09T21:56:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T21:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:59:09","slug":"the-moral-teachings-of-jesus-radical-instruction-in-the-will-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/the-moral-teachings-of-jesus-radical-instruction-in-the-will-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by David P. Gushee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

–<\/p>\n\n\n

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Buy Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cI believe that the teachings of Jesus offer the best ethical instruction, the best account of the will of God, that the world has ever known,\u201d writes Christian ethicist David Gushee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His 2024 book, The Moral Teachings of Jesus<\/em>, guides readers through 40 individual and sometimes parallel lessons \u2014 not cherry-picked favorites but those that arise most clearly from Jesus\u2019 instructions captured in the Gospels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With excellent biblical scholarship and penetrating insight, Gushee delves into the lessons Jesus offered on living in radical and often counter-cultural ways of faithfulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when following Jesus is often downplayed or absent from many expressions of the Christian faith, this book is well timed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Gushee notes, however, in the Introduction: \u201cSurely any time is the right time, and any church is the right church, to seek the spiritual and moral renewal that comes from close study of the astonishing, bracing, demanding moral teachings of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a most helpful resource for individual reading, sermon preparation or group study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe category \u2018moral teachings,\u2019\u201d writes Gushee, \u201cdenotes teachings intended to instruct Jesus\u2019 listeners, especially his committed disciples, about God\u2019s moral will for their character and behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gushee does not simply read a verse, tag Jesus and climb upon some ideological soapbox. He sticks with Jesus\u2019 teachings in the Gospels, even when the lessons are hard to hear and even harder to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To articulate and advance the following of Jesus as the defining priority of the Christian faith requires a willingness to refocus on Jesus\u2019 instructions to all would-be disciples. Gushee\u2019s book is a helpful resource for that needed refocusing, reframing and reforming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing so, in fact, can largely define what it means to be truly Christian when that label is so often misused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe Christians are those who commit to obey these teachings,\u201d he writes. \u201cBlessed are those who bless the world by heeding and doing what Jesus taught.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review by John D. Pierce, Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by David P. Gushee – \u201cI believe that the teachings of Jesus offer the best ethical instruction, the best account of the will of God, that the world has ever …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booksintro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesusworldview.org\/resource-library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}