Interpreting the Sermon on the Mount: The Balance of Grace and Action

As a pastor, author, and speaker, Rich Villodas has spent a lot of time studying the Scriptures. Over the years, he’s realized what he treasures about them: 

“ I love that the Bible is not this collection of sanitized, holy people,” he said. “It’s a collection of broken, frail people who are made righteous by a goodness outside of themselves.”

Villodas and Moore discuss that righteousness and goodness through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. They talk about the type of life Jesus calls his people to live and consider what it looks like to engage with the emotions of our loved ones. The two converse about the prescriptive power of the Psalms, consider the role of forgiveness, and explore the nature of resentment as they cover Jesus’ statements about anger and lust.

Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include:

• Rich Villodas
• The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls by Rich Villodas
• Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World by Rich Villodas
• The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus by Rich Villodas
• “Christianity Today’s 2021 Book Awards”
• Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 1: The Christbook, Matthew 1–12 by Frederick Dale Bruner
• “Bitter-sweet” by George Herbert
• Don’t Forgive Too Soon: Extending the Two Hands That Heal by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn

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