teaching/sermons/col-1-15-20/commentaries/mcknight_jesus_creed_extracts.md

McKnight, The Jesus Creed — extracts for Col 1:15–20

Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others (Paraclete, 15th anniv. ed.). Source: mcknight_jesus_creed.md (the same chapters appear in two halves — original ten and an expanded run — quotes are cited to the original Part 1/2 numbering; line numbers reference the source export.)

McKnight's central move: Jesus's answer to "which is the greatest commandment" (Mark 12:29–32) — the Shema (Deut 6:4–5) amended by Lev 19:18 — is the founding creed of Christian spiritual formation. Everything in McKnight runs through that one lens.

What lands for this sermon. The "Abba" / sacred-love thread is the strongest (and most quotable). The "Torah of love" thread is the second strongest — it's McKnight's version of how Jesus reorders righteousness around love, which is structurally adjacent to the "Christ is the head" reordering in v.18. Reverence — the preacher's chief interest — is present in McKnight but slimmer than expected: one strong paragraph on Jesus's own verbal reverence, plus the embedded "love and reverence God the Creator" in his John Woolman quote. Nothing on Col 1:15–20 itself; no cosmic Christology; no "become what you worship" move with Wright's force. Flagged below.

1. The Jesus Creed itself — Shema amended by Lev 19:18

McKnight's foundational claim. Worth holding next to v.20 ("reconcile to himself all things… making peace"), since for McKnight reconciliation is structurally inseparable from love-of-God-and-neighbor.

"In teaching college students about Jesus I became convinced that Jesus, as a good observant Jew, daily recited the Shema (love God) and that he amended that daily recitation by adding 'love your neighbor as yourself.' The Jesus Creed, then, is loving God and loving others." — McKnight, Intro to 15th Anniv. Ed. [line 228]

"As a good Jew, Jesus devotionally recites the Shema daily. [...] Jesus answers the man by reciting the Shema but adds to it, and in so doing, transforms a creed so he can shape the spiritual center of his followers. [...] Instead of a Love-God Shema, it is a Love-God-and-Others Shema. [...] Making the love of others part of his own version of the Shema shows that he sees love of others as central to spiritual formation." — McKnight, Ch. 1 [lines 427–443]

"As a normal Jew, spiritual formation for Jesus begins with the Shema of Judaism. But Jesus revises the Shema in two ways: loving others is added to loving God, and loving God is understood as following Jesus." — McKnight, Ch. 1 [line 454]

Why this matters for the sermon. McKnight reads "loving God" as following Jesus (per the Lk 9:59–62 burial-of-the-father scene). That move is what makes v.18 — "He is the head of the body, the church" — load-bearing rather than ornamental. To love God is to come under the head.

2. Defining love — the five marks (Crouch/Kim-adjacent)

McKnight, perhaps surprisingly, does define love. The Five Marks are the lens by which everything else in the book reads. Pasted compactly because they may be useful pastoral language for v.20-shaped reconciliation:

"Love is (1) a rugged commitment (2) to be with another person, (3) to be for another person, (4) and this commitment is aimed unto becoming Christlike—becoming loving, and holy, and righteous and good and just and peaceful. This translates into four principles: the principles of commitment, presence, advocacy, and direction." — McKnight, Intro to 15th Anniv. Ed. [line 233]

The fifth mark (direction) is the formation-line worth holding next to v.18's "head of the body":

"Love is not aimless wandering with one another, an evening Spaziergang in the park with whomever and whenever doing whatever however. There is a kind of generous intentionality about love. God loves us to expand us into the persons he designed for us to be. [...] God loves us so we will become like God, or like Christ. Christlikeness then is the direction of all love. Here's proof: God is love and calls us to love. God is holy and calls us to be holy. God is just and calls us to be just. Who God is, is the template for love's direction in our life." — McKnight, Intro [lines 303–304]

Honest framing. This is the closest McKnight comes to the "holiness AND love" dual-attribute move. He names them in series — love, holy, just — but doesn't argue (as Wright does in Simply Christian) that emphasizing one without the other distorts God. Use this as a parallel mark of the divine character, not as McKnight's developed argument on the dual nature. (See section 9 below for what's not here.)

3. Reverence — the one strong McKnight passage

The reverence thread is real in McKnight but not extensive. The center of gravity is this paragraph on Jesus's own verbal reverence:

"Jews at the time of Jesus speak of God with reserve. In so doing, they give us a little lesson on how speech can be transformed by sacred love. 'Verbal' reserve begins with the command not to take the Name (YHWH) in vain. The logic of Jesus' contemporaries is this: if we never pronounce YHWH, we will never use YHWH in vain. So, they figure out ways to avoid using the Name. Here's a good illustration of Jesus' own reserve: when on trial, he tells the authorities that they 'will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One.' Instead of using the Name of God, Jesus says 'The Mighty One' out of reverence. Jesus follows the Jewish custom of verbal reverence in the Lord's Prayer: 'Our Father, hallowed be your name.'" — McKnight, Ch. 5 ("A Creed of Sacred Love") [line 852]

Followed immediately by:

"While I am not in favor of getting nutty here, it wouldn't hurt modern Christians to develop some reserve in their 'God talk.' But this reserve does not arise because God is a judge who, like Zeus, threatens the world with death-dealing thunderbolts if humans get out of hand. No, reserve in speech is what happens to a Christian's speech when that speech is shaped by a sacred love for God, when the Christian loves God with 'all the mind.'" — McKnight, Ch. 5 [line 853]

And, embedded in McKnight's John Woolman quotation, the phrase the preacher will want to hear — "love and reverence" as a single posture toward the Creator:

"Woolman's creed is the Jesus Creed: 'True religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator and learn to exercise true justice and goodness [toward others].'" — McKnight quoting Woolman, Ch. 5 [line 845]

A single later mention places reverence as the entry-point to wisdom:

"Wisdom begins when we reverence God." — McKnight, Ch. 22 [line 3052]

Why this matters for the sermon. McKnight's reverence is the speech-shape of sacred love — not fear in front of a Zeus-thunderbolt God, but the natural restraint of a heart that loves an Abba whose love is sacred. That maps onto the preacher's 05-08 voice memo: reverence is not the building-vs-rest-of-week category; it's what happens to speech and posture when love-of-God is real. McKnight is explicit that reverence flows from sacred love, not the reverse.

Honest framing. Don't oversell McKnight as a reverence theologian. He has one paragraph and one embedded Woolman line. The preacher's bigger reverence-as-reality argument will need to lean on Willard, Wright, and his own voice memo. McKnight contributes one specific datum: Jesus himself models reverence in his speech.

4. Abba — intimacy held with reverence

McKnight makes the Abba move that Wright makes too: it's an intimacy that does not collapse the awe. The clearest line:

"By revealing this secret, Jesus is not being disrespectful to, or overly familiar with, God. Indeed, Jesus urges his followers to speak of God's special Abbahood uniquely: 'Do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.' That is sacred love, written into the fabric of a name." — McKnight, Ch. 5 [line 838]

"So why does Jesus focus so narrowly on Abba as the name for God? God may be YHWH, but that sacred name evokes mystery; YHWH may be King, but that term evokes distance. From a long list of names, Jesus chooses Abba. What Jesus wants to evoke with the name Abba is God's unconditional, unlimited, and unwavering love for his people." — McKnight, Ch. 3 [line 641]

"That Jesus chooses Abba as the Name of God intensifies the significance of 'love' in the Jesus Creed. When we comprehend our love of God as a sacred love for an Abba who loves us with a sacred love, we will learn to honor that love in heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is, our love for God is only truly sacred when we surrender to him totally, when it is our 'all,' as the Jesus Creed emphasizes." — McKnight, Ch. 5 [line 839]

"What animates this repentance is the utter awe of seeing what the sacred love of God is really all about. Abba is impeccably pure, majestically marvelous, and embarrassingly faithful in his love for us. It is this good sense of embarrassment that evokes repentance from us, and helps us to see our violations of love against God and others as sin." — McKnight, Ch. 5 [line 859]

Why this matters for the sermon. McKnight names what Frank's gospel formula carries — "crucified in love" lives next to "reigns as King." McKnight's Abba is intimate and "impeccably pure, majestically marvelous." That phrasing is closer to the preacher's 05-08 reverence-as-reality language than any other single line in the book.

5. Become like what you love — the formation argument

McKnight has Wright's move, but compressed. The "become what you worship" theme is implied through what we yearn for, we become like. The load-bearing line:

"If we love someone, we love what they love. God's love plan is for his glorious Name to be honored and his will to become concrete reality on earth. Earth is Abba's frontier; heaven is already his. In pondering God's Name, kingdom and will, we are prompted (daily) to yearn for what God yearns for. Love always prompts yearning." — McKnight, Ch. 2 [line 577]

And the explicit emulation/imitation frame:

"Education in the world of Jesus was not about information but about emulation or imitation. To 'follow' Jesus, then, was to watch him, to listen to him, to learn how to live by living like Jesus. Most of all that means learning a life of love." — McKnight, Intro [line 316]

"Christlikeness then is the direction of all love." — McKnight, Intro [line 303]

Honest framing. McKnight does not develop a "you become what you worship" thesis the way Wright does in Simply Christian (and the way the Hebraic prophets do in Ps 115 / Isa 44). What McKnight has is a softer version: love yearns; yearning shapes; emulation forms. Use this as a consonant voice alongside Wright, not as McKnight's own developed move.

6. The Torah of love — Jesus's reordering of righteousness

McKnight's reading of the Good Samaritan. This is the structurally adjacent move to Col 1:18 — Christ at the head reorders what counts as righteousness. Best single quote:

"The Torah, so says Jesus, is a love-God-and-love-others Torah. Jesus is not against the Torah. He is against understanding it in such a way that its fundamental teachings about loving God and others are missed. The priest and Levite followed the letter of the Torah but failed in the spirit of the Torah. [...] Put differently, we are not called to the love of Torah but to the Torah of love. It is easy for us, in our twenty-first-century catbird seat, to look down our noses at the priest and Levite and toss on hot coals of criticism. It is easy but misguided because it shows that we, too, are caught in love of Torah instead of a Torah of love. 'Love doesn't sound so dangerous until you've tried it,' says Paul Wadell. Jesus calls us to surrender our 'safe neighbor love,' which the priest and Levite were doing when they looked straight ahead; Jesus calls us instead to look to the side to see our neighbor who is in need." — McKnight, Ch. 6 ("A Creed for Others") [lines 916–918]

"If we are to love God and love others, Jesus is asking his audience, what happens when love-of-God-as-obeying-Torah (the Shema of Judaism) comes into conflict with love-of-God-as-following-Jesus (the Shema of Jesus)? That's a tough one, for all of us. But for Jesus the answer is clear: Loving God properly always means that we will tend to those in need." — McKnight, Ch. 6 [line 910]

Why this matters for the sermon. Frank's "stars-to-streets" macro is McKnight's "Torah of love" in another vocabulary. The hymn's pivot from "all things were created in him" (v.16) to "he is the head of the body, the church" (v.18) puts the cosmic Christ at the head of neighborly love. McKnight's "look to the side" is the street-level move the series is making.

7. The Lord's Prayer — yearning shaped by love-God / love-others

Same structural move McKnight finds in the Shema, now in prayer. Useful for tying v.20's reconciliation to the daily life of the church:

"As Jesus didn't leave the Shema to be a God-only thing, so he didn't leave the Kaddish to be a God-only thing. And he doesn't want it to be an I-only thing either." — McKnight, Ch. 2 [line 584]

"It [the Lord's Prayer] is the prayer most used and least understood. People think they are asking God for something. They are not—they are offering God something. [...] the Lord's Prayer is not a prayer to God to do something we want done. It is more nearly God's prayer to us, to help Him do what He wants done. [...] The Lord's Prayer is not intercession. It is enlistment." — McKnight quoting Frank Laubach, Ch. 2 [lines 596–597]

8. Cross / surrender / following — the orientation, not just martyrdom

The closest McKnight gets to Romans 6 / Gal 2:20 territory:

"It was Jesus' own love for Abba and for his disciples that led him to die for them. His love for them set the tone for how they were to love God, him, and others. Jesus says, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' In historical context, this statement of Jesus suggests martyrdom. But a careful reading of similar statements by Jesus leads to the conclusion that he is speaking of an orientation in life: a life of surrender, whether it involves martyrdom or not. Letting Jesus show the way, as Dallas Willard says, 'is the controlling principle of the renovated heart and the restored soul.'" — McKnight, Ch. 21 [line 3023]

Honest framing. McKnight does not develop a participation-in-Christ / with Christ / co-crucified theology. The cross in this book is the example of self-giving love, not the ontological event Paul puts in Col 1:20. The preacher will need Paul (or Willard, or Wright) for the participation move; McKnight provides the formation move alongside it.

9. Threads that didn't land — be honest

10. Surprises worth flagging

  1. The Five Marks definition of love (section 2) is McKnight's most original contribution to the project — it's a pastoral grammar for what love is, and it lines up with v.20's reconciliation as a commitment of presence and advocacy rather than a sentimental tone. Worth keeping for any "what does 'making peace through the blood of his cross' actually look like in a body" move.

  2. "Reserve in speech is what happens to a Christian's speech when that speech is shaped by a sacred love for God" (line 853). This is the load-bearing single sentence for the reverence thread. McKnight's reverence is not Zeus-fear; it's the natural restraint of love. That sentence is the bridge from the preacher's 05-08 voice memo to the hymn's "hallowed" tone.

  3. "Abba is impeccably pure, majestically marvelous, and embarrassingly faithful in his love for us" (line 859) — three adjectives that hold holiness and love together in one breath without forcing the argument. Quotable.

  4. "Look to the side" (line 918). This is McKnight's street-level imperative, and it's a one-phrase summary of the move from v.17 ("in him all things hold together") to v.18 ("he is the head of the body, the church"). The cosmic Christ wants the church to look to the side.

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