Common Ways That Jesus Displayed His Genius
Attune Your Heart
The way Jesus displays his genius is very understated. That is, he says to people, “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear.”
And it’s very easy not to hear. So the genius is there for those who have their hearts morally switched on to listen to Jesus. And if you don’t want to listen to Jesus, you won’t notice it. There’s that interesting way about the way he speaks, and it is quite easy to miss what he’s saying. But when you meditate on it and you treat it with all seriousness, you see much more.
The Surprising Genius of Jesus
Peter J. Williams
In The Surprising Genius of Jesus, Peter J. Williams examines the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 to show the genius, creativity, and wisdom of Jesus’s teachings.
So Jesus is not an intellectual show off. There’s a lot of tendency with bright people to want to put all their knowledge on display. And he’s very understated. You just look at the wisdom of his saying, for example, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and the things that are God’s belong to God.”
And that’s just so brilliant because you can think, Well, you know, it’s got Caesar’s head on the coin, and we humans are in the image of God, and so we need to render ourselves to God.
The genius is there for those who have their hearts morally switched on to listen to Jesus.
But again, not everyone necessarily sees that. They can say, Oh, he’s just managed to get out of a nasty political trap. And there are so many examples of the sayings of Jesus where there’s just a deep level to it, but you do need to attune your heart. And that’s why the thing he most often says is, “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear.”
Peter J. Williams is the author of The Surprising Genius of Jesus: What the Gospels Reveal about the Greatest Teacher.
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