connecting words and deeds

Matt. 8 -- I like how Jesus has just talked about who is valued/blessed in the Kingdom. He finishes his sermon and lives it out. He goes around looking for those with afflictions and healing them.

The connection of knowing and doing the truth reminds me of a quote from Kierkegaard. here it is.

"The truth consists not in knowing the truth intellectually but in being the truth . . . Knowing the truth is something which follows as a matter of course from being the truth, and not conversely. And it is precisely for this reason it becomes untruth when knowing the truth is separated from being the truth, or when knowing the truth is treated as one and the same thing as being the truth, since the true relation is the converse of this: to be the truth is one and the same thing as knowing the truth." (You may need to read that again.)

Jesus said he was the truth (John 14:6), I think this is a statement of action/embodiment, not an ontological statement of existence.

Anyway the connection is clear, let's be the truth rather than have the truth, for when we think we have it, but don't live it, we could not be farther from the truth.

One last forshadowing in this chapter about the Kingdom. It seems to me that verse 11 is the first time that we see a statement from Jesus that begins to show the Kingdom to all the earth. Many will be with Israel from the East, and West . . . the Kingdom is for the world.