What's So Amazing About Grace?

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Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. I yearn for the church to become a nourishing culture of that grace. Churches Unite 'To Present Something That is Good' ". Herald Express. Devon. August 25, 2011. p.57 . Retrieved August 16, 2015. I think that Jewish rabbi was probably correct to walk away from the Nazi in silence. He didn’t try to get revenge on the man, but neither was he able to embrace him and tell him it was all forgiven. I imagine that with whatever “faith” the man had in his God, he was crying out for justice to be done. And that is no bad thing, whether for that man or any other suffering injustice. This book is no mere Christian pep talk; it is moral philosophy that would make Plato burst out of the Lyceum to proclaim the slaughter of the fattened calf. And by that I mean it's good. Damn good. a b c d e f g h i Callaway, Phil (April 1998). "If Grace Is So Amazing: Philip Yancey". Presbyterian Record. Vol.122, no.4. Toronto. p.18. ProQuest 214350907.

The scene from John 8 rattles me because by nature I identify more with the accusers than the accused. I deny far more than I confess. Cloaking my sin under a robe of respectability, I seldom if ever let myself get caught in a blatant, public indiscretion. Yet if I understand this story correctly, the sinful woman is the nearest the kingdom of God. Indeed, I can only advance in the kingdom if I become like that woman: trembling, humbled, without excuse, my palms open to receive God's grace. Martin, Lorna; Vincent, John (March 15, 2003). "Sales of Religious Books Soar as Readers Seek Refuge from War". The Herald. Glasgow. p.6 . Retrieved August 8, 2015. a b Guthrie, Stan (March 1, 2006). "Grace as a License for Sin: Why Obedience Isn't Just for Legalists". Christianity Today. Carol Stream, Illinois . Retrieved July 30, 2015. We speak of forgiveness often, even believing that we are forgiving people, but do we understand the true depth of it and what it demands of us? If only they realized, if only the church could realize, that in some of the most important lessons of spirituality, members of the basement group were our masters. They began with radical honesty and ended with radical dependence. Athirst, they came as 'jolly beggars' every week because AA was the one place that offered grace on tap."the church must be reminded that it is not the master or servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.” Rev. Dr. Martin King, Jr. a b c Olson, Ray (July 1997). "The Great House of God/What's So Amazing About Grace?". Booklist. 93 (21): 1772. We use the word to describe various things. We use the word to describe what we do before a meal: “Say Grace.” We use it to describe a dancer’s fluidity: “She is so graceful.” We use it as a name: “We named our daughter Grace.” Although these are okay, the essence of grace isn’t captured in any of these. Cathedral Date for Multi-Million-Selling Christian Author". Bristol Post. September 2, 2006. p.26 . Retrieved June 22, 2015. Crampton, Robert (November 3, 2001). "Rolling with It". The Australian. Surry Hills, New South Wales . Retrieved August 9, 2015.

I could go on in the same vein but I risk you thinking this blog post is about homosexuality. It is not. It is about where the wrong view of grace leads. It leads to repentance eliminated in favor of tolerance and forgiveness cheapened into permission. In a word, it leads to grace no longer being grace but rather being acceptance. Yancey can deny it all he wants, and your now-contemporary-used-to-be-fundamentalist friends can do the same. Their denials fade to the echoes of a whisper when confronted with their actions. What you believe changes how you live, and what you read changes what you believe. Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?" "O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many things; but, then, nobody ever thinks of doing them." Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin But overall I enjoyed the book and was inspired by it. I would not say it contains anything groundbreaking for someone not new to Christianity, but just plenty of good reminders of how grace and love for God and our fellow man should look, and what they mean for us and for those we share these things with. This book is everything Christian thought should be: valid without resort to revelation or previously accepted precepts, and yet compatible with--and indeed supportive of--a resolutely theistic world view. For that reason, though I would describe this book as a work of "Christian" philosophy, by the nature of its message it invites a readership of Jews, atheists, Hindus, Islamics, agnostics, and whoever else desires to seek out and understand what is good and right in this world--what it means to live a "just" and "moral" life. I think Christian philosophy should strive to be valid even if the theistic assumption is false. Yancy apparently does too: he proceeds by appealing to independently valid ideas and simply supporting them with evidence drawn from the Christian tradition (the life of Jesus, etc.). Plato would be proud. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Quincy Adams

After discussing the meaning and use of both the Old and New Testament words for grace, Ryrie concludes with the following excellent summary: In 1978 Philip Yancey became a full-time writer, initially working as a journalist for such varied publications as Reader’s Digest, Publisher’s Weekly, National Wildlife, Christian Century and The Reformed Journal. For several years he contributed a monthly column to Christianity Today magazine, where he also served as Editor at Large. In 2000, Bear Grylls, the youngest Briton to survive an ascent of Mount Everest, cited What's So Amazing About Grace? as his "favourite holiday read" [42] and "a book that has inspired me a lot". [43] In 2001, American politician Mark Earley called it his favorite book. [44] That year, English musician Noel Gallagher asked Irish musician Bono to explain religion to him because Gallagher knew Bono believed in and prayed to God. Bono spoke with Gallagher on the subject for two hours and sent him a copy of What's So Amazing About Grace? Gallagher later said that he was "going to have a good read of this book", that Bono "made a lot of sense", and that the gift was particularly meaningful because Bono's father had recently died. [45] a b "See What's So Amazing Outdoors This Summer". Herald Express. Devon. August 28, 2010. p.15 . Retrieved June 22, 2015.

The modern Western Christian church is long on judgment and short on grace. As grace is the very virtue that is to set us apart from the rest of the world, this is a huge issue. In this book, Yancey shines a light on our collective failures in this regard, while also highlighting some smaller scale successes in the demonstration of grace and love to the world at large. We have so much room fro improvement, but we’re not without hope.I believe Jesus gave us these stories to call us to step completely outside our tit-for-tat world of ungrace and enter into God’s realm of infinite grace. But almost as soon as we met, he told me what pure, unvarnished Christianity meant to him - in his heart. He told me Grace is a free gift, and it would get me where I wanted to go. God loves us.

With verse 20 Paul demolishes the stronghold of the Jew or anyone who thinks he might be justified by keeping the Law or any rule of righteous behavior as with the Sermon on the Mount or the laws of the Koran. Plainly put, keeping any form of law is not a means by which a person can be declared righteous before God. The Law, whether it’s the Old Testament Law or that written within the heart of man (Rom. 2:14-15), is simply God’s means of showing man his awful sinfulness and alienation from God. As Wiersbe writes: Crime and a State of Grace". South Wales Evening Post. Swansea. July 28, 2006. p.32 . Retrieved June 22, 2015. If you get nothing else out of this book I hope you get that God loves you more than you can even imagine! No matter what you have done in the past, no matter what you are doing now and no matter what you will do in the future, God still loves you. He is waiting for you to come to him and ask him to forgive you. It's as simple as that! The “rules” that we “have to follow” don’t seem so daunting when you’re following them because you love, trust and respect the person who is asking you to do, or not do, something.He tells them of ordinary people like them - and me - who accomplished the Miraculous in unnoticed, though life-affirming little ways - even without a mainstream religion. Yancey sets grace in the midst of life's stark images, tests its mettle against horrific "ungrace." Can grace survive in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust? Can it triumph over the brutality of the Ku Klux Klan? Should any grace at all be shown to the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed and cannibalized seventeen young men?Grace does not excuse sin, says Yancey, but it treasures the sinner. If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves.'" Brennan Manning Gold Medallion Book Awards Winners". Evangelical Christian Publishers Association . Retrieved August 14, 2015. According to the author, he began writing the book in the same way he began most of his books: by exploring a question that was unresolved for him. In this case, the question became the book's title. [10] In What's So Amazing About Grace?, Yancey answers this question by writing that God gives grace to people unconditionally, without their need to earn it. His book includes Bible stories, anecdotes from Yancey's life and accounts of historical events. [11] Similar to his other works, What's So Amazing About Grace? has a self-deprecating tone. [12] It describes Yancey's upbringing in a judgmental church, a theme Yancey previously explored in The Jesus I Never Knew and later returned to in Reaching for the Invisible God and Soul Survivor. [4]