What's So Amazing About Grace?

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Apart from grace, we are all on the same road. Some people just slide into the ditch and stay for a while. Others slide in, drag others in with them, and set up house.

What’s So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey (Review What’s So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey (Review

It should be noted that verse 10 concludes the section begun in 2:1-3 which began with an emphasis on our spiritually dead condition and life under the domination of Satan’s world system. This pre-salvation life is a life lived out in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind (vs. 3). But now, by God’s grace, we are not only redeemed from spiritual death and the penalty of sin, but unto a new life of good works by God’s enablement (see also Eph. 4:17-31). This truth 20 is not only stressed in Romans 6:1f in answer to the question, “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” but we find it in the book of Titus where there is a strong emphasis on good works. Note the following: I realized that as a journalist, I have to be respectful and cordial, even when I’m interviewing someone with whom I profoundly disagree. I approach them not as someone to convert to my way of thinking—that’s not going to happen. Rather, my goal is to get them to explain their point of view in a way that my readers can comprehend and judge for themselves. I’ve been trying to put that into practice even with friends and neighbors. My goal is not to win them over, or defeat their arguments, but rather to listen carefully so that I can articulate their position fairly. But are these people accurate about who needs grace? It depends on the standard by which we judge our true condition. Every human being needs God’s grace to the limit no matter how good we may appear to be when compared to others. Naturally, it is better to be a moral person, a good neighbor and citizen, and a decent husband and father than to be guilty of the things mentioned above, but as will be shown from our study, we all are in desperate spiritual condition and in need of God’s grace. When compared to a holy God, we are all wretched sinners in desperate need of His grace. All the World Needs Grace Because

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One dictionary defines legalism as “strict, literal adherence to the law or to a particular code, as of religion or morality.” 35 As just stressed, liberty is not the absence of restrictions or of law. Under liberty, Christians are under the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2) or as Paul defines it elsewhere, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2). Just so, legalism does not simply mean the presence of law. Swindoll defines legalism as an attitude. He writes: In so many words, legalism says, “I do this or I don’t do that, and therefore I am pleasing God.” Or “If only I could do this or not do that, I would be pleasing to God.” Or perhaps, “These things that I’m doing or not doing are the things I perform to win God’s favor.” They aren’t spelled out in Scripture, you understand. They’ve been passed down or they have been dictated to the legalist and have become an obsession to him or her. Legalism is rigid, grim, exacting, and law like in nature. Pride, which is at the heart of legalism, works in sync with other motivating factors. Like guilt. And fear. And shame. It leads to an emphasis on what should not be, and what one should not do. It flourishes in a drab context of negativism. 37 License As a result, accusations are regularly leveled against faith alone in Christ alone. It is sometimes called “cheap grace” or “easy believism.” But this is nonsense. The claim of “easy believism,” so often aimed at those who preach “faith alone in Christ alone,” is a misnomer. Simple faith—because it is so contrary to the way people think—is not easy for people who think they must add something to the work of God. Furthermore, salvation in Christ is free, but it’s not cheap. It cost God the death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace: Why It’s So Amazing and Awesome | Bible.org Grace: Why It’s So Amazing and Awesome | Bible.org

We have seen that grace means the free and unmerited favor of God, but it needs to be stressed that an attitude of legalism by which man seeks to merit God’s favor actually undermines the impact of grace. This is seen in a number of passages which show how grace and human works are opposed to one another. Also, stories reflect raw life. When someone asked Jesus a direct question, they probably expected a direct answer. They rarely got one. Jesus understood that life involves complexity and mystery. For example, a person asked him, Who is my neighbor? Jesus responded with the compelling story of the Good Samaritan. You can’t legalistically define the appropriate objects of love and compassion—no, we become the neighboring ones in the way we behave. His convicting story makes that point. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith. As the updated What’s So Amazing About Grace? video study is being released, how do you hope people are impacted by the material? Having given clear proof from Scripture of man’s basic sinfulness, the next step is to demonstrate to whom this applies. The question is simply, is anyone exempt? Is the moral man or the religious man? Absolutely not and verses 19-20 plainly indicts all the world as accountable or liable for judgment.Philip Yancey: Grace gets down-to-earth and personal, and is best encountered in a group setting. So often I’ve seen long-buried feuds come to the surface. I’ve attended recovery groups based on the 12-step model, where raw humanity gets confessed and dealt with in a spirit of honesty and support. I wish church demonstrated that same kind of radical honesty. Instead, we tend to put on a false front that “everything’s just fine, thank you.” Everything is not fine, and we need a safe place to deal with the assaults of life. For this is the way God loved the world: he gave his one and only Son that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, emphasis mine). Philip Yancey: I recently came across a quote from the philosopher James K.A. Smith that answers your question better than I could. Here’s what he said in The Christian Century magazine: “As a young Christian philosopher, I wanted to be the confident, heresy-hunting Augustine, vanquishing the pagans with brilliance, fending off the Manichaeans and Pelagians with ironclad arguments. As a middle-aged man, I dream of being Mr. Rogers. When you’re young, it’s easy to confuse strength with dominance; when you’re older, you realize the feat of character it takes to be meek. I used to imagine my calling was to defend the Truth. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to love.” You sometimes hear the accusation that this kind of free-grace breeds license. Part of the answer to the license issue is that grace does not leave us as we were before salvation, but becomes the very foundation for the Christian life (see Rom. 5:1-2). With grace comes the motivation and ability (by God’s grace, of course), to produce good works. This is part of the aim of God’s salvation by grace as expressed in Ephesians 2. But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:24).