Mar
13
2010
Coming Soon
I was asked by my publisher to write a brief summary of my forthcoming book Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels for ByFaith magazine. This is what I wrote:
Most Christians assume that the gospel is something non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, but after we believe it, we advance to deeper theological waters. The truth is, however, that once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel—and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes every day.
For me, it was through probing the story of Jonah that I came face-to-face with the fact that the gospel is not just for non-Christians but also for Christians.
Jonah is a storied presentation of the gospel, a story of sin and grace, of desperation and deliverance. It reveals the fact that while you and I are great sinners, God is a great Savior, and that while our sin reaches far, his grace reaches farther. This story shows that God is in the business of relentlessly pursuing rebels (a label that ultimately applies to us all) and that he comes after us not to angrily strip away our freedom but to affectionately strip away our slavery so we might become truly free.
I wrote Surprised by Grace because we all need to be.
Surprised by Grace (Crossway) will be available in May 2010.