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Saw this wonderful quote from one of my favorite books, Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel. The quote, by the way, was featured in a post over at It's a beautiful gospel. Here 'tis:
The portrait of Peter, the rock who proved to be a sand pile, speaks to every ragamuffin across the generations. Lloyd Ogilvie notes: “Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate. That’s why he took his denial of the Lord so hard. His strength, loyalty, and faithfulness were his self-generated assets of discipleship. The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.I know many Christians who "turn the tables" in this way. And I know many non-believers who think that the idea that we might not actually "deserve" the love of God is sheer effrontery. The notion that "but for the grace of God" we are in deep trouble turns out to be, for these people, supremely arrogant and judgmental.
“Many of us face the same problem. We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance. Our whole understanding of him is based in a quid pro quo of bartered love. He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent. But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that he will love us, rather than living because he has already loved us.”
Grace, it seems, is a hard doctrine to swallow. Buried beneath its winsome finish is a difficult truth: we deserve nothing. Calvinists may be outspoken on this score, but most evangelicals throw the word grace around while avoiding this core truth. Perhaps that's the reason that many non-believers find the doctrine of grace less attractive than we expect. And yet without this core truth, grace would not be grace.
Anyway, good to be back at WF. I'll try to visit more often!
1 comment:
good post.
i have not read that book...yet.
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