We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Generous Grace
Mark McIntyre wrote a piece on his blog called Selective Grace that highlights the ways in which the church tends to more easily demonstrate grace with some than with others. It’s a call to a more generous grace that does not distinguish between particular sins or particular differences in belief. How have we been withholding grace from those who might most be in need of it? How can we offer grace in ways that acknowledge the generous grace we have received from God?
From the blog:
In a denomination that I formerly attended many of the pastors would often refer to their drug abuse in their “B.C.” days. They would use their former behavior as an illustration of God’s grace, and rightly so. They did indeed receive grace and despite their past failures God uses them in ministry.
The problem comes in when some other sins are less likely to receive grace. In some churches, those who have experienced divorce, those who struggle with same sex attraction, those with mental illness and those who might disagree on minor points of doctrine receive anything but grace. Even in that denomination with the formerly drug addled pastors, selective grace was a struggle and some people were treated in a manner inconsistent with grace.
Related Reading
Podcast: Is It ALWAYS Wrong to Take Oaths?
Greg looks at the spirit of the law as it pertains to law in the material world. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0264.mp3
The Nature of Human Rebellion
God placed Adam in the Garden and instructed him to “protect” it (Gen. 2:15). The word is often translated “till” or “keep,” implying that Adam’s main responsibility was to protect the pristine Garden from weeds. This is certainly a possible interpretation of this word, but in light of the cunning serpent that shows up in…
Avoiding the “S” Word: Sin
In our culture today, we don’t like to talk about sin. While most of us have a deep sense that something is off, that something is wrong with ourselves and the world, and many know or feel that they are guilty of something, this kind of talk is avoided. Instead, we evaluate ourselves by our…
Podcast: What if I Don’t Like Church?
Greg and Dan talk about what to do when we do not like church. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0450b.mp3
What Does it Mean to be “Saved”?
The common legal-framework view of salvation encourages people to understand it as mere acquittal, but there is much more to it than that. First let’s consider what God saved us FROM. It’s certainly true that God saved us from the fatal consequences of our sin by forgiving us. But the New Testament’s view of salvation…
A Rational Defense of Belief in God
The New York Times recently posted a review of Alvin Plantinga’s book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. In it, Plantinga argues on philosophical grounds that, among other things, theism is not in conflict with science, that a belief in naturalism along with evolution is contradictory, and that “Faith…is another basic way of forming beliefs, distinct…