What's So Amazing About Grace?

Book Review

Yancey, Philip. What’s So Amazing About Grace? Zondervan. 1997

Comment. Henry
The topic of this book and the literary quality is such that it will not become subject to the dangers of becoming ‘dated’. To experience grace is a wonderful thing. To practice grace is an awesome responsibility that we must give ourselves to completely. This is basic to the ‘Great Commission’. This resource is very helpful in understanding and living out grace.

“Grace is indeed amazing- truly our last best word.” (13) It is a word that is easier to convey than to explain. Karen Blixen’s story of ‘Babette’s Feast’ tells of grace in action. Where grace is absent, Christianity is ineffective. “The church has managed to gain a reputation for its ungrace.” (32) Ungrace is an overarching characteristic of out culture. Romantic love is an experience of grace. Jesus often responded to the inbuilt resistance to grace that characterizes all of us. God responds with rejoicing when we respond to his grace. “Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.” (70)

One of the hardest things to handle about grace is that it is unfair. It involves forgiveness which is not a part of fairness. Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame and guilt. Revenge never settles the score. Ungrace spreads like an airborne disease; grace happens one person at a time. A number of stories shared about forgiveness happening on a ‘corporate/national scale.

Grace knows no boundaries or exceptions when it comes to those who require it. Philip tells the story of a very powerful story about how he experienced the demonstration of grace that was required in his relationship with a close friend who is a homosexual. We all need “grace-healed eyes”. (175) Grace can be refused but it cannot be abused since repentance is a prerequisite to experiencing grace. Grace cannot become a license for immorality. To argue that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission may sound like good logic but it does not make good theology. Legalism is alive and well in our culture and as damaging as it has ever been. Religion based on externals is weak indeed.

Great concern is expressed about the lack of grace in the lives of Christians today. The potential of what power grace can have in our culture is huge. The evidence of “patches of green” (253) in our parched cultural environment show up in the most unexpected places. “The world thirsts for grace. When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.” (282) What a blessing to experience grace. What a privilege and responsibility to share it, dispense it.