Over the last weekend I listened to someone who was once very prominent in Australian Christianity as he visited our town.
He had a lot to say that questioned his old understanding of the Christian faith, particularly songs that he had written. I think the critique of the distinctives of the movement that he was formerly associated with have some validity.
He’s even gone to the extent of revising lyrics of his old songs to reflect his new understanding of grace. Again, the idea of grace as something that is given to us, not as something that we attain and hold on to by our efforts, is a welcome emphasis.
But, if I understood him correctly, based on what he said last weekend, I was left with the impression that God reconciled humanity with Himself through the incarnation and that which Jesus endured on the cross was humanity’s rejection and anger.
Sometimes our emphasis on certain aspects of truth, along with an omission of other aspects of truth, can communicate an incomplete gospel. Which is no gospel at all.
I’ve read similar thoughts before. I think they have been popularised in the novel The Shack among other places.
I trust that God may yet lead him, and us all, into a more complete understanding of salvation by grace, through faith in the perfect life, atoning death and resurrection power of Jesus.
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