Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us [Paperback]

Scot McKnight's *Embracing Grace* is a redeeming book and the object of redemption is "the gospel."

The USAmerican (or "western") gospel is a shrivelled specimen of the gospel presented in the Bible and lived and proclaimed by Jesus, the apostles and early church.

One line in the book captures a boatload of truth. Scot writes about the younger generation of Christians who are aware of a bigger gospel than the previous generation could imagine. Scot states, "That gospel comes in the shape of a community."

Think about that. The gospel comes not in the shape of a sermon or a pamphlet or 3 steps to this and 4 steps for that. A community.

Weaving together the grand story of God's redemptive purpose, McKnight brings together the broken strands of God's creation design for humanity. Sin shattered the eikons of God, that is, sin corrupted men and women who bear God's image and who exist to live a life of love with God, with each other and with creation itself. This design includes being content within ourselves as well.

The western monkey-wrench that clogs up the process of God's gospel of restoration is our renegade worship of the idol of "individualism." Sin made Adam and Eve primarily individuals which was a devastating crack in God's majestic Eikons. We've been in a deep, gooey mess ever since.

In McKnight's unfolding of the marvels of the biblical gospel we appreciate the wonder of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is breath-taking, no doubt. But forgiveness is the foothills of the Rockies. Restored relationships are the peaks of the gospel. Sin destroys relationships as well as muddies up our lives. The gospel is about restoring relationships with a joyful, divine Community called God the Father, Son and Spirit. The gospel is about restoring us to one another in a wholeness of life called Shalom. "Any gospel that stops short of Shalom distorts the gospel." The gospel is about restoring us to creation (which to this day is groaning because of sin). Get Embracing Grace and read it. I feel I'm flailing to describe it.

A community of restored Eikons loving God and people for the sake of the world is what Jesus' redeeming work is about. Heaven when we die? Yeah. Sins forgiven? Yeah. But to reduce the gospel to the foothills of redemption is a sad reduction, indeed. Jesus Christ is a much more majestic Person and had in mind a much more majestic Purpose than to prop up the sappy, reduced gospel prevalent in the West.

Scot is right. There is a young wave of Christians who will not settle for the foothills where it's quite comfortable and safe and clean and boringly painless. They would rather hazard the climb to the peaks and adore a more beautiful and mysterious God, breathe a cleaner version of salvation air and see more expansive vistas of God's wonderful and wounded world. And they will do this even if they die trying.

Scot McKnight's *Embracing Grace* helps them (and all of us) in that climb.

In this wonderful book, Scot McKnight provides a fresh picture of a gospel of restoration. Humans were created as images ("eikons" is the term Scot prefers) of God, and the gospel is the message of Jesus acting to restore "cracked Eikons" to their original state. According to McKnight in the introduction, "The gospel is the work of God to restore humans in union with God and communion with others, in the context of a community for the good of others and the world" This restoration is an active process, intimately entwined with living a 'Kingdom lifestyle' in line with the life of Jesus and his teachings, summed up in the "Jesus Creed" of loving God and others (see Scot's other excellent book for more about that.) Hence the restoration also involves the healing of relationships with God, other people, and creation as a whole, and thus cannot take place in isolation. McKnight identifies western individualism as one of the biggest stumbling blocks preventing us from completely embracing this gracious gospel. Individualism is essentially a process of exclusion, diametrically opposed to the gospel of Jesus which is one of embrace, towards God and others. Scot quotes quite a bit from Miroslav Volf's "Exlusion and Embrace" a book that I've had on my wishlist for quite some time, but have now finally gotten around to ordering, as a result of reading this book.

This is a very powerful, deeply thought out, yet easy to read book. Scot McKnight has the knowledge and depth of a theologian (which he is) with the heart of a pastor - actually more than that - the heart of an eikon being restored to it's true state. His writing style is engaging and never bogs you down. In fact he's almost too down to earth at times (what on earth is "tohu va-bohu" Scot?? My only slight frustration with this book was seeing this strange unfamiliar word written over and over again)

Anyway read this book. And then read it again. Let the concept soak into your mind. One can only imagine the sort of results we might see, personally and communally, if this kind of wholistic gospel was embraced by many more Christians.

Until I read this book, I had only heard "of" Scot McKnight. I knew that lots of the "emergent" guys have a lot of respect for him. Now that I've read this book, I know why. It's amazing. McKnight is both thoughtful and engaging. He weaves plainspoken theology with short biographical profiles into a tapestry of God's incredible grace. He presents grace not as the magic pill that takes care of our sin problem, but rather as the enabling force of God's love that we as a community are to reflect to the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone longing for hope, for community, for purpose, and/or faith. McKnight's discourse on grace is so heart achingly beautiful that I frequently found myself wiping tears from my smiling face. Thank you Scot for this gift to Christianity and the World. AE