What's So Amazing About Grace

What's So Amazing About Grace
Philip Yancey
Zondervan 1997

I loved this book. I really loved this book. I suppose I am very late arriving at the party as the book is more than 15 years old and is now considered something of a modern classic. I can only say the reputation is well-deserved. Reading it was like a spiritual breath of fresh air.

The first thing to say is that the book is very easy to read. It is targeted at the average Christian; in fact at the average reader. Although it deals with the some of the most important of Christian truths it does so using not only language but a way of communicating that is both easy to grasp and very engaging for any reader. Rather than detailed exegesis of biblical texts or complex theological arguments, which let's face it can be off putting for people who are not theology geeks, Yancey mostly makes his points by telling a number of stories and anedotes. But then teaching by using parables has an impeccable Christian pedigree, doesn't it?

The main point Yancey makes is that grace - that most precious and uncontaminated of Christian concepts - ought to be at the very heart of the lives of individual Christians and of churches, but too often is missing. Grace is unmerited favour. Grace is treating people better than what they deserve. It is the attitude that God shows to sinners when he offers a saving relationship with them, and it is the attitude that Christians ought to show to others inside and outside the church. Yet it is often not there. So often Christians come across as narrow-minded, judgmental, moralistic and legalistic. Yancey uses the umbrella term "ungrace" to cover these kinds of attitudes.

Every church needs to think about its atttitudes and how it actually treats people. Just throwing the word "grace" around isn't enough. Just knowing the theological technicalities of salvation by grace is not enough. What's needed is the embodiment, the very incarnation of grace in people's lives. That is how Jesus lived. His life was the ultimate life of grace. It is what his followers are called to copy.

I can't see how any Christian would fail to benefit from reading this book. Go and get yourself a copy and be prepared to be encouraged and challenged in equal measure.