Todd Hunter on the goal of forgiveness

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

Thanks to Jonny for pointing out the release of Todd Hunter’s new book Christianity Beyond Belief. You can get samples on the IVP site. The following quotes stood out for me, nicely joining up the thoughts rolling around my head this week…

I believe that in responding to Jesus, people do not merely receive forgiveness of sins so they can go to heaven. Rather, they are forgiven so they can begin a different kind of life, a cooperative relationship with God, a new and eternal kind of life right now (which ultimately includes heaven).
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Far from trying to make forgiveness less important in the Christian story, my aim is to show that understanding sin in the context of God’s story is crucial to forming a new life, a cooperative friendship with God. I want us to see forgiveness as a starting line, a threshold to a new, fully human life. In my experience, forgiveness is often viewed as a finishing line, with a “whew” and a wipe of the brow while thinking I’m in. I have no quarrel with the notion that forgiveness gets us in. But I want to emphasize that it gets us into a new life story, not merely into heaven when we die.

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Read more | Comments (0) | February 28th, 2009

an insigificant life

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

This quote was sent to me by a friend when we left university. It has haunted me ever since…

It is possible to evade a multitude of sorrows by the cultivation of an insignificant life. Indeed, if it be a man’s ambition to avoid the troubles of life, the recipe is perfectly simple — let him shed his ambitions in every direction, let him cut the wings of every soaring purpose, and let him assiduously cultivate a little life, with the fewest correspondences and relations.
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if you want to get through the world with the smallest trouble you must reduce yourself to the smallest compass.
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Tiny souls can dodge through life; bigger souls are blocked on every side. As soon, therefore, as a man begins to enlarge his life, his resistances are multiplied. Let a man tear out of his soul the petty selfish purpose and enthrone a world purpose, the Christ purpose, and his sufferings will be increased on every side.
– J. H. Jowett

(From the sermon The School of Calvary.)

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Read more | Comments (0) | February 25th, 2009