Scandalous Grace: A Book for Tired Christians Seeking Rest

by Preston M. Sprinkle

you after He has already condemned Jesus for you. It’s impossible. God will never be angry with you since His anger was poured out on Jesus. All of it. One hundred percent. This point needs to soak into your bones, because we have a natural desire to cover our shame with guilt instead of grace. Guilt drags along behind us like a ball and chain, even though God has shattered the chain with a cross.

the gospel cannot be understood in terms of such tit-for-tat retribution—do this and get blessed; don’t do this and get cursed. The gospel blows apart the categories of transaction and conditionality. We’re hardwired to believe that good people get the good stuff and bad people get the bad stuff. But the gospel demands that bad people get the good stuff, and we’re all bad!

Chuck Colson tells a story about twenty American soldiers held captive during World War II. During their captivity, they were forced to do hard labor, which usually involved digging with a shovel. One morning, the soldiers showed up for duty one shovel short. The prison guard counted twenty prisoners but only nineteen shovels, and he threatened to kill five prisoners if the one who forgot his shovel didn’t fess up. Seconds later, a prisoner stepped forward and admitted that he forgot his shovel. The guard quickly unbuckled his pistol, shoved the barrel into the temple of the shovel-less prisoner, and pulled the trigger. Still furious, the guard threatened the others with the same fate if they forget their shovels. But after taking a recount, the guard found twenty shovels after all. The first time around, the guard simply miscounted. The innocent prisoner gave his life for his friends and comrades. This is grace. Or is it? The soldier’s heroic act reveals a form of grace, but it’s not charis. The story may have moved your heart (it did mine), but it falls short of biblical grace. The soldier’s heroism is an inferior analogy to Jesus’s love and sacrifice for you. Jesus didn’t give His life for His comrades and friends—buddies on the battlefield who earned His trust and were worthy of sacrifice. Jesus died for His enemies.

If after reading this book you are eager to know, “How much can I now sin and still be right with God?” then you need to read the book again. There’s a good chance you haven’t truly understood the God we have been talking about. If hearing about the God of Tamar, Ruth, and Gomer stirs up an eagerness to reject that God and not desire an obedient relationship with Him, then something didn’t register. God will chase you, but why run?

Lack of obedience reveals a lack of grace. Divine grace produces the obedience God demands.

Obedience can’t be icing on the cake, because grace doesn’t stop pursuing us when we get saved. It continues on to push good works out the other side. Grace is just that powerful.

Energism. When you do something good, it’s because grace is working in you. When you obey, that’s grace doing its job. The instant that desire flares up in your soul to do a good deed, that’s grace too.

“The more the human agent is operative, the more (not the less) may be attributed to God,” said John Barclay.2

When we are tapped into Jesus and the Spirit, grace flows through our veins and compels us to obey. We should never think of our obedience as separate from God’s work in us. Rather, our response to God is the by-product of God’s work in us.

obedience isn’t grace’s enemy, but its by-product.

Our obedience doesn’t determine God’s love toward us, any more than grapes force the sun to pour out its heat upon the vine. It’s the sun’s heat (God’s love), the rich soil (Jesus’s death and resurrection), and the abundant water (the Spirit) that produce grapes.