If you are joining this book review series mid-stream , you can read the comment from the beginning by going to the LABELS section following the last post on this page and clicking on PHILIP GULLEY
Gulley, Philip, If the Church were Christian. Rediscovering the Values of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010)
CHAPTER 2: Affirming Our Potential Would be More Important Than Condemning Our Brokenness
God sees His people as perfect. When He sees us, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, He sees Jesus. We are covered by the Blood of Jesus (Ephesians 1:7), the Lamb of God, just as the Jews were covered by a lamb’s blood on their doors when the Angel of Death passed over Egypt (Exodus 12:12-13).
Washed by the Blood of Jesus, we become white as snow; God doesn’t even remember our sin. Our forgiveness is total and complete. We don’t suddenly quit sinning but it does happen over time (1 Corinthians 6:11).
We are not saved by faith and then saved by our own efforts for subsequent sins. On the Cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” There is nothing we can possibly do to add to that. We are forgiven.
Those in the Church can and do occasionally sin, but it is not in their new nature to sin habitually or continually. We are not to live in a perpetual state of guilt.
Philip Gulley says that we shouldn’t leave church feeling spiritually bruised. I couldn’t agree more. A church which sends its members out into the world feeling beaten and full of guilt has completely missed the point of the Gospel. They fail to understand how God views His Christians. Don’t they know that the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents? (Luke 15:10)
The world is broken, dirty, bruised, confused, hateful, arrogant, spiteful … all those things. We, who are members of the household of God, are charged with helping the world to see that there is a better way, even if the world doesn’t want to see it.
This is part of a continuing chapter-by- chapter response to this book. More to come.
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