Would the real “Transforming Grace” please stand up

I need to come clean. “Transforming Grace” is not an original title. This might be the only blog of that name but I borrowed the title from Jerry Bridges book Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love. I was given the book by friends in Malaysia around ten years ago and have only read it recently. I wish I’d read it then! It would have, perhaps, saved me a number of years struggling with unrecognised neonomianism (where acceptance by God is based on a mixture of grace and works).

In his opening chapter The Performance Treadmill Bridges explains what happens to Christians who are practical neonomians:

All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). But sanctification-the entire Christian experience between justification and glorification- is another story. At best, Christian life is viewed as a mixture of personal performance and God’s grace. It is not that we have consciously sorted it all out in our minds and have concluded that our relationship with God, for example, is based on 50 percent performance and 50 percent grace. Rather it is a subconscious assumption arising from our own innate legalism-reinforced and fueled by the Christian culture we live in…The principal thesis of this book, however, and the truth I hope to demonstrate is that…the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ.

That introductory paragraph will also determine much of the content of this blog. I aim to post quotations which do two things:

1. Transform and increase my grasp and knowledge of God’s grace in Christ

2. Transform me as a result