Embracing Grace: The Gospel That Restores Us to God, Creation, and Ourselves

by Scot McKnight

Book Overview

Written in the candid and lucid style that has made McKnight's The Jesus Creed --and more recently, The King Jesus Gospel --appealing to thousands of pastors and lay leaders, McKnight has added a new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1612612474
• ISBN13: 9781612612478
• Release Date: October 2012
• Publisher: Paraclete Press (MA)
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Dancing Faith - Good News for creation, the world, community, you and me

I purchased Scot Mcknight's book, "Embracing Grace - A Gospel for All of Us because I read, "the Jesus Creed" about loving God and loving your neighbor. What does Loving God with all of your strength look like and what does Good News look like to your neighbor?..... "Embracing Grace" gives you some practical glimpses. It also gives some ideas of what the Kingdom of God looks like when we are "embracing grace". Scot writes with fresh metaphors that allow the Gospel to be seen in new ways. His chapter on the Missional Gospel and cracked Eikons is worth the whole book. From Dancing Grace - Chapter 13, "The embrace of faith, like any embrace, is visible." I think the world is still awaiting that visible expression of love from the people of God. This dance of faith begins with a Person - Jesus Christ and encompasses His big, integrated, holistic heart for creation, the world, society, community, our neighbors, family and each of us. Anything less than this is not the Gospel. McKnight captures this and shares practical stories of what it looks like. I have been working in relief and development for the past 27 years in Asia and was reading this book while visiting projects in northeastern Cambodia. When we first went there in 1990, 40% of children were dying before reaching the age of five, primarily from malaria, bad water and preventable childhood diseases. We began serving the health needs of a remote province that was where the Khmer Rouge began their assault on the country and after 17 years, there has been a growing impact upon both the spiritual and physical health of 100,000 people. This small, team has embraced this local part of the Khmer world that God is restoring. The leaders of this team and local community were encouraged to hear Scot's thoughts on the Gospel among us and what it looks like to our neighbors. I think that you will be encouraged too. If you have not read Scot McKnight, do yourself a favor - get this book.

A Recalibrated Vision of the Gospel

There's a rare, rhythmic pulse that pervades this book, an ancient beat that doesn't usually accompany today's most popular Christian literature. It's a catchy tune too, like one of those radio jingles that you can't get out of your head. I had almost forgotten that the gospel is supposed to have this kind of unforgettable impact on me, on us. After reading Embracing Grace, it's hard for me to recall the last time the gospel looked so big, so beautiful, so extraordinarily relevant to our times.

Scot McKnight's book on grace is a gift

Until I read this book, I had only heard "of" Scot McKnight. I knew that lots of the "emergent" guys have a lot of respect for him. Now that I've read this book, I know why. It's amazing. McKnight is both thoughtful and engaging. He weaves plainspoken theology with short biographical profiles into a tapestry of God's incredible grace. He presents grace not as the magic pill that takes care of our sin problem, but rather as the enabling force of God's love that we as a community are to reflect to the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone longing for hope, for community, for purpose, and/or faith. McKnight's discourse on grace is so heart achingly beautiful that I frequently found myself wiping tears from my smiling face. Thank you Scot for this gift to Christianity and the World. AE

A Holistic Gospel the Tells the Overall Biblical Story

The emerging generation is fed up with plastic presentations of Jesus and impersonal propositions that one must believe in order to be "in." They are in search of a more holistic gospel: one that both reflects the overall story presented in the Bible and also one that allows us to experience God in day-to-day life. In his book, Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us, Scot McKnight presents us with the biblical story of God's grace in such a way that we can authentically live it out in true community. You won't find some re-hashed narrow presentation of mere propositions in this book. What you will find is the more holistic story of God's embracing grace to restore us to our original design as his image-bearers -- presented by a biblical scholar who knows the grand story, and who has the gift to explain it in terms that we can understand and experience in the reality of our daily lives.

EMBRACING GRACE: NOT A McGOSPEL

Scot McKnight's *Embracing Grace* is a redeeming book and the object of redemption is "the gospel." The USAmerican (or "western") gospel is a shrivelled specimen of the gospel presented in the Bible and lived and proclaimed by Jesus, the apostles and early church. One line in the book captures a boatload of truth. Scot writes about the younger generation of Christians who are aware of a bigger gospel than the previous generation could imagine. Scot states, "That gospel comes in the shape of a community." Think about that. The gospel comes not in the shape of a sermon or a pamphlet or 3 steps to this and 4 steps for that. A community. Weaving together the grand story of God's redemptive purpose, McKnight brings together the broken strands of God's creation design for humanity. Sin shattered the eikons of God, that is, sin corrupted men and women who bear God's image and who exist to live a life of love with God, with each other and with creation itself. This design includes being content within ourselves as well. The western monkey-wrench that clogs up the process of God's gospel of restoration is our renegade worship of the idol of "individualism." Sin made Adam and Eve primarily individuals which was a devastating crack in God's majestic Eikons. We've been in a deep, gooey mess ever since. In McKnight's unfolding of the marvels of the biblical gospel we appreciate the wonder of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is breath-taking, no doubt. But forgiveness is the foothills of the Rockies. Restored relationships are the peaks of the gospel. Sin destroys relationships as well as muddies up our lives. The gospel is about restoring relationships with a joyful, divine Community called God the Father, Son and Spirit. The gospel is about restoring us to one another in a wholeness of life called Shalom. "Any gospel that stops short of Shalom distorts the gospel." The gospel is about restoring us to creation (which to this day is groaning because of sin). Get Embracing Grace and read it. I feel I'm flailing to describe it. A community of restored Eikons loving God and people for the sake of the world is what Jesus' redeeming work is about. Heaven when we die? Yeah. Sins forgiven? Yeah. But to reduce the gospel to the foothills of redemption is a sad reduction, indeed. Jesus Christ is a much more majestic Person and had in mind a much more majestic Purpose than to prop up the sappy, reduced gospel prevalent in the West. Scot is right. There is a young wave of Christians who will not settle for the foothills where it's quite comfortable and safe and clean and boringly painless. They would rather hazard the climb to the peaks and adore a more beautiful and mysterious God, breathe a cleaner version of salvation air and see more expansive vistas of God's wonderful and wounded world. And they will do this even if they die trying. Scot McKnight's *Embracing Grace* helps them (and all of us) in that climb.