Hannah Sorenson’s Reviews > In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character > Status Update

Wow…Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s discussion on “cheap grace” is powerful

^No sooner does sin enter the garden than grace appears, clothing Adam and Eve in animal skins God himself supplies. It is God who provides the first sacrifice, as it is God who provides the last. Grace from the garden to Golgotha. Grace from Golgotha to this generation. And grace shall lead us home.^

That was from A. W. Tozer

^No one was ever saved other than by grace, from Abel to the present moment. Since mankind was banished from the eastward Garden, none has ever returned to the divine favor except through the sheer goodness of God. And wherever grace found any man it was always by Jesus Christ. Grace indeed came by Jesus Christ, but it did not wait for His birth in the manger or His death on the cross before it became operative.^

^Love expresses itself in grace.^

^She was simply acknowledging a fact: parents love their children more than children love their parents. They love more for the plain reason that they love longest—having begun to love before the child is born, and then loving that child from an adult vantage point—with the full force of adult understanding of the world, of danger and loss, of grief and joy and expectancy and regret.^

^Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the merciful, for they have received mercy.
Blessed are the merciful, for the mercy they have received is without end.^

^Because Jesus is the author, each word has been chosen and arranged with perfect intent:

"God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Note the word picture the man's statement creates. God at one end of the sentence, a sinner at the other, mercy in between.^

^This is why it makes sense that God is both faithful and just to forgive us our sin: because Christ received justice at the cross, we receive mercy. Having executed justice on Christ in our stead, God would be unjust to now withhold from us forgiveness for our sin. Mercy and justice both take their place in the narrative of our salvation.^

cont'd

But the New Testament teaches us that in Christ, we see the mercy of God demonstrated in all its lavishness: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Eph. 2:4-5).^