thasty87 posted: " Favorite Quote: "We who are believers tend to evaluate our character and conduct relative to the moral culture in which we live. Since we usually live at a higher moral standard than society at large, it is easy for us to feel good about ourselves an" Favorite Quote: "We who are believers tend to evaluate our character and conduct relative to the moral culture in which we live. Since we usually live at a higher moral standard than society at large, it is easy for us to feel good about ourselves and to assume that God feels that way also. We fail to reckon with the reality of sin still dwelling within us" (16-17). My Impressions: I started this book back in February of 2020 as part of a Bible Study that a good friend of mine was teaching. We were probably three weeks into it when the COVID pandemic hit and the world shut down. As much as I was enjoying the book, I put it aside in the hopes that once COVID "went away", the Bible Study would resume. After a year and half of waiting, I gave up and read the book anyway. I suspect that doing it as part of a group study would have been helpful because I would have read it at a slower pace; as it was, I tore through it in about two weeks. Jerry Bridges is a gifted and articulate writer, and I greatly appreciated his humility and honesty. Everyone I know who has read Jerry Bridges speaks of him with fondness and admiration, almost as if they knew him. After reading this book, I almost feel like I know him too (technically he passed away in 2016, so this is impossible, but I think you know what I mean). I'll open this review with a definition of "respectable sins" in the author's own words: "The acceptable sins are subtle in the sense that they deceive us into thinking they are not so bad, or not thinking of them as sins, or even worse, not even thinking about them at all!" (17). Just a few pages later he writes, "though I have not committed any of the big scandalous sins, I have gossiped, spoken critically of others, harbored resentment, become impatient, acted selfishly, failed to trust God in difficult issues of life, succumbed to materialism, and even let my favorite football team become an idol" (24). The premise of the book is that we often rest easy as Christians, believing that because our lives are relatively neat and tidy, the work of sanctification is essentially done. Yet as this book points out, there is still a lot going on in our hearts that is sinful, even if it looks okay on the outside. (And given the state I live in, his comments about idolizing his favorite football team may hit a little close to home.)
The acceptable sins are subtle in the sense that they deceive us into thinking they are not so bad, or not thinking of them as sins, or even worse, not even thinking about them at all! Respectable Sins
Read more of this post |
|
|
|
|
WordPress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment