Product Description

The leader's guide to the Gold Medallion Award-winning ZondervanGroupware for groups of all sizes. This book helps leaders direct group participants in exploring, understanding, and appreciating Christianity’s greatest gift to the world: grace.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #467626 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-17
• Released on: 2000-08-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Amazon.com
Mention the word "grace" and what immediately comes to mind for most of us is a bagpipe wailing the solemn notes of "Amazing Grace."

The grace of which Philip Yancey writes is the freely given and unmerited favor and love of God. This grace seems a remote, almost sentimental concept, without a place in our lives or our society. It is a vague, slippery thing to us, probably because we seem to experience grace so rarely and have managed to leech the word of meaning. But Philip Yancey has set about to rescue grace in his book What's So Amazing About Grace?

This grace is the true message of Jesus. All faiths have virtues and creeds and justice and truth, but Jesus speaks merely of receiving the love that God has for us. Accepting it, not earning it or making ourselves worthy of it. And frankly, accepting something we have not earned or are not worthy of is not an easy thing for most of us.

In truth, grace is both utterly simple and utterly confounding. Little by little, Yancey guides us into a clearer understanding of grace by using stories, in much the same way Jesus did. We read stories of both grace and ungrace at work in people's lives. Sadly, it is stories of ungrace that are more prevalent today, the current culture wars painful acknowledgments of ungrace in our lives as Christians in this country. Yancey helps us understand that ungrace is that state of being in which self-righteousness and pride are a result of thinking that we have somehow earned God's approval and may now stand in judgment in his behalf.

Philip Yancey was awarded the Gold Medallion Christian Book of the Year award for this book in 1998 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. Readers concurred with this decision, making this book an immediate bestseller. Believers and nonbelievers alike should accept Yancey's challenge to become agents of grace rather than agents of vengeance or judgment or anger. In truth, we are each starving for grace, ready to grasp it tightly. And it is through grace that all other hungers--for justice, for righteousness, for love--are satisfied. Yancey opens his book by telling us that "grace" is the last best word, and in What's So Amazing About Grace?, he proves that he's right. --Patricia Klein

From the Publisher
The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace? have influenced the Christian church in a way few other books ever have. Both have ascended to the ranks of ongoing best-sellers. Both have won the Gold Medallion Book of the Year Award--fitting recognition for what may well be Philip Yancey's two most significant books to date. And now the previously abridged audio editions of these two remarkable works come unabridged. Read by professional narrator Bill Richards, here are Yancey's complete, passionate, personal insights into the person of Jesus and the nature of grace--with the convenience and flexibility of Zondervan Audio Pages.

From the Author
Philip Yancey serves as editor at Large for Christianity Today magazine. His books The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace? were national best-sellers appearing on both the Publisher's Weekly and ECPA lists. Both books also won the Gold Medallion Book of the Year Award. Yancey has written eight Gold Medallion Award-winning books, including Where Is God When it Hurts? Disappointment with God, and The Gift of Pain. He co-edited The Student Bible, which also won a Gold Medallion Award. He and his wife live in Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Taking the Amazing Out of Grace
"Grace [is] the only unsullied theological word remaining in our language." (p.232) So writes Philip Yancey. Other words, like love, have lost their original theological meaning, but grace has managed to retain its profound meaning. What is that meaning? Grace, writes Yancey, means . . . well, I looked through the book in vain, really, for some succinct definition of the word. Yancey gives none. "In sum," he explains, "I would far rather convey grace than explain it." (p.16) Yancey's book is a collection of stories that illustrate what Yancey means by "grace," interspersed here and there with some political commentary and light scriptural exegesis. Part One is a description of our world as a place full of what Yancey calls "ungrace," the cure for which is grace. Part Two is a plea for the world to forgive. Part Three is essentially Yancey's manifesto on homosexuality, legalism, the Clinton presidency, and the work of Christian political action groups.

Yancey's indictment of the Christian church is that it should be less judgmental, more loving. I should admit here that it is exceedingly dangerous to say anything against a book that makes an argument like that. One cross word about it, and the reviewer has unwittingly condemned himself as a judgmental, unloving negativist. So I suppose we must begin with the premise that pointing out error is not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and even Philip Yancey all do it quite frequently.

The extent of Yancey's definition (read, description) of grace seems to be that which may be described as "nice" or "kind" or "pleasant," though he doesn't use those precise words. For example, on page 13 of the book, Yancey says: "The Berlin Wall falls . . . ; Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands . . . -for a moment grace descends." These are all wonderful events, but would the Bible really define grace by them? Yancey also laments that in our world, "Test papers come back with errors-not correct answers-highlighted." (p.36) Unacceptable "ungrace," to Yancey. One wonders how Yancey can write such sentences and still exult that "grace" is "one grand theological word that has not spoiled." (p.12)

It is interesting to read the book and pinpoint whom exactly Yancey considers "ungrace," and whom he praises and defends as "grace." It seems that everyone whom Yancey would define as kind or nice is gracious, and everyone who is mean and unkind is "ungrace." Sometimes he gets it right. Nazis and racists are condemned; Martin Luther King, Jr. and those who minister to Nazis and racists are praised. Now, there are some profound reasons for saying thanks to a man like Martin Luther King, Jr. and for condemning the likes of Adolf Hitler. Those reasons have to do with sin and righteousness. But Yancey's judgments turn out to pivot not at all on sin, but rather on pleasantness and niceness: Abortion protestors, people who call homosexuality a sin, and anyone who writes a negative review of a Yancey book are all "angry," "vicious," and "vituperative." (p.227-228) By contrast, Bill Clinton, homosexuals, and even divorcees are lauded and pitied as people who have been the targets of Christian "hatred" (p.226) and "judgment." (p.11 and 31). The closest thing to a definition Yancey gives is on p.231 when he defines his word "ungrace" as "meanness and inflexibility." It may sound less than profound, but that is precisely the dividing line between the "grace" and the "ungrace" in Yancey's mind.

This emphasis on niceness also leads Yancey to discount the importance of conviction of sin. There are many examples, but perhaps the most illuminating is his discussion of homosexuality. Yancey steadfastly refuses to call it a sin. Homosexuals are just "different" people, he says. (p.163). Yancey is impressed by the "poignant" chant of the marchers at a gay-rights rally: "Jesus loves us, this we know . . ." (p.166) The scene is ironic. Here are people in flagrant violation of the Scriptures, and Yancey is more impressed that they can say the words "Jesus loves me" than he is disturbed by their sin. Grace is not simply an acceptance of everyone for the sake of harmony. There is something in the world called sin. Homosexuals are not merely "different." They are sinners, but instead of cowering under the judgment of God, as Christians do, and repenting of it, those marchers celebrate their sin and presumptuously sing "Jesus loves me." And Yancey can hardly find words to express his admiration for them.

Yancey tells the story of a prostitute whom he invited to church. (p.11) Her response was, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse." Of course, the church is to love sinners and tell them the gospel of Christ, but consider this-maybe the church is supposed to make that prostitute feel bad. Maybe it is actually loving to make someone feel uncomfortable about their sin. Jesus says that it is the very work of the Holy Spirit to "convict the world of guilt in regard to sin." (John 16:8) Imagine that! "The Holy Spirit! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. He'd just make me feel worse!"

In the end, Yancey's conception of grace is inadequate. It evacuates the word of any meaning other than "niceness," which will eventually evacuate the gospel itself of any meaning. If grace is defined by "niceness" and evil by "meanness," then it is not surprising that Yancey might seem confused about whether Christians or homosexual militants are more "grace-full." So what's so amazing about grace? What is so amazing about grace is that this righteous God, who has sworn that He will punish sin, has nevertheless seen fit to extend it to a sinner like me.

Philip Yancey Is Amazing!
Author Philip Yancey offers a refreshing viewpoint of grace in his spiritually challenging book What's So Amazing About Grace? He effectively uses the scriptures as a lens to focus on the life we lead today. His illustrations help the reader to turn that lens on himself or herself - not in a critical way, but in a soul-opening way. He has chosen some of the most startling and effective illustrations I have ever encountered. This book, already being used in our Christian colleges, needs to be required reading for anyone who takes his or her Christian life seriously.

Everyone needs to read this book - Christian or not
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I've bought many copies and given them away. To me this book summarizes what Jesus was all about - love, forgiveness...GRACE.