Considering the Great Work of the Gospel

A few years ago I came across The Great Work of the Gospel: How We Experience God’s Grace by John Ensor.  It intrigued me.  John works in establishing pregnancy centers worldwide.  He lives in Boston as well.  So for years I’ve been meaning to buy and read this book.  Something always seemed to be more important at the time.  Until recently.  I picked up a copy about 2 months ago and decided to read it since I was beginning a series on the atonement for Lent.

I’m sorry I waited, but the book was timely in light of the whole Rob Bell thing.  The Christian should treat grace like a scientist treats gravity: not merely accepting its reality, but want to understand its totality.  As recipients of grace, we explore grace that our hearts might be more captured by it and more grateful for it.  To adapt an old saying, unexamined grace isn’t worth having.  This is because to understand grace is to understand Christianity.  How can you be a Christian without wanting to understand it?

“The grace of God that forgives us changes us. … The grace of God wounds our pride but then increases our confidence.  When God forgives, he exposes the most shameful things only to then cleanse them all from our conscience.”

Let’s stop for a moment.  Some personal context to lay my cards on the table.  I grew up Catholic.  I have a Ph.D. in guilt: true and false.  I am a recovering Pharisee who couldn’t keep his own high standards, much less God’s.  There are MANY things I don’t want you to know about me.  There are things only a privileged (and I use that term loosely) know about me.

But I have no interest in cheap grace, or cheap forgiveness.  I’m not trying to ignore God’s standards.  Neither is Ensor following the fashion of the day.  He structures the book on the topic of the Great Work.  When we own up to our guilt, we desire forgiveness and grace.  But if we never own up to guilt, then grace seems pretty much irrelevant.  In all of the chapters, Ensor examines a variety of biblical texts and addresses numerous misconceptions.  In the chapter on desiring grace, for instance, he tackles self-esteem and the reality of the conscience.

One of the most important chapters is on the Great Work Needed.  There he explores the biblical concept of God’s wrath.  This chapter would be a hard one for Rob Bell to choke down.  But as others like Tim Keller and Matt Chandler noted, God’s wrath is tied not just to his justice but also his love.  Wrath and love are not antithetical.  Such an idea is overly simplistic, misguided puts God in our box.  By gutting God of wrath, people like Rob Bell make the cross rather purposeless.  He also defends the biblical doctrine of hell as an expression of both love and justice.  He refutes some common evangelical attempts to get around the reality of God as Judge sending people to hell.

“Love must be able to get angry as well as to comfort.”

He also develops the great hope of the gospel.  It is not quite what Rob Bell thinks it is.  The Scriptures really do not make out a universal hope for forgiveness.  Rather than exalting love in such a way as to exalt our will, Ensor exalts God’s sovereign freedom to “have mercy upon whom I will have have mercy.”  And “to harden whom I shall harden.”  Somehow those texts from Exodus which Paul expounds upon in Romans 9 seem to be ignored when exalting our wills.  But this chapter is mostly about God’s heart to forgive, that He is slow to anger (though He does), and He is abounding in love (hesed).  The Scriptures repeatedly teach how God is patient with sinners until at last His wrath breaks through.

The Great Work is revealed in Christ, the Rescuer.  There is no Great Work apart from the Rescuer.  There is no forgiveness apart from Jesus and His substitutionary atonement, the Great Work justified.  He saves us from the wrath of God (Romans 5:8-9), bearing punishment meant for us (Isaiah 53).  It was no mere accident, but the will of God.

Ensor does not want to leave us with doctrine understood, but doctrine experienced.  God cleanses our conscience, but our conscience is alot like my dog.  She doesn’t like to get a bath.  I have to struggle with her so she will be cleaned.  We must struggle with consciences that struggle to believe the promises of the gospel.  Part of us wants to wallow in self-pity.  Part of us wants to contribute something to the process.  The Enemy loves to accuse.  It is no easy thing, experiencing (living in the freedom of) our forgiveness in Christ.

“Prayer is faith articulating its glad dependence on God’s provision.”

This leads us to enjoy the Great Work when we do experience it.  Our hearts are cleansed SO we can serve God and enjoy God.  He must make us holy that He might make us happy.  We want happy without holy.  We also share the Great Work, putting our grudges to death.    We also serve in the Great Work, offering up our lives for others.

This is a short book.  Ensor does not meander much.  He gets to the point, but it is not dry theology by any stretch of the imagination.  He fills the books with historical examples and the examples of people he has met.  It is a warm book as well as a true book.  In other words there is both heat and light here.  It is good, rather great, news for sin weary souls.  I very much encourage the reading of this book.  It will be of far more use to you than a book that was recently released.