Absolutely. I think the value of my book is it’s emphasis on seeing our faith as fundamentally a relationship rather than a religion. When I look at the issue of forgiveness and repentance, I think in terms of the effect my behavior is having on my relationship with someone I love.
In regard to God, I have no question that my sin hurts Him and when I know I have hurt Him [because the Holy Spirit convicts me of that] I literally run to Him in repentance. My motivation for repentance is not just to deal with the matter of my sin but rather, to restore my relationship with someone I love.
In other words, my repentance cares more about my relationship with my perfect, loving Father than my relationship with law.
Yes, I agree. It’s in the context of a relationship. My wife always forgives me. In fact I think to stay married to me she has to have already done that in advance, knowing that I’m going to disappoint her again. LOL. But this is what troubled me about the guy who came to my church and preached this “I don’t need to ask God to forgive me after I get saved” stuff. He took I John 1:9 and wrote it off and then took the Lord’s prayer and wrote it off and then proceeded to write off everything Jesus said before the cross as not apply to us. This is the sort of stuff that makes me just a little angry.
Bob, I totally agree. It is a bigger problem for me because I am in the “Grace Message” business. He is taking my message and warping it. This makes my job much more difficult. My message will be tarred with the same brush as his, even though I disagree with all of his excesses and misuses of Scripture. My answer to his heresy is not to stop preaching the grace message but to preach it as well as I can.