Het boek combineert een verhaal over een affaire tussen een professor en een van zijn studenten (ja, schokkend!) met een zeventiende eeuwse preek, een discussie met de lezers, en nog veel meer, om maar duidelijk te maken dat de liefde van God niets te maken heeft met wat wij doen. Dat is volgens Capon nu juist de betekenis van het kruis, dat God uit vrije wil ervoor gekozen heeft zelf te lijden aan de gevolgen van onze keuzes, onze zelfzucht, ons falen, onze 'dood'. Wij zijn niet in staat om onszelf te veranderen, om onze ikgerichte patronen blijvend op te heffen. In dat opzicht zijn we dood. Deze dood is net zo zeker en vast als onze lichamelijke dood. Maar wat de bijbel zegt is dat we in Jezus zijn opgewekt uit de dood. Jezus associeerde zichzelf met ons in onze dood en droeg daarvan alle gevolgen, en wij zijn in Hem besloten in zijn opstanding uit de dood. De hele schepping is levend gemaakt in Hem. Dat is realiteit! Er zijn geen mensen die niet inbegrepen zijn in het werk van Jezus. Volgens Capon hoeven we dat alleen nog maar te accepteren - accepteren dat we dood zijn op onszelf, en levend in Christus. Wie weigert deze realiteit te aanvaarden, wie zijn ogen stijf gesloten houdt voor Gods aanbod, kan het leven (dat al van hem is!) niet ervaren en blijft dus daarbuiten in de duisternis. Ik zou zelf enkele nadrukken anders leggen dan Capon, vooral als het gaat om het koninkrijk dat komt en de natuur van de 'hemel', maar dat is mijn stokpaardje nu eenmaal. Wie niet bang is geconfronteerd te worden met zijn innerlijke zeurpiet (de innerlijke 'oudste broer' uit de gelijkenis), zal door dit boek onder de indruk komen van de liefde van God en de vrijheid die we bezitten. Hij is werkelijk goed!
Ik ga hier geen lange recensie van maken, ik wilde eigenlijk alleen een paar citaten die ik had opgeschreven delen om jullie enthousiast te maken.
'There is no way of tying the kingdom of heaven to anything we do. It comes because the king makes it come, not because we give it a helping hand.'
'To be what the Law says we should be, is the only way we can be what we really are.'
'The law ... stands. I cannot topple it, and God does not. But there is no law that stands against God's acceptance of those who break it, should God by his own devices, choose to accept them. The gospel is simply the announcement that God does indeed so choose.'
'We come before Christ, even in judgment, by the power of his cross and resurrection only; our contribution to the process, like Lazarus's, is simply our death, not our good or bad behavior.'
'Hell is the ultimate unreality; it is unbelief in the only set of facts there is.'
“Grace cannot prevail until law is dead; there is no way of seeing clearly the freedom to which we are being driven until morality has been bound, gagged, and stuffed unceremoniously in the trunk. That is the fundamental oddity of our condition; and while there is no way of tempering its oddness, there are at least precedents to keep us from expecting it to go away. The classic parables of grace always involve the flaunting of some immorality, some inequity, some gratuitously offensive detail. The Father’s free acceptance of the Prodigal is not fully portrayed until he orders the slaying of the fatted calf and the Elder Brother rightly observes that all his years of goodness never got him even a goat. The gracious beneficence of the Owner of the Vineyard is not driven home until those who worked but one hour are paid not only equally with the rest but ahead of them as well. The Good Samaritan is simply an insult: to Jesus’ Jewish audience, there were no good Samaritans; to make a hero of one was to stand truth on its head. Let me refine that a little. I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over — until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves. And even if we leave none at all, we will grub for ethics that are not there rather than face the liberty to which grace calls us. Give us the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, and we will promptly lose its point by preaching ourselves sermons on Worthy and Unworthy Confession, or on The Sin of the Elder Brother. Give us the Workers in the Vineyard, and we will concoct spurious lessons on The Duty of Contentment or The Moral Aspects of Labor Relations.
Restore to us, Preacher, the comfort of merit and demerit. Prove for us that there is at least something we can do, that we are still, at whatever dim recess of our nature, the masters of our relationships. Tell us, Prophet, that in spite of all our nights of losing, there will yet be one redeeming card of our very own to fill the inside straight we have so long and so earnestly tried to draw to. But do not preach us grace. It will not do to split the pot evenly at four A.M. and break out the Chivas Regal. We insist on being reckoned with. Give us something, anything; but spare us the indignity of the indiscriminate acceptance.
Lord, let your servants depart in the peace of their proper responsibility. If it is too much to ask, send us to bed with some few shreds of self-respect to congratulate ourselves upon. But if that is too hard, leave us at least the consolation of our self-loathing. Only do not force us free. What have we ever done but try as best we could? How have we so hurt you, even by failing, that you should now turn on us and say that none of it makes any difference, not even our sacred guilt? We have played this game of yours, and it has cost us.
Where do you get off suggesting a drink at a time like this?” (Gekopieerd van deze blog).
