Transforming Grace, Jerry Bridges. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2017 (book originally published in 1991, study guide, 2008).

Summary: A comprehensive study of the nature of grace and the experience of grace throughout the life of the believer accompanied by a study guide for group use.

“Sola Gratia!” was one of the rallying cries of the Reformation. We believed we are saved by God’s grace alone rather than through anything we’ve done or will do. Yet we often have a hard time believing in and living into grace as a transforming, ongoing reality in our lives. More often, it seems it is simply a theological formula or a point in our presentations of the gospel message.

Jerry Bridges, who died in 2016, wrote this book to address the question of how we may live in grace and experience God’s gracious transformation in our lives. Recently, the publisher released a new edition of this work, combining the text of the earlier work with a subsequently published study guide for groups.

The first couple chapters address a struggle facing many of us. We often profess to believe in grace but live Christian lives that are performance-based, where we tie God’s work in us to the balance of our own merits and demerits. Our crucial need is to come to the place of understanding our utter, permanent bankruptcy. Bridges writes:

“To the extent you are clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness or are putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments, to that extent you are not living by the grace of God in your life” (p. 24, italics in original).

Part of the remedy for us is to understand how truly amazing is the grace of God that utterly blots out our sins and remembers them no more. God is like the generous landowner in Matthew 20, who pays those who work only an hour a day’s wage, who gives us what we need and not what we deserve. This leads to godly lives motivated by the extravagant love we have received. Obedience is no longer adherence to a set of rules, but rather recognizing that the commands of God express how we might love him in response to the grace we have experienced.

We are called to live holy lives, even as we are already freely declared holy in the sight of God through grace. Grace also is evident in our growth into the holy character that is already ours as gift, a character enumerated in the fruit of the Spirit. This call to holiness is a call to freedom. Bridges uses the helpful illustration of a raised road running through a swamp where living by grace informed by the law of love that leads to liberty is contrast with going off one side into the  swamp of legalism or the other side of license. As we progress in grace, we discover that grace is sufficient in our lives, meeting us in our weakness and debilities, challenging our self-sufficiency, and bringing us to an awareness of both our own inadequacy and God’s utter adequacy.

Chapter Twelve was perhaps one of the most helpful in the book, on appropriating grace. We often struggle between our own desires and the will of God, and need to appropriate God’s grace to become what we believe. Bridges believes this occurs as we seek God in prayer for this ability to do what God bids, as we lay hold of scriptural promises and principles (which in true Navigators ministry is scripture we have memorized), and as we submit to the providential working of God in our lives. Bridges also commends the importance of trusted companions with whom we honestly share our struggles.

Finally, Bridges encourages us to put on “garments of grace” as we put on the qualities of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness, and an overarching love, as commended in Colossians 3:12-14. He concludes the book in observing how forgiveness is possible because we recognize our own indebtedness or bankruptcy toward God, and thus forgive the small debts we are owed by others. In this, Bridges nicely closes the book where he begins.

I thought this book a very clear, biblical, and practical explanation about how we might live into the grace of God. Bridges own humility in sharing his experiences of struggling with this in his own life make this even more winsome. The incorporation of the discussion guide (a bit more than 100 pages) into this work enhances its usefulness to groups. Although there are thirteen chapters, the guide is organized into eight discussions. For each, the guide summarizes the central idea for the covered material, offers a warm-up exercise, provides selected text from the book to read ahead, questions to help in “exploring grace,” a closing prayer, going deeper questions if there is time for this, and quotes from famous Christians to help us “ponder grace.”

As a Christ-follower for five decades, it was a delight to be reminded of these foundational truths and how we may live into them. Yet the text is clear and basic enough to be understood by new believers, and rich enough to provide fresh nourishment for those who have walked long with Christ. All of us have in common the reality that we more easily profess grace than appropriate it for our lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.