I am thankful more books like this one continue to enter the world to help people wrestle through their deepest questions and concerns about the nature of God, especially in the age-old conflict of trying to reconcile images of God portrayed in the Old Testament with the revelation of Jesus in the New Testament. For many, this appears irreconcilable, but once you begin to get into the deeper meaning and ultimately, as Greg’s book shows, the revelation of Jesus being exactly what God is like, the reconciliation process begins. Greg opens this work sharing his own frustrating and angry journey of wrestling with this conflict in how he used to view God, before finally experiencing a deep healing in realizing God’s nature of Unconditional Love. This personal story is powerful in itself, and sets up his journey that is like so many others who have or are struggling to make sense of God’s nature that is often misrepresented by those who teach the scriptures, or have simply believed the awful things about God they have been told, often feeling they need to defend these awful things out of necessity of being true to what they think the scripture says.

When misunderstanding the nature of God, yet defending that tainted nature, it is not uncommon to hear people say things like, “If the Bible says it, then it's true, and that is enough for me.”

In this work we see, it is not enough, for if it fails to see scripture, and all of life, through the lens of the nature of God as revealed in Jesus, it will always fail, no matter how certain you think you are. Greg says:

“The question, however, is how we should approach the Bible, for the approach you take to Scripture completely determines the “God” you find in it.”

Greg learned that love, not fear, is the greatest motivator for bringing about change. We know that fear has often been the lens by which people see and image God, therefore, they see through a pitch black glass, not even able to see dimly. The Light of Christ revealing the nature of unconditional love changes everything, as the Light begins to shine on Reality. Greg rightly says, “The way we envision God is the single most important thing in our life.” Therefore, until we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, we remain blind and deaf to the nature of God as revealed perfectly in Christ. Greg’s work begins to open our senses to what is true, especially in understanding that “The New Testament does not assume all biblical depictions of God carry equal authority, instead, it considers Jesus to be the sole, perfect revelation of God’s character and purposes in the world.”

Why else would Jesus have come in the flesh to show us the Way out of our blindness to who God really was?

What I love about Greg is his refusal to deny the importance of the scriptures' entire message, with all its weaknesses and strengths, while simultaneously focusing on God who is always working with imperfect humans to shine through both their ignorance and brilliance. The “message of the cross” becomes the single eye by which our whole body, and the whole body of scripture, is filled with light to see the essence of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ. Love becomes the guiding lens that was guiding scripture, and us, all along. We can see this in the inconsistency of our own life and understanding of scripture, when the Light shines in our darkness.

Greg does a good job of showing how God was working throughout the scriptures' story to reveal a better way, the most excellent way of Love Paul talks about in the New Testament. It begins to rightly divide the difference between what the Word (Christ) reveals and the word of scripture was always trying to reveal through humans who continually misinterpreted the heart of God. One shining example was how God was trying to get the Israelites into the promised land, and the tension between how God wanted to get them there and how the Isrealites attempted to get there, namely through slaughtering men, women, and children. Such difficult understandings only make sense when we see God’s refusal to abandon people, while forever working with their dysfunctional interpretations on how to see God’s promises fulfilled. I think we can all relate. This will be a revelation for many as they read it.

Overall in this short work (As Greg also writes much thicker books), Greg does a nice job getting to the heart of the message of God’s unconditional, other-oriented love, and shares practical ways we can embody this message as the freedom of who God really is comes to light in our being and reading of scripture. He shares a few examples of people who loved Jesus but could not bring themselves to trust him fully because of what they were taught in their fear of God, which highlights the power of the message freeing them in their renewed devotion toward God. In the end, even though some things Greg shares speak to his own lens through which he is growing on this journey and might not be worded the best, the entirety of the heart of his message is consistent and beautiful to the main point that sets us free. Let us end on a few powerful pieces from the book highlighting the “message of the cross” revealing the ultimate nature of God within our own limitations:

“In stooping to accommodate human fallenness, God takes on the appearance of a deity who approves the very practices he is tolerating. Yet this is not an approval; it is a profound act of divine humility and love. And each accommodation points forward to the ultimate expression of God’s humility and self-sacrificial love, when God stooped to bear the sin and curse of the world thus took on a sinful and cursed appearance.”

“The cross is not simply a momentary expression of God’s character-it is the ultimate revelation of God’s eternal essence.”

“Jesus reveals what God is truly like, and therefore what God has always been like.”

This shorter book from Greg can be an eye opening, deeper still, heart opening gift to help you see clearly the unconditional love of God.

-PH

“Thank you MennoMedia for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.”

A great, accessible book on the topic of how to see God through the lens of Christ

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)