Justification

I recently finished reading Wright's Justification. I found it a good read, but Wright is a hard author to grab little quotes from, which is probably one reason he is misunderstood. Anyway, I did grab some that I will post over the next few days. Here's the first one:

Sin is what bubbles up unbidden from the depths of the human heart, so that all one has to do is go with the flow. That has the appearance of freedom, but is in fact slavery, as Jesus himself declared. True freedom is the gift of the Spirit, the result of grace; but, precisely because it is freedom for as well as freedom from, it isn't simply a matter of being forced now to be good, against our wills and without cooperation (what damage to genuine pastoral theology has been done by making a bogey-word out of the Pauline term synergism, “working together with God”), but a matter of being released from slavery precisely into responsibility, into being able at last to chose, to exercise moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the Spirit is at work within, that God himself is doing that which I too am doing.—Justification, page 189

<idle musing>
Mind you, it is all by grace. Yes, you are enabled to respond, but you are responding. I like Bonhoeffer's way of putting it: “When Peter stepped out of the boat in faith, was it works?” No, it was in response to God. To not respond is to believe in cheap grace, which is really not grace at all, but license in the guise of liberty.
</idle musing>