Foreword by Howard John Loewen As our lives become complex with the demands of our affluent and accelerating society, do we hear the gospel's timeless and insistent call to live the "obedience of faith"? In these three "sermonic essays" Eldin Villafañe takes on the task of awakening true obedience of faith through the themes of discipleship, incarnation, and justice. Beginning with discipleship, Villafañe draws on the "Christ hymn" of Philippians 2 to challenge Christians to choose the costly Christ-life. He then offers six contrarian perspectives on the incarnation from the early church as correctives to our current, culturally conditioned theological emphases. Finally, taking the book of Amos as a touchstone, Villafañe issues a call for just leadership among the nations. Adding interest and depth to this work are an insightful foreword by Dean Loewen and thoughtful responses by Richard Peace, Juan Francisco Martinez, and Veli-Mattí Kärkkäinen. Villafañe's Beyond Cheap Grace incisively extends Christ's call to discipleship, incarnation, and justice to the church, the academy, and Christian leaders of all traditions.

Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s most radical book, this reading of the Sermon on the Mount has influenced many Christians throughout the world over the last 50 years.

Throughout the history of Christianity, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT” or“queer”) people have been condemned as unrepentant sinners who are in dire need of God’s saving grace. As a result of this condemnation, LGBT people have been subjected to great spiritual, emotional and physical abuse and violence. This issue takes on a particular urgency in light of the ongoing harassment and bullying of LGBT young people by their classmates. Cheng argues that people need to be liberated from the traditional legal model of thinking about sin and grace as a violation of divine and natural laws in which grace is understood as the strength to refrain from violating such laws. Rather Cheng proposes a Christological model based upon the theologies of Irenaeus, Bonaventure and Barth, in which sin and grace are defined in terms of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. This book serves as a useful resource for all people who struggle to make sense of the traditional Christian doctrines of sin and grace in the context of the 21st century.

God loves us, but He loves our neighbor too! So, He calls us beyond ourselves to love them as He does! “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Beyond: Embracing the Outward-Focused Heart of Christ is a 21-day devotional journey to go beyond ourselves to join Jesus in the harvest field, to see campuses, cities, and communities around the world transformed by the reality of the Gospel. Written by both seasoned and emerging voices within the Body of Christ, these devotionals come from those who are practicing the lifestyle of the “outward-focused heart of Christ” in their cities and communities. Jesus is standing in the harvest field of this generation and inviting us to come with Him. There is an intimacy with Jesus we can only know as we labor with Him in the harvest. Our prayer is that as you embark on this 21-day journey, you will be pulled deeper into the missionary heart of Jesus.

All men face some degree of temptation or discontentment. Here is your guide to get you past frustration into freedom. We live in a culture where 55% of married men and 70% of single men look at porn at least once a month and over half of all marriages end in divorce. To understand why that is we have to look beyond the battle to the root of both the problem and the solution... Most books for men on how to defeat lust and improve their relationships with the women in their lives preach a plan for trying harder, thinking better, and battering their behavior into submission. The problem with this approach: no matter how strong we are today, the battle continues tomorrow, and nothing ever seems to change in the long run. In Beyond the Battle, author and pastor Noah Filipiak shows you why symptom-based behavior management approaches offer short-term solutions. Instead, he unpacks the keys to a gospel-centered, long-term victory, helping you win the war against temptation and entitlement. Beyond the Battle is an accessible, effective, man-to-man resource for individual or small group use that will guide you toward freedom from sexual temptations by connecting you more deeply to Jesus—to his sacrifice and sufficiency. Filipiak addresses deep questions of marriage, singleness, and sexual temptation like: What's really the worst enemy in a man's marriage? How are my assumptions about my wife contributing to the problem? How does a corrected understanding of God's grace change my outlook on marriage or singleness? This book turns typical "purity" strategies on their head by addressing head-on our sense of self-entitlement and our self-seeking tendencies, showing how to look to God—instead of to women—for intimacy, approval, acceptance, and validation. Includes free access to 7-week small group video curriculum plus an option 40-day devotional.

Recent sexual scandals have rocked the North American religious scene and left the churches concerned about credibility and liability. What are the bounds of clergy sexuality? What constitutes misconduct, and what legal, moral, and religious norms apply? More broadly, what has gone wrong, and how can clergy understand their own sexuality and their lives of service? Lloyd Rediger is a uniquely qualified national expert on all these questions with a strong message for clergy about their sexuality, spirituality, and behavior. In this timely volume, which incorporates material from his earlier volume Ministry and Sexuality, Rediger brings his extensive research, clinical experience, and theological insights to bear on the topic. He offers a comprehensive, authoritative account of clergy sexuality and sexual ethics with up-to-date legal information; helpful research on ethnic, gender, and denominational factors; a religious and moral framework for understanding clergy sexuality; and analysis of the sexual problems encountered by clergy. (Learn more about Dr. Rediger at his website.) This volume could well become the standard pro-fessional resource for clergy in a new era of increased accountability and moral reflection.

How should Augustine, Aquinas, Bonhoeffer, Kant, Nietzsche, and Plato be read today, in light of postcolonial theory and twenty-first-century understandings? This book offers a reader-friendly introduction to Christian liberationist ethics by having scholars "from the margins" explore how questions of race and gender should be brought to bear on twenty-four classic ethicists and philosophers. Each short chapter gives historical background for the thinker, describes that thinker's most important contributions, then raises issues of concern for women and persons of color. Contributors include George (Tink) Tinker, Asante U. Todd, Traci West, Darryl Trimiew, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, and many others.