This emotionally stirring book brings readers to realize their sin and leads them straight into the arms of a grace-giving God by using Rembrandt's ornate painting "The Return of the Prodigal Son" as an illustration.

Over 250,000 copies sold Have we become so focused on “major” sins that we’ve grown apathetic about our subtle sins? Renowned author Jerry Bridges takes you into a deep look at the corrosive patterns of behavior that we often accept as normal, in this established and impactful book. Practical, thought-provoking, and relevant at any stage of life, Respectable Sins addresses a dozen clusters of specific “acceptable” sins that we tend to tolerate in ourselves, such as: Jealousy Anger Judgementalism Selfishness Pride Writing from the trenches of his own battles with sin, Bridges offers a message of hope in the transforming grace of God to overcome our “respectable sins.” Now with an added study guide for personal use or group discussion so you can dive deeper into this staple of Jerry Bridges’s classic collection. “Read this book—we need to—and be ready for a gentle surgeon’s sharp knife.” —J. I. Packer, author and speaker

Sociologist George Yancey critiques four models of race (colorblindness, Anglo-conformity, multiculturalism and white responsibility), and introduces a new model (mutual responsibility). He offers hope that people of all races can walk together on a shared path toward racial reconciliation--not as adversaries but as collaborators and partners.

What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes. Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation. Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.

The controversial evangelical Bible scholar and author of The Bible Tells Me So explains how Christians mistake “certainty” and “correct belief” for faith when what God really desires is trust and intimacy. With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of “once for all delivered to the saints.” Enns offers a model of vibrant faith that views skepticism not as a loss of belief, but as an opportunity to deepen religious conviction with courage and confidence. This is not just an intellectual conviction, he contends, but a more profound kind of knowing that only true faith can provide. Combining Enns’ reflections of his own spiritual journey with an examination of Scripture, The Sin of Certainty models an acceptance of mystery and paradox that all believers can follow and why God prefers this path because it is only this way by which we can become mature disciples who truly trust God. It gives Christians who have known only the demand for certainty permission to view faith on their own flawed, uncertain, yet heartfelt, terms.

Stereotypical tendencies in Christian counseling include either emphasizing sin at the expense of grace or grace at the expense of sin. Mark R. McMinn seeks to overcome these exaggerations and enable all those in the helping professions see the proper understanding and place of both sin and God's grace in the Christian counseling process.

"Robert MacFarlane has written that language does not just register experience, it produces it. Our religious language in particular informs and shapes our understanding of God, our sense of self, and the way we make sense of our challenging path back to loving Heavenly Parents. Unfortunately, to an extent we may not realize, our religious vocabulary has been shaped by prior generations whose creeds, in Joseph Smith s words, have filled the world with confusion. "I make all things new," proclaimed the Lord. Regrettably, many are still mired in the past, in ways we have not recognized. In this book, Fiona and Terryl Givens trace the roots of our religious vocabulary, explore how a flawed inheritance compounds the wounds and challenges of a life devoted to discipleship, and suggest ways of reformulating our language in more healthy ways all in the hope that, as B. H. Roberts urged, we may all cooperate in the works of the Spirit to find a truer expression of a gospel restored."--