Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 12:1 (Spring 1999)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

The Grace Exchange: God’s Offer of Freedom from a Life of Works. By Larry Huntsperger. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1995. 192 pages. Paper. $8.99.

The title is fascinating: The Grace Exchange. After reading the book, I’m still not sure what it means. The author seems to mean something like this: by grace, when we submit to Christ—more on this in a moment—God exchanges our sinfulness and unrighteousness with Christ’s sinlessness and righteousness.

The subtitle is disturbing. What is “Freedom from a Life of, Works”? Surely we have been saved in order that we might produce good works and glorify God (John 15:7–17; Eph 2:10). We do not need, nor should we desire, freedom from a life of works. Evidently what Huntsperger means by the subtitle is that while God gives us “a moral framework” to be obeyed, the Christian life is not centered on that framework, but on the Person of Christ. I can certainly say “Amen” to that, though I cannot to the subtitle.

Huntsperger believes that, “Entrance into the family of God happens only through true heart submission to Christ” (p. 21). He repeats the phrase “submission to Christ” over and over again in the book as the condition of obtaining eternal salvation (see, for example, pp. 21, 22, 31, 41, and 124). Does he believe that “true faith” always includes submission to Christ? Possibly, but he fails to make this point clearly. Does he believe that faith is submission to Christ? Again, he isn’t clear. He seems to assume that all will accept as biblical the notion that submission to Christ is the condition of eternal life.

Thus, while he often says that we are not saved by our own works or anything we can offer God, he holds up submission as the condition of salvation. He evidently sees nothing contradictory in this.

Another way in which the author seems to contradict himself is on the question of whether believers will necessarily act in a godly manner and persevere in the faith. On the one hand he gives the impression that he understands verses like 2 Cor 5:17 and 1 John 3:9 to refer to the sinless new nature of the believer, not to some guaranteed level of holiness all believers will manifest (cf. pp. 9, 45-46). Yet, on the other hand, he indicates that all true believers have “a new longing to live in a manner pleasing to God… a sensitivity to sin that [they] never had before…[and] a love for other people that was never a part of [their] former life” (p. 46; se...

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