Christian Focus

When Grace Comes Home is a book about the practical working out of Christian beliefs. There are an awful lot of us who are proud of our doctrine, that we know the right answers to the tough questions about Christianity, yet fail to live like they're true.

This book is an antidote, subtitled 'How the Doctrines of Grace Change Your Life'. It is written from a traditional, reformed, Christian perspective (eg. J.I. Packer and R.C. Sproul) and takes various doctrines and Christian disciplines and shows how belief in God's sovereignty and human depravity ought to affect these areas.

The chapters included are Worship, Humility, Adversity, Outlook, Witness, Sanctification, Assurance, Law and Liberty, Prayer, Guidance and A Faith for Living. The writing is engaging, persuasive and at times quite disarming.

I'd like to note a few drawbacks before wrapping up though. I don't think Johnson addresses the issues of Law and Liberty and Guidance as clearly and fairly as he could to his opponents, although the Guidance chapter is particularly excellent (like many cessationists, he seems significantly closer to the Charismatics than he thinks) and encouraging. There's also a suspicion of reason that runs through his book, which I find a little disappointing, or at least unclear, but these are minor points.

The book comes recommended by some great names in Evangelicalism, including James Boice and J. Ligon Duncan III, but Packer sums the book up best with:

'Rarely can the vitamin content of sweet, strong, classic pastoral Calvinism have been made so plain and palatable as it is here.'

Paul Huxley, Guildford