It's a Beautiful Gospel

Per The Prodigal God by Tim Keller (p. 101-2):

During his ministry he wandered, settling nowhere, and said: “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20).  He remained completely outside the social networks of political and economic power.  He did not even seek academic or religious credentials.  Finally, at the end of his life, he was crucified outside the gate of the city, a powerful symbol of rejection by the community, of exile.  And as he died he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46), a tremendous cry of spiritual dereliction and homelessness.

What had happened?  Jesus had not come to simply deliver one nation from political oppression, but to save all of us from sin, evil, and death itself.  He came to bring the human race Home.  Therefore he did not come in strength but in weakness.  He came and experienced the exile that we deserved.  He was expelled from the presence of the Father, he was thrust into the darkness, the uttermost despair of spiritual alienation – in our place.  He took upon himself the full curse of human rebellion, cosmic homelessness, so that we could be welcomed into our true home.

Quote from Doug Wilson, found @ Blog and Mablog

…  But grace itself, the real thing, is a lion out of the cage.

There will be wretched people in Heaven who sinned far more grievously than other socially decent people who are in Hell. There will be people who worked for the last hour of the day and are paid the same as those who worked all day. There will be hookers and coke addicts in Heaven, and members of the Evangelical Theological Society who aren’t. There will be people up there like Rahab who was justified by lying, saying that the spies went one direction when she knew damn well they went another. And God said, “Well done, woman. I’ll have the apostle James use you for an example of how faith without works is dead.” So there’s a doctrine for you. Justification by lying. And there will be people in heaven even though they occasionally use words like damn to make a point. As though I was not in enough trouble. In the realm of God’s work, there are kings praised for eating the shewbread that they were not supposed to eat, and kings struck with leprosy for going into the temple where they were not supposed to go. There will be priests praised for profaning the sabbath by offering sacrifices on that day, even though they were guiltless in their sinning. There will be rabbis praised for breaking the sabbath through perfoming circumcisions on that day, and Presbyterian ministers praised for violating the Lord’s Day by administering baptisms then. There will be thousands of “pagans” from the Old Testament saved, people who were under no obligation whatever to become Jews. Who will be saved outside the covenant nation of Israel? Well, Melchizedek, Jethro, Namaan the Syrian, Job the Edomite, the inhabitants of Ninevah who repented at the preaching of Jonah, and however many antediluvians who had a change of heart after the door closed and the rain started. Make no mistake — saving a planet full of sinners like us is a messy task, and not one for the tidy-minded.

But we still get worried with the notion that the Spirit is a mighty, rushing wind who is rampaging all over the place, saving people. We want grace in a can. We want to put grace into little spritzer bottles, and then we can mist each other at approved meetings. But the grace of God is a tornado, not a zephyr.