{"id":1785,"date":"2024-07-11T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T03:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1785"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","slug":"the-gospel-of-sin-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1785","title":{"rendered":"THE GOSPEL OF SIN MANAGEMENT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am more and more convinced that the shrinkage of the American church is due to the narrowing of how we understand &#8211; and proclaim &#8211; what we call &#8220;the good news&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You are a sinner, but if you put your faith in God&#8217;s Son, you will be forgiven all your sins and you will go to heaven when you die.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How utterly anemic this is compared to the true gospel!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dallas Willard calls it &#8220;the gospel of sin management&#8221; and suggests the ineffectiveness of\u00a0 the modern church &#8220;is not in spite of what we teach and how we teach it, but precisely because of it&#8221;. (<i>Divine Conspiracy<\/i>, 40)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it &#8211; or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all.&#8221; (11)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Willard says the true gospel invitation is &#8220;to make a pilgrimage &#8211; into the heart and life of God&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s so much more to it than wiping clean your record of sin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am more and more convinced that the shrinkage of the American church is due to the narrowing of how we understand &#8211; and proclaim &#8211; what we call &#8220;the good news&#8221;: You are a sinner, but if you put your faith in God&#8217;s Son, you will be forgiven all your sins and you will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1786,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions\/1786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}