Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Book 2, Chapter 4: The Perfect Penitent


In this chapter Lewis is answering the two crucial questions answered first in the Gospels: "Who is Jesus Christ?" and "What did he do?" On the first reading it looks like Lewis is downplaying theology. Quite the opposite is true. While he is hesitant to dig deep (remember his target audience), his bare-bones presentation calls the reader to embrace the death of Christ on his own behalf. That is theology. A chapter summary would have to be what Lewis calls "the catch." He says: "Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.” Two questions for you: First, how does this knowledge that we are calling sinners to do what they have no power to do affect our theology? And, second, how does this affect our attitude when we seek to evangelize lost people?

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