The gospel in letters
Grace comes for nothing
How do you know if you have done enough good deeds in order to be acceptable to God? This is the dilemma of everyone whose religion has no concept of free forgiveness. Mother Teresa's religious doubt and spiritual emptiness was as understandable as it was tragic (‘To doubt God is human, and to hell with convention,’ September 13). If only she had read her Bible she would have seen that grace is a gift, not something that one earns.
Joshua Bovis, Lambton
What I love most about this letter to the editor (The Sydney Morning Herald 14 September 2007) is not so much the letter itself (great as it is), but the (presumably pagan) subeditor's heading: “Grace comes for nothing”. The subeditor has understood what grace means! That is an extraordinary victory for Christian thought in a society which cares nothing for God.
Well done, Josh! Keep writing. We need persistent, faithful newspaper correspondents. I've just been re-reading Jim Packer on the Puritans, and his well-researched view is that spiritual revival in the 17th century (which was just as real as its 18th-century counterpart, though less well-publicized) was, under God, due to Puritan writing.
It deliberately dumbed-down writing, too. These guys worked overtime to tell the gospel straight, without clever allusion and witty sesquipedalian flourishes. JC Ryle later called it “crucifying your style”.