To him, all good things, trout as well as eternal salvation, came by grace and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.
As I cited in Sunday's sermon, a solid and succinct quote from Johnny Mac regarding the "grace of Christ" (e.g., Gal 1:6):“The grace of Christ is God’s free and sovereign act of love and mercy in granting salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, apart from anything men are or can do, and of His sustaining that salvation to glorification.”
posted by GUNNY @ 16:05
8 comments
8 Comments:
eh?
A River Runs Through It
Bing! Point, Jay the Bennett.
In contrast to the somewhat unclear quote from the movie, I juxtapose Johnny Mac's.
Still, I've always thought that an interesting quote from the movie, perhaps because it seems a bit of a play on words where "grace" is concerned.
Gunny,
I am sure you have been asked this before (maybe you should add the answer as a widget in the sidebar to your blog), but how do you come up with all the movie quotes?
Do you take notes while you watch?
Do you have a go-to searchable database?
Do you just have a great memory?
My gut says a combination of all three--you are a movie enthusiast. You watch with an attentive ear. You remember the gist of a lot of good quotes, then you use an online database to get the exact quote.
How do you do it?
Oh and by the way, I think it's one of the best signature moves of any blog.
More to the theological point, I have a question for the Reformed-types around here.
In the quote, MacArthur describes grace like it is some kind of force. (He's not alone in this. This seems to be a staple of Reformed thinking.) It's like God uses his grace like Yoda uses the Force. Grace is like the lasso that God uses to rope sinners that are running from Him.
What biblical basis do we have for thinking of God's grace in that way?
A lot of attributes of God are mentioned in the Bible--the love of God, the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the patience of God, etc. And yet, Reformed thinkers attribute Force-like qualities to none of these. Why is that?
The key verse here is Ephesians 2:8--by grace you have been saved. Reformed theology takes this instrumentally, as if God's grace is a tool that he uses to save people, instead of just an attribute.
Matt,
You're right. It is a combination of the three. More often than not, a quote will just sort of come to me from memory.
But there are times when I'm watching a movie when I'll actually write a quote down, thinking I might use it in the future and so I want to get it right. Quotes like that I have in a note on my iPhone, but before that I used to put them in a Microsoft Word document.
The latter is smarter, because I can use the "find" feature to more quickly find the quote, even though I've got them in alphabetical order according to movie.
I really need to handle up on my bidness and put those from my iPhone note into that Word document.
Oddly enough, I have about a half dozen blog posts that have been dormant in the draft folder because I've yet to come up with a good quote. And there are some great quotes that I wish I had a blog post to match.
;-)
Matt wrote: "What biblical basis do we have for thinking of God's grace in that way?"
Great question. In fact, it may merit its own blog post. I'll get to work on that, sir.
2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV)
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
This verse has always seemed to me to equate "GRACE" with "POWER". And, from an engineering perspective, we know that POWER = ENERGY / TIME, or mechanically, POWER = FORCE x DISTANCE / TIME.
Plus, we know that God is omnipotent, or all POWER-ful, which is comforting and terrifying. I think the context of God using His power determines if it is indeed grace or not - I mean I don't think the objects of His wrath consider His exercise of His power as grace. But, when the objects of His mercy benefit from His exercise of His power, we call that GRACE.
So, I think the Star Wars universe falls short in using merely "The Force". What we need is POWER.
Anyway my friends, May the Power be with you, aka Grace to You.
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