--- title: "The Grace of God by Andy Stanley" description: "My Takeaway: Grace really is the central message of the Gospel. I have been meandering through this book for a while.  I bought it pre-release when it was sold at church (full disclosure, I go to Buck..." url: https://bookwi.se/the-grace-of-god-by-andy-stanley/ date: 2011-02-03 modified: 2026-07-27 author: "Adam Shields" categories: ["Book Reviews"] tags: ["Scribd"] type: post lang: en --- # The Grace of God by Andy Stanley [![The Grace of God](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/cover-3323.jpg)](http://www.amazon.com/Grace-God-Andy-Stanley/dp/0849948142/) **My Takeaway: Grace really is the central message of the Gospel.** I have been meandering through this book for a while.  I bought it pre-release when it was sold at church (full disclosure, I go to Buckhead Church, [Andy Stanley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Stanley) is my pastor.)  Then Thomas Nelson gave away the ebook if you signed up on the Facebook page.  So I waited for the ebook to come out.  Thomas Nelson only distributed it in PDF (they really should know better).  So I tried converting it to kindle format using Calibre and it did not look that great.  I eventually finished the book by reading it as a pdf on the iPad, a far from perfect experience. This is my first of Andy Stanley’s explicitly theological books.  I have read some of his leadership books and I think leadership is where he really shines.  He is a great preacher and having attended the church for a while I can recall some of the sermons this was based on.  It is not a sermon series turned to book form.  But there are a few things that I recognize from earlier sermons.  I think there is just as much that will be in future sermons.  In fact, I recognize a couple quotes from the book as being in the last two week’s sermons and the book has been in my house for the past couple months. I think the best insight of the book is “God’s law is never given to establish a relationship; God’s law is given to confirm an existing relationship.”  I think this is the root of much misunderstanding in the Christian world.  Too often we want people that are not Christians to act like Christians. Another quote from the book is about fairness. “Fairness is a tricky thing.  Here’s something I’ve noticed: I only complain about things being unfair when unfair works against me.  When unfairness works to my advantage, I call that answered prayer…Fortunately for us, the kingdom of God does not operate according to the principles of fairness.  At least not the way we measure fairness.” This is a good book on grace.  Grace is the central message of the gospel.  Any gospel that is not essentially about the grace of God is not really the gospel.  Because this is the central message of the gospel there are a lot of good books on grace.  That is good, because as different people we need different messages on grace in order to help us where we are at.  For some reason, [Brennan Manning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennan_Manning)‘s [Ragamuffin Gospel](http://www.amazon.com/Ragamuffin-Gospel-Bedraggled-Beat-Up-Burnt/dp/1590525027%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dmrshiecom-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1590525027) has always been my ‘go to’ book on grace.  I think ‘The Grace of God’ is a good book on grace.  I think it is particularly good for people that grew up in the church but have strayed from it.  That seems to be a group that Andy Stanley is particularly good at reaching out to.  This book follows along with that focus quite well. **Purchase Links:  [Hardcover](http://www.amazon.com/Grace-God-Andy-Stanley/dp/0849948142/), [Kindle Edition](http://www.amazon.com/The-Grace-of-God-ebook/dp/B0044XV5YO/), [Audible.com Audiobook](http://www.amazon.com/The-Grace-of-God/dp/B004CJJK8I)** ______ I want to do a short little rant about a habit of Andy’s that drives me nuts.  He refers to Jesus referencing Jonah in the book.  (And he does this in sermons regularly.) And says, “Apparently he [Jesus] thought Jonah was a historical figure and that the events recorded in the book of Jonah actually happened.  So that’s my view.  I always side with Jesus on debatable matters.”  But it is unclear to me that Jesus’ reference to Jonah really means that Jesus thought that Jonah was literally true.  It really doesn’t matter to me whether you think Jonah was literally true or not.  But I think that this type of claim does not really show anything.  People refer to stories all the time and referring to a story does not mean that a person believes that the story was literally true.  It just means that they refered to a story.  Jesus referring to creation does not mean Jesus thought that creation happened in 7 days.  Jesus referring to Noah does not mean that the entire world was covered in water for either 190 or 187 days (depending on whether you follow the calendar references or the count of days in the Noah story).  I think we can know many things about scripture, but I do not think that we can know the ‘literal’ meaning of things just because those events were reference later in scripture by someone else, whether it was Jesus or Paul or someone else. ![](http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=aac77aeb-a6cb-4724-b901-b0c444200118) ***Related Bookwi.se Book Reviews*** - [![](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/279830723_80_80.jpg)](https://bookwi.se/coffee-jesus-david-wilkie/)[Coffee With Jesus by David Wilkie](https://bookwi.se/coffee-jesus-david-wilkie/) - [![](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/311088004_80_80.jpg)](https://bookwi.se/prototype/)[Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You’re More Like Jesus Than You Think? by Jonathan Martin](https://bookwi.se/prototype/) - [![](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/235414123_80_80.jpg)](https://bookwi.se/be-rich/)[How to Be Rich: It’s Not What You Have. 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