Blogging the Book: Respectable Sins

Each quarter, at Calvary, I highlight a good book for the congregation to read and think about and sometimes we gather for a book discussion at the end of the quarter. I have used the following books thus far: The Cross-Centered Life (C.J. Mahaney), Living the Resurrection (Eugene Peterson), How People Change (Lane & Tripp), The Treasure Principle (Randy Alcorn), and Battling Unbelief (John Piper). This time we are taking our discussion online, as I will be using this blog to facilitate discussion on the Spring Book of the Quarter: Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges – and anyone is welcome to join us. My friends over at New Covenant are already doing this (thanks Ken!) – feel free to check out their discussion as well.

Starting next week I will post my thoughts on the first two chapters on Tuesday (and two chapters each week) – here is the schedule:

4/22 – Ordinary Saints (1) & The Disappearance of Sin (2)
4/29 – The Malignancy of Sin (3) & The Remedy of Sin (4)
5/6 – The Power of the Holy Spirit (5) & Directions for Dealing with Sins (6)
5/13 – Ungodliness (7) & Anxiety and Frustration <8>
5/20 – Discontentment (9) & Unthankfulness (10)
5/27 – Pride (11) & Selfishness (12)
6/3 – Lack of Self-Control (13) & Impatience and Irritability (14)
6/10 – Anger (15) & The Weeds of Anger (16)
6/17 – Judgmentalism (17) & Envy, Jealousy, and Related Sins <18>
6/24 – Sins of the Tongue (19), Worldliness (20) & Where do we go from here? (21)

Here is the description from the back of the book:

Have Christians becomes so preoccupied with the major sins of our society that we have lost sight of our need to deal with our own more subtle sins? Jerry Bridges returns to his trademark theme of holiness and addresses a dozen clusters of specific “acceptable” sins that we tend to tolerate in ourselves – such as jealousy, anger, pride, unthankfulness, and judmentalism. Jerry writes not from a height of spiritual accomplishment but from the trenches of his own battles with sin. In his admonitions, Jerry offers a message of hope in the profound mercy of the gospel and transforming grace of God as the means to overcome our subtle sins.