Mike Ovey, who was recently promoted to glory, gave a very significant lecture at the 2013 GAFCON conference in Nairobi entitled The Grace of God OR the world of the West? In this lecture he talks about Bonhoeffer's notion of 'cheap grace' - repentance-less self congratulation. Then he goes for the roots of this - how has this cheap grace become so prevalent in the Western church - and he zeroes in on narcissism and entitlement - the presumption expressed by the old L'Oreal advert: "Because you're worth it." The centre of the universe is me. Churches start to tell their congregations that they need to love themselves before they can love their neighbour. God is shifted from being The King to being my butler. The gospel is twisted so as to feed self-love rather than to free us from self-love. I recently came across the following section from Jonathan Edwards. His wider point is that the first foundation of love for God should be wonder at who God...
Living and preaching at the foot of the Cross