“Extra Virgin Grace” by Ryan Rufus – Book Review

When you know an author personally, you sort of think you have an idea what they are going to say in their latest book. I have known Ryan Rufus for a couple of years and thought pretty much that. Boy was I wrong. His latest book, ‘Extra Virgin Grace’ for me is right up there with the likes of ‘The Naked Gospel’ and ‘God without Religion’. From page one Ryan just gets straight into it and unpacks dimensions of grace I have not even even thought of considering in some cases.

In Extra Virgin Grace, Ryan not only writes about the general surface issues associated when it comes to the Old & New Covenants, he goes in deep. He takes on some very sensitive topics including whether or not a believer can lose their salvation, God’s discipline and other confusing scriptures that people struggle to get to grips with. He also does an awesome job of removing a lot of Christian jargon surrounding certain words like holiness, flesh, obedience and righteousness which has unfortunately been defined through religious lenses for so long. This is one of those books you will most probably not just read once. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

“The goal of renewing your mind is not to have a perfect mind but to have a mind that submits perfectly to your spirit.” – Pg. 22

“You can’t receive His Righteousness when you’are trusting in your own.” – Pg 37

“People think Jesus was giving a nice little sermon on the mount about how to be a better person and kinder to others and pleasing to the Lord. He wasn’t. He was systematically exposing self-righteousness…” – Pg. 86

“Sin is not unholiness, it’s a byproduct of unholiness.” – Pg. 103

“The whole point of grace is that God does the work on our behalf and then credits us with having done it all perfectly so we can just enter into a relationship of rest.” – Pg. 172

If you would like a copy of this awesome book, visit New Nature Publications‘s website. They ship the book free to any country in the world! For the techno junkies out there, get the Kindle version through Amazon.