Book Report: Death by Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

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Book Report: Death by Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

Introduction

The book Death by Love: Letters from the Cross has been written by Mark Driscoll who is a pastor and by Gerry Breshears who is a theologian on Christianity. In this book, Driscoll has put forth his pastoral letters which he had written to twelve different people, who were Christians, and had tried to help them with his pastoral advice and by delineating the fact that they got saved only because of Jesus' atonement. In this way, he has shown how Jesus' atonement saves people from their sins and has shown through twelve incidences how Jesus' atonement came to be the savior of these twelve souls which were all Christians. In this way, it is clear that Jesus' atonement expiated humanity from sins and brought life to those who would not have been any livelier had Jesus not expiated mankind through his crucifixion and later resurrection from his grave to come to the people's rescue (Walk It Out, 2010).

Book report on Death by love: Letters from the cross

Book summary

In this book, the author shows how Jesus' atonement has come to save the humanity and mankind. In the book he narrates true life stories of twelve different individuals and exposes as to how the Jesus came to their rescue. In this way, he is able to show the twelve different effects of Jesus' atonement (Walk It Out, 2010). These twelve different effects of Jesus' atonement include being the christus victor, providing redemption, showing the new covenant sacrifice, gifting righteousness, providing justification, and becoming the propitiation. The remaining effects include providing expiation, becoming unlimited limited atonement, becoming ransom, becoming the christus exemplar, providing reconciliation, and manifesting revelation (Driscoll and Breshears, 2012).

These letters indicate the stories of twelve different people. The most important stories include those of Katie whose father is no good and, therefore, she becomes all depraved, but finally Jesus comes to her rescue and she becomes a good girl again. Then, the story of Thomas shows that he is all absorbed in his never quenching thirst and lust for women. However, in the end he is able to purify himself and becomes content. The story of Luke goes that he is cheated by his wife who sleeps with another man. Consequently, Luke gets his contentment through Jesus' timely intervention. Then, the story of David goes that he is a good Christian yet cannot get rid of his predilections for committing grave sins and minor misdemeanors. However, he is able to overcome his tendency for committing crimes in the end, with the help of Jesus. Finally, Mary is able to overcome from the shadows of having gotten raped, by taking to Jesus and his ways (Driscoll and Breshears, 2012).

However, the key themes in the book and in the stories remain people who are either sinful, or are sinful despite ...