God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

Jerry Bridges’s new book, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate, should be available at the DG conference. NavPress has posted the table of contents and the first chapter online for free as a PDF. It looks as if the book—which I have not yet seen—not only offers an overview theology on sin and its remedy, but specifically addresses the following sins:

• Ungodliness
• Anxiety and Frustration
• Discontentment
• Unthankfulness
• Pride
• Selfishness
• Lack of Self-Control
• Impatience and Irritability
• Anger
• Judgmentalism
• Envy, Jealousy, and Related Sins
• Sins of the Tongue
• Worldliness

In the preface Bridges summarizes his intent for the book:

This book, as the title announces, is about sin — not the obvious sins of our culture but the subtle sins of believers, the target audience of this book. So let me say up front that I am not without the sins addressed in this book. In fact, you will find that I sometimes use my own sad experiences as examples of some of these sins.

The motivation for this book stems from a growing conviction that those of us whom I call conservative evangelicals may have become so preoccupied with some of the major sins of society around us that we have lost sight of the need to deal with our own more “refined” or subtle sins.

While seeking to address these “respectable” sins, however, I also want this to be a book of hope. We are never to wallow hopelessly in our sins. Rather, we are to believe the gospel through which God has dealt with both the guilt of our sin and its dominion over us.

The gospel, though, is only for sinners, for those who recognize their need of it. Many Christians think of the gospel as only for unbelievers. Once we trust in Christ, so the thinking goes, we no longer need the gospel. But, as I seek to bring out in this book, the gospel is a vital gift from God not only for our salvation but also to enable us to deal with the ongoing activity of sin in our lives. So we still need the gospel every day.

Bridges has also partnered with his friend Bob Bevington to produce a new book on the cross and the “blessed exchange,” entitled The Great Exchange: My Sin for His Righteousness. It takes its organizational cues and arguments from George Smeaton’s classic work on the atonement.