Book Review: Saving The Saved by Bryan Loritts

Many Christians feel they have to perform in order for them to keep God from not loving them or take their salvation away. I have always been amazed at how some Christians believe they are saved by grace which not based on their works yet they can lose their salvation by what they do. Christians need to be reminded that God will continue to love them despite their performance.

Brian Loritts's message in his book, Saving The Saved, is about how we are saved from trying harder to a performance-free love by God. Loritts reminds his readers that God sent His Son to save us from our sins because we could not do it. That is the gospel message. Jesus performed so that we don't have to.

Loritts does not advocate antinomianism which is simply giving grace to live freely because God will forgive me. He is saying, yes, we are loved by God, but we still have to obey because we do love God. This performance-free love that is given to us by God takes away the spotlight that is put on our performance and puts it on Jesus. We are saved from ourselves because we are condemned by our performance not just before we are saved, but even after we received Jesus.

I get the message that Loritts was communicating in his book and embraced a few things he said. There was one area that almost made me want to shut the book and be done with it. He talked about Jesus's temptation from the devil and how He resisted it. If you know the story, you know Jesus quoted scripture. Jesus was God in the flesh. This is what Loritts said:

God's Son was able to turn down Satan's request to perform because he knew he was intrinsically loved by his Father. Jesus emerged unscathed from this temptation because he felt the security of being loved for who he was, not for what he did.

I have no doubt that Jesus knew the Father loved Him because God is love and His love is perfect. What made me question what Loritts wrote was it seems he assumed that Jesus needed saving. Jesus was God in the flesh. He was 100% God and 100% man. He was tempted in every way as we are yet was without sin. God's Son resisted the devil because He was divine not because He had freedom to not perform for His Father's love.

As I said, I get what Loritts was communicating in the bulk of the book, but this one little excerpt left me with a bitter taste in the mouth.

Thanks Booklook Bloggers for letting me review this book.