Transform By Grace Adewuya

The Theological Critical Reflection

Transformed by Grace by J. Ayodeji Adewuya
As I submerge into Dr. J. Ayodeji Adewuya’s book “Transformed by Grace,” I see that he provides a straightforward theological study of Romans 6-8 demonstrating that Paul’s theology revolves around sanctification. Dr. Adewuya presents that Paul’s focus is on the new life in Christ, its privileges and obligations. These three chapters constitute a unity where Paul answers the criticism that salvation by grace encourages sin, centers chiefly on the conflict with sin and the law, and the realities of the new life where the Holy Spirit enables and energizes the believer to live in a manner that the law could not match (p. 17). However, I will focus on identifying
Nevertheless, the message of the Gospel is a message of victory. With the understanding that we, as Christians, face temptations, Paul makes it clear that we are not immune from suffering either. Instead, suffering is to be understood as a normal part of Christian experience. Let us not forget the words of Jesus in John 16:33: “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” So will we. Moral life, for Christians, is to be seen as a journey through life sustained by fidelity to the cross of Christ, which brings a fulfillment no law can ever embody. Therefore, the importance of a recovery of the integrity of the church is needed. In order to do so, Hauerwas, in his book “The Hauerwas Reader,” explains, we need a community of people who are capable of being faithful to a way of life, even when that way of life may be in conflict with what passes as “morality” in the larger society. That way Hauerwas identify the importance of the church as crucial for sustaining the Christian journey. Mark Medlin, during our forum, presented that the personal expressions of holiness and the attention to those expressions has led the movement into a sort of self-sealed environment apart from the realities of the world. Each day we move farther away from the core values of the early church. Due to so much
As Samuel M. Powell says in his introduction of his book “Embodied Holiness,” holiness is a bodily and spiritual matter, where “body” commonly means the physical body of the believer (the subject of holiness), the physical body of the historical Jesus (the importance in holiness), the church (the living context of holiness), and Eucharist (Christ incorporated into us). Therefore, the body is the center of the concept of holiness in the New Testament. Rodney Clapp agrees with what Hauerwas says on his essay (Embodied Holiness, p. 19-38) that Christians should be worry about becoming holy (p. 63). Clapp’s understanding of Hauerwas’ point of view of the peasant discloses that we, in a way, have some kind of embodied and habituated knowledge of holiness – Michael Polanyi’s concept of “tacit knowledge” (p.64) affirming that Hauerwas is right to think that the church faces a considerable challenge in becoming a “disciplined body of disciples since professional and consumer assume the church has no right to tell them what to believe or do (p. 71). Clapp refers to it as the illusions of individualism. Clapp also agrees with Hauerwas saying that we, Christians, are always contingent and dependent, and he goes on to emphasize a reality of Christian character: we are