Outrageous Mercy: Rediscovering the radical nature of the cross
William P Farley
P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg, 2009. 192pp.
If you’re reading this, you probably need no convincing that regular reflection on the cross is a pretty good idea. But maybe you’re not sure that Outrageous Mercy: Rediscovering the radical nature of the cross deserves a place on your ‘Want to read’ list. I certainly wasn’t convinced; I’d never heard of William P Farley before this book came across my desk. What’s more, since I do like to judge a book by its cover, it didn’t immediately strike me as essential reading. With so many great books on the cross available, I confess that, on first glance, Outrageous Mercy looked a little too light and a little too American to really grab me.
Well, I may not have chosen this book for myself, but I’m glad someone else chose it for me! Outrageous Mercy proved to be a refreshing and stimulating look at the most important subject in the world. Farley’s approach is simple: the big idea of this book is that the cross has two dimensions: “It is something God has done for us, but it is also a revelation of vital truths communicated to us” (p. 11, emphasis his). He claims that ‘we’ (by which I assume he means evangelical Christians) usually think only of the former, and so miss much that the cross says to us—and much that it reveals about God’s character. His book is an attempt to redress this imbalance by examining some of the key ideas and messages communicated to God’s people through the death of Jesus.
To achieve his aim, Farley chooses several important topics—including suffering, boasting, wisdom, ‘worship’ (his term) and what we might loosely call ‘spiritual warfare’—and examines what the cross says to us about each. Each chapter attempts to explain the pitfalls of thinking wrongly about the subject at hand, before showing how the cross should inform and correct our thinking. At times, Farley is a bit like a preacher circling around his subject from different angles, revisiting key themes several times over. For example, the nature of sin and the reality of God’s holiness come up repeatedly in various contexts.
Outrageous Mercy is punchy and fluent—an easy read—the kind of book you’d feel comfortable giving to someone in your church who ‘isn’t much of a reader’. It bears the fingerprints of a pastor, replete with illustrations and anecdotes that illuminate the subject at hand, while also showing the real-life, pastoral context in which the author has worked through and developed his theology of the cross.
The book also has a very personal touch: Farley often injects himself into the discussion, revealing things he used to misunderstand and explaining how understanding the cross corrected his thinking. For example, in the chapter on wisdom, he writes, “I asked for wisdom. I knew it was important, but I did not really understand why… What I eventually received was not what I’d asked for. The cross is the wisdom of God, but I wasn’t looking at the cross.” (p. 131)
At the same time, Farley does not patronize his readers by presenting himself as ‘a fellow pilgrim searching for answers’; he’s a theologian writing a book about the cross, he’s done some research, and he speaks with appropriate authority.
One important issue the book raised for me was the nature of God’s revelation. Farley rightly describes the cross as God’s “show, don’t tell” (p. 173)—the place where his actions reveal his love. But doesn’t the cross only show us God’s love because God goes to great lengths to tell us what it all means in Scripture? Given the central thesis of the book, a brief exploration of this idea would have strengthened the argument.
Also, given the nature of Farley’s project, you might find yourself wondering why he chose the topics he did, or wishing he’d addressed your questions. For example, personally I would have loved a chapter on what the cross says about forgiveness and reconciliation in human relationships. But you can’t have everything.
I suppose the danger with a work like Outrageous Mercy is that it could encourage Christians to make the cross answer our questions, rather than allowing the cross to set the agenda and tell us what’s really important. But this is a minor quibble—especially since Farley is clear about his aims. Better to be thankful for a perspective that (as Farley says) is often overlooked among evangelical scholars. If you read this book alongside something like Stott’s The Cross of Christ, Leon Morris’s The Atonement, or newer volumes such as Pierced For Our Transgressions, or Packer and Dever’s In My Place Condemned He Stood, your theological bases will be well covered.
So next time you revisit the canon of books on the cross, consider adding Outrageous Mercy to your list. It may just help revitalize the way you think about, preach on, teach and rejoice in the cross.
