PASSION
By Mike McKinley
The Good Book Company (http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk). 150 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 908 762 061
‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Galatians 6.14). The cross of Jesus is everything. It is eternity changing, world changing, death changing, life changing... or least it should be!
The subtitle of this book puts it: ‘How Christ’s final day changes your every day.’ In this excellent book, Mike McKinley, a pastor in Virginia, takes us through the last hours of Jesus Christ leading up to his death on the cross from Luke’s Gospel.
For many Christians these narratives are well trodden, but the careful engaging with the text and the fresh explanation of it helped me to see things I had never seen before. For example, I had not noticed the contrast in the focus of the words of the two criminals crucified on either side of Jesus — one focussed still on this life and the other on the next.
As the subtitle suggests, there is also careful application, and each chapter ends with helpful questions for reflection. It is devotional writing at its best and fittingly each chapter ends with an appropriate hymn. The clarity, however, makes it equally accessible to an unbeliever who is new to the Bible. The book also contains three different reading plans to encourage reading more or even all of Luke’s account.
Reading this book, a chapter a day, moved me to understand more of Christ’s passion and gave me a fresh passion to live to boast only in the cross. I plan to buy a boxful for the church family here. Why not do the same?
David Sprouse,
pastor, Cuckfield Baptist Church, West Sussex
