If inner peace and a sense of justice come only from God [Proverbs 29:26; Shadrach et al. vs. Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 3] and we yearn for both when in conflict, why do we not appropriate them from God when in conflict? 1 John 4:18 suggests it is because we stand paralyzed in fear, for our love is not fully mature. But how can that be true for a forgiven believer-unless our image of God is not correct?

The author argues that our fear flows from an image of God as an angry judge, judging us from his Torah, a penal code of crime and punishment. But why do we think that when Christ on the cross wipes our sins away and gives us a spirit of sonship? [Romans 8:15]. Do we think it because we think our thousand-year Western legal tradition is biblically based and we subconsciously read it into Torah? What if that premise is wrong? After all, Torah originally meant instructions or teachings, not law.

Mr. Bontrager reexamines the nature of God and his Word in view of Torah as a gracious gift of instructions to people blinded by sin, living in a fallen world, offered to us by God to guide us in working through conflict according to his ways, thereby finding peace and justice [Psalm 119].