Wholeness Volume 1: Where God Is Bringing Us by Bruce Weatherly; Brookstone Publishing Group/Iron Stream Media, 2025. 208 pages; $17.99 (paperback); reading level: adult.
Wholeness Volume 2: How God is Transforming Us by Bruce Weatherly; Brookstone Publishing Group/Iron Stream Media, 2025. 240 pages; $18.99 (paperback); reading level: adult.
The writer of these two volumes has an urgent message for the church: In emphasizing justification and the seemingly endless cycle of sin, confession, and forgiveness over the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, church leaders are “paying lots of attention to something we died to [a life of enslavement to our old, sinful self]…and not enough attention to the Holy Spirit and what is true about us now.” What is true about us now, as the author insists repeatedly (because we so badly to need to hear it over and over again!), is that while we are justified – completely forgiven with the promise of eternal life to come – we are also free in this life – “free from sin as a way of life, free from the law and free ‘indeed,’…because the Holy Spirit is now living and reigning in us…”. What is true about us now is that the third person of the trinity does not work with us from the outside but through us from the inside, as we lay hold of the scriptural fact that we are truly one with Him. That simple, joyful message of our oneness with the Holy Spirit runs like a steel rod straight through these two volumes but never seems repetitive because intriguing new insights spiral around it, illuminate it, make it real, chapter by chapter: life under the New Covenant of the Holy Spirit as God’s plan to reach the nations; how we can “just live” without the endless self-effort which brings us back under the control of the law from which we’ve been freed; the place of suffering in our lives (and in the life of a “perfect and upright” man named Job); the role of the law in a life lived under the New Covenant of the Spirit; and, in Volume 2, a deep dive into Romans 6-8 which further illuminates this new life we live in true oneness with the Holy Spirit. These books were years in the writing, obviously the culmination of a lifetime of faithful serving, living, reading, and studying, but there is not a paragraph to be found that has been dulled by overthinking. The author’s palpable excitement about his message gives the impression that his words leaped onto the pages just moments before these two volumes went to press. This is not soothing but bracing fare, fare for those seeking a deeper faith life, a life of “just living” in the wholeness of the New Covenant of the Spirit for which we were created and redeemed and by means of which the world will take notice… and begin to wonder at what it sees in us.
