The Hyper-Grace Gospel: A Response to Michael Brown and Those Opposed to the Modern Grace Message (7 page)

“Hyper-grace preachers say the words of
Jesus are not for us. They have no authority and are irrelevant to the modern
church.”

One of the
strangest claims made against hyper-grace preachers is that we are dismissive
of the pre-cross teachings of Jesus. In point of fact, hyper-grace preachers
are the only ones taking Jesus seriously. When Jesus is preaching law, we say
that’s authentic law, not to be taken lightly. And when Jesus is revealing
grace, we bow in awestruck gratitude. We would not dare to re-interpret His
words with qualifiers and caveats.

In contrast,
those who preach a mixed-grace message dismiss the hard words of Jesus as
hyperbole and exaggeration. “Jesus didn’t mean what He said about chopping off
limbs or being perfect.” Like the Pharisees of old, they pick and choose those
commands which are to be followed while disregarding others as metaphorical,
unreal, and not to be taken seriously.

To be fair, the
misperception that hyper-grace preachers reject the teachings of Jesus is based
on a kernel of truth, which is this: Everything Jesus said is good, but not
everything Jesus said is good for you. Or to put it another way, Jesus spoke
words the whole world needs to hear, but you are not the whole world.

For instance,
Jesus had strong words for the Pharisees whom He called snakes and sons of hell
(Matthew 23:15, 33). Are you a snake? Are you a son of hell? If not, then Jesus
words for them may not be meant for you.

Does this mean we
should go through the Gospels cutting out those bits that don’t apply to us?
Personally, I don’t like the idea of chopping up the Bible. I think all
Scripture is useful for teaching and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).
But relevance is determined by context.

If you are
self-righteous, then the harsh words of Jesus to the self-righteous are
relevant for you. You need to hear Jesus say this:

For I tell you that
unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of
the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

However, if you are not confident of your
own righteousness, then you need to hear His promises of grace:

Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

What you hear in the words of Jesus
reflects what is in your heart. If you are standing on your own righteousness
you will hear law like you’ve never heard it before. “You have heard it said …
but I say unto you …”

Jesus preached
tough, merciless law that leaves no margin for error. “Be perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). The message is clear. Either you must
be perfect or you must be represented by One who is.

However, if you
already know that you are not perfect, you need to hear Jesus’ words of grace.
You need to hear Him speak about His Father who loves you, cares for you, and
offers you His righteousness (Matt. 6:33).

The genius of
Jesus is that He could speak to a crowd of people and connect with everyone at
their point of need. Consider Jesus’ story of the Pharisee and the tax
collector (Luke 18:9–14):

How does this
parable make you feel? Does it fill you with joy or resentment? Your response
to the story is your response to the gospel. If you identify with the sinful
tax collector, then this story is good news.
Really? He went home justified?
That’s the scandal of grace right there. God justifies sinners (Romans 4:5)
… But if you are confident of your self-righteousness, this story is not good
news at all. “Wait a second. I fast. I tithe. I am better than other people.
Jesus, what are you saying?” Jesus doesn’t mince His words. “Everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled” (Luke 18:14). That’s a hard word for a hard heart.
It’s a word that condemns the self-righteous and silences the boastful. It’s a
word of law for those who don’t see their need for grace.
[51]

A mixed-grace preacher reads the words of
Jesus selectively but a hyper-grace preacher values everything Jesus says. He
recognizes that Jesus is the perfect Physician who always prescribes the
perfect medicine. He gives law to the smug and grace to the needy. No matter
who you are or where you are on your journey, Jesus has life-saving words for
you.

“The hyper-grace gospel leads people to
sin. Sinful living is the fruit of the modern grace message.” For 2,000 years,
those opposed to the gospel of grace have said it promotes sin and
licentiousness (Romans 6:1–2). But grace is no more a license to sin than
electricity is a license to electrocute yourself. Saying “grace promotes sin”
is like saying “medicine promotes sickness.” It’s a distortion that leads
people to distrust the only thing that can empower them to sin no more.

Spurgeon had
little time for such foolishness:

No doctrine is so
calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of God.
Those who have called it “a licentious doctrine” did not know anything about
it.
[52]

“Hyper-grace preachers say it doesn’t
matter what you do. You can go on sinning.” Actually, it does matter what you
do because sin is destructive. Sin hurts people. But since we are not in the
habit of drawing attention to other people’s sin, I can understand how some
have this misperception. So can D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

There is no better
test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of
salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret
it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace
alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as
you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. That is a
very good test of gospel preaching. If my preaching and presentation of the
gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not
the gospel.
[53]

Preach the scandalous grace of God and
some will misinterpret your message as an endorsement of sin. It’s practically
inevitable. But those who dismiss grace as a license to sin merely show their
ignorance of it. As John Calvin may have said, “How can the medicine that’s
supposed to kill the disease (grace) feed the disease (sin)?”

“Hyper-grace
preachers are soft on sin. They don’t condemn the sin that’s right in front of
them.” The same accusation could be leveled at Jesus. An adulterous woman was
brought to Him for judgment and He didn’t even mention her sin. Not once.
Instead, He said “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). Jesus wasn’t making a
threat. He was saying, “Receive my gift of no condemnation and be set free from
sin.”

“Hyper-grace
preachers are closet sinners who distort the message of grace to accommodate
their ungodly lifestyles.” Grace preachers are sometimes compared to the
licentious men of Jude 1:4. Because we stand with Jesus instead of the
rock-throwing Pharisees we are thought to be soft on sin and sinners ourselves.
This is a slanderous accusation made by the ignorant and graceless.

To be sure, the
abuse of grace is a legitimate concern. But so is medical malpractice and no
one is suggesting we should shut down hospitals. As Rob Rufus likes to say,
“The best response to abuse is not non-use but proper use.”

Grace-abusers are
often confused about their relationship to God. As Jefferson Bethke has said,
“Only people who see God as their judge, not their Father, try to take
advantage of grace.”
[54]

The issue for the
abuser is not behavior but identity, because one follows the other. What you do
flows out of who you are. If you see yourself as a sinner, you’ll sin. But if
you see yourself as a dearly loved child of God, you won’t. You’ll gladly
receive His grace that frees you from the dominion of sin (see Rom. 6:14).

Paul White
writes:

There is a
difference between chasing grace for what it gives and chasing it for Who grace
is … It is Jesus, not a message, that makes us who we are.
[55]

Jesus is grace. To abuse grace is to abuse
Jesus. Those who love Him would never do it.

For the grace of
God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No”
to ungodliness … (Titus 2:11–12a)

Jesus is the grace of God that offers
salvation to all people. His grace teaches us to say no to sin. If the grace
you’re drinking teaches you to say yes to sin, it’s not the grace of God. It’s
a manmade substitute.

To say grace
promotes sin is like saying Jesus promotes sin. It’s slanderous at best, and
blasphemous at worse. Grace isn’t permission to sin; it’s the power of God to
sin no more.

Some make a great
show of suppressing sin by laying down the law but all they do is drive sin
underground. A law-based approach cannot work because the strength of sin is
the law (1 Cor. 15:56). Combating sin with the law is like trying to put out a
fire with a bucket of gasoline.

It is not God’s
law that teaches us to say no to ungodliness, it is His grace. Those who seek
to mix grace with law ruin the medicine that would otherwise set you free. Only
God’s pure and undiluted grace can turn a sinner into a saint, a hater into a
lover, and a Pharisee into an apostle.

Stumble and sin
in a mixed-grace church and the message you get will be, “Look at what you
did!” But sin in a hyper-grace church and the message will be, “Look at what He
did and what you can now do because of what He did!”

A mixed-grace
church would have you turn from every sin until you’re a dizzy sinner. But a
hyper-grace church will do what Paul did with the sinning Corinthians and seek
to reveal your true identity in Christ. They will say things like:

(You are)
sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be His holy people … Grace and peace
to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank God for
you because of His grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in Him you have been
enriched in every way … (and) He will also keep you firm to the end, so that
you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:2–5,
8).

We don’t get victory over sin by striving
to keep the rules. We overcome sin by trusting Jesus who loves us and lives
within. So reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to Christ and be free!

“Grace preachers may not be promoting
sin,” say the critics. “But neither are they challenging people to embrace a
lifestyle of obedience to Jesus.” That depends on your definition of obedience.
If by obedience you mean, “Obey the rules, or else,” then you are right for a
grace preacher would put law on a believer.

A mixed-grace
preacher says, “You gotta obey God,” but the bottom line is not whether you
obey Him, but whether you trust Him. Wayne Jacobsen explains the difference in
his book,
He Loves Me
:

One can obey God
and yet not trust Him, and in doing so miss out on a relationship with Him. One
cannot, however, trust God and be disobedient to Him.
[56]

Grace preachers emphasize the love of God
for the same reason Jesus did: Our Father’s love is the root on which we grow.
Obedience is not something we do to merit His love. It is evidence that His
love has been made complete in us.

Joseph Prince
writes:

People say that
those who preach grace don’t preach on obedience. What they don’t realize is
that under the old covenant of law, obedience was the root of all God’s
blessings. But under the new covenant of grace God blesses us first, and obedience
is the fruit.
[57]

Another complaint made against the
hyper-grace gospel is that it is unbalanced. It emphasizes one teaching (grace)
above all others (repentance, obedience, holiness, etc.). But as we have seen,
grace is not a teaching. Grace is a Person and His name is Jesus. In Him is
found all the wisdom and all the teaching you’ll ever need.

Others say, “we
need grace
and
we need truth,” as though it was possible to have one
without the other. Yet there is no grace without truth and both are embodied in
Jesus. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). If you have Him
you have grace
and
you have truth in abundance. You have the complete
package.

But for the sake
of argument, let’s say you could have grace without truth. What is the truth
that is apparently missing from the hyper-grace gospel? According to our
critics, it is an insufficient emphasis on law keeping and holy living.

“The hyper-grace
preachers say, ‘Jesus loves you,’ but that’s only half the message. They don’t
tell you about His words in John 14:15—‘If you love me, you will obey what I
command.’”

A mixed-grace
preacher reads the words of Jesus backwards and says you must obey to prove
your love. But obedience is a fruit, not a root. Jesus is making a promise not
a threat. He’s saying that as you abide in the vine and bask in His love, He
will bear His fruit in your life effortlessly. It’s inevitable.

A hyper-grace
preacher takes Jesus at His word: “If you love me, you will obey.” Those who
are resting in the unconditional love of Jesus will trust Him and do what He
says without any conscious effort. They don’t need rules to tell them what to
do for the Holy Spirit Himself is their guide (John 16:13). It’s a completely
different way to live.

“Hyper-grace
preachers affirm the lustful desires of their hearers.” What lustful desires?
If you’ve been born again, you have been given a new nature and a new heart.
Saint, you are one with the Lord. You have the same desires as Jesus.

“Grace keeps
Christians immature and discourages them from pursuing holiness.” Why do we
need to pursue that which we already possess? “Because sanctification is
progressive,” says the holiness preacher. “It’s the result of faithful
discipline in prayer, Bible study, and purity.” But the Bible says holiness is
a gift. Like all the blessings of God, holiness comes us to us through grace
alone.

It is because of
Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that
is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:30)

Do not have any doubts about God’s
requirements. He requires you to be wholly holy. You’re not getting in unless
you are. But the hyper-grace gospel declares that the holiness you and I both
need is found in Jesus Christ. Sanctification isn’t a three-step process, it’s
a one-step process and Jesus is that step.

“Hyper-grace
preachers discourage holy living.” Actually, what we discourage is the futile
quest to make yourself holy by acting holy. We agree with the New Testament
writers who said things like, “You are holy so
be
holy.”
[58]

 Do you see the
difference? Under the old covenant it was do-to-become. Act holy and maybe
you’ll get holy, although no one ever did. But under the new covenant it’s
do-because-you-are. Be holy because in Christ you
are
holy and you are
holy through and through.

How do
hyper-grace preachers encourage holiness? Not by getting you to sign up for
flesh-powered holiness courses. Instead, our desire is that you will

Grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and
forever! Amen. (2 Peter 3:18)

There is nothing
within us that can save us or sanctify us. Everything we need has to come from
above. Everything we need is found in Jesus.