Authors: Paul Ellis
Tags: #Christianity, #God, #Grace, #Love
“Hyper-grace preachers present an
unbalanced view of God,” say the critics. “They’ll tell you about His love but
not His wrath or judgment. They’ll tell you about heaven but not about hell.”
Contrary to what
you may have heard, hyper-grace preachers
do
talk about hell, wrath, and
judgment. (I have written whole series of articles on these topics and I hardly
think I am the only grace-preacher who has done so.) But what we don’t do is
mix bad news with the good news.
Andrew Wommack
writes:
The gospel is good
news—not bad news! That definitely limits what we mean by the word
gospel
.
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Those opposed to the modern grace message
sometimes claim that we who preach it have left hell out of the gospel. They
are correct. Hell is bad news; the gospel is good news. By definition, there
can be no bad news in the good news.
Wayne Jacobsen
writes that when we use the threat of hell to motivate people to come to God,
we are using it in a way Jesus never intended. As a result,
We push people
farther away from God’s greatest desire rather than inviting them closer to it.
His message was not “Come to God or you’ll burn in hell.” His message was
“God’s kingdom has come near you and you can become a participant in it.”
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Jesus was not interested in scaring the
hell out of people but inviting all to enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s not
about what you have been saved from, but what you have been saved to.
It is significant
that in his summary of the gospel, Paul never mentions hell:
By this gospel you
are saved … that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He
was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1
Corinthians 15:2–4)
Indeed, Paul never mentions hell by name
in any of his letters. Although Paul did preach on judgment and the coming
wrath he never used the fear of hell to push people into a loving relationship
with Jesus. There is no fear in love.
Darrin Hufford
writes that we are drawn to God by the Holy Spirit, not threats of hell:
Threats of hell
bring fear and condemnation. Only a loveless person could think of such a thing
… God didn’t create men to save their souls from hell. He created men and women
to have relationships with one another and with Him … God never delights in
people getting what they deserve. He is about saving us from what we deserve.
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To place hell at the center of the gospel
is to mischaracterize God as a vengeful punisher who sends people to hell, when
in truth He is a loving Father who saves His kids from the hell of their own
choices.
“Hyper-grace
preachers never warn the saints about the coming wrath.” Nor does anyone in the
Bible. John the Baptist warned the Pharisees and the Sadducees about the coming
wrath but you are not a Pharisee or a Sadducee. The gospel is not “be wary of
the coming wrath,” but “Jesus rescues us from the coming wrath” (see 1 Th.
1:10). For the believer, wrath has been taken out of the equation.
A mixed-grace
preacher will blend bad news with good news and insist that the threat of hell
is part of the gospel message. He will confuse the saints by telling them God
loves them, but if they’re not careful they may fall under His judgment and
wrath. Those who are saved may become unsaved and those whom God adopts He may
yet abandon.
In contrast, a
hyper-grace preacher says there’s no bad news in the good news. He will seek to
woo sinners with the love of God and reassure the saints that no one can snatch
them out of their Father’s hand. He will say things like “nothing in life or
death can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:38–39).
“Grace is a soft gospel for soft
Christians,” say the critics. “Grace promotes passivity and laziness.” It does?
Then I guess somebody forgot to tell Paul:
By the grace of God
I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder
than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1
Corinthians 15:10)
This is not a Grammy speech. This is Paul
giving us the secret to his success.
Paul was a
tough-as-nails church planter. He wrote letters that would shape the world for
2,000 years. How’d he do it? “I didn’t make this happen,” said Paul. “God and I
did it together.”
Grace doesn’t
make people lazy; it makes them productive and supernaturally fruitful. In
contrast with the law that provides no aid to those who trust it, grace makes
us soar.
A 300-year-old
poem from John Bunyan expresses this perfectly:
Run,
John, run, the law commands,
But
gives us neither feet nor hands.
Far
better news the gospel brings:
It
bids us fly and gives us wings.
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In his book
Extra Virgin Grace
,
Ryan Rufus has a chapter entitled, “More gets done when you rest.” This title
perfectly captures the relationship between God’s grace and our fruitfulness.
For as long as you are working
for
the Lord—trying to serve, trying to
produce—you cannot bear His fruit. But the moment you start resting in the
Lord, He will begin to bear His fruit in you. It’s a huge difference.
When I was a
pastor, I used to bust my hump in service to the Lord. Any fruit I had was
piddling. But since I have learned to rest in God’s grace, I have become a
thousand times more fruitful. Every grace preacher has the same testimony. Had
you heard of Joseph Prince or Andrew Wommack before they started preaching
radical grace?
One of the best
illustrations of how grace makes us fruitful comes from Tullian Tchividjian’s
book
One Way Love
. Tchividjian tells the story of two friends who
applied for college. One was accepted but the other was deferred. In the
subsequent months both friends took similar classes and had a similar workload.
But the one who had been accepted into college branched out into a number of
extracurricular activities. He started a band, got into rock-climbing, and set
up a program for under-privileged kids. The other friend also got involved in
extra-curricular activities but he did so in the hope of impressing college
acceptance boards. How did things turn out?
At the end of the
semester the student who had been deferred was exhausted while the student who
had been accepted was full of energy. Free from the pressure to perform and the
need to play it safe, the accepted student wrote papers about topics he was
genuinely interested in and attained higher grades. Tchividjian concludes that
the fruit of assurance was not laziness but creativity, charity, and fun.
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The unconditional
love of God gives you wings. It inspires you to take risks and be generous with
your life. When you are frolicking in the grace of God, work doesn’t feel like
work. It feels like fun.
“But if you tell
people they don’t have to do anything for God, they won’t.” Good! They
shouldn’t, because your Father is not looking for servants, He’s looking for
Sons. It’s not about what you do for Him. It’s about what you and He can do
together. By himself the apostle Paul could do nothing, but he and God together
changed the world.
“Hyper-grace
believers are too lazy to open their Bibles and read Scripture for themselves.”
Don’t fall for the line that says reading a certain number of scriptures or
praying a certain length of time impresses God. It doesn’t. The New Testament
Christians didn’t even have Bibles and most of them couldn’t read anyway. Yet
this did not stop them from walking in their Father’s favor and setting the
world on fire with the good news of Jesus.
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“Grace is
irresponsible for it says we have no responsibility to do anything. We have a
duty to serve the Lord.” In the mouth of a mixed-grace preacher, words like
responsibility and duty are the cattle-prods of performance-based Christianity.
They convey a sense of obligation that leaves you debt-conscious rather than
grace-conscious.
Jesus didn’t
suffer and die to put you in His debt. He did it to show you how much He loves
you. The idea that you are obliged to repay Him for His priceless sacrifice is
ludicrous. What can you give Him in consideration for His grace? There is
nothing. The instant you give Him anything, it ceases to be grace. Your only
“duty” is to say, “Thank you, Jesus!”
In a mixed-grace
environment you will feel the pressure to perform and live up to the
expectations of others. But walk under pure grace and you find there is no
pressure, only the freedom to be who God made you to be. Manmade religion will
tell you that you have a responsibility to deliver results for the Lord, but
your only responsibility is to shine as a dearly-loved child of God.
We have looked at twelve myths or
misperceptions that some have about the hyper-grace gospel. Since I preach this
gospel, this list was easy to make. I encounter these misperceptions all the
time. Perhaps you have encountered some of them as well.
These twelve
myths are pervasive. They regularly appear in articles and books attacking the
modern grace message. Every single myth listed here appears in some form in Dr.
Brown’s book, as we shall discover in Part C.
Michael L. Brown’s book,
Hyper-Grace:
Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message
, is arguably the best
researched and most articulate critique of the modern grace message. The book
is 304 pages long, has 15 chapters addressing what Dr. Brown perceives to be
the errors in the hyper-grace gospel, and is backed up by more than 30 pages of
detailed notes.
Those of us who
preach the hyper-grace gospel welcome the discussion and debate that Dr.
Brown’s book has triggered. We are also grateful for the opportunity to clarify
the distinguishing characteristics of this gospel, while also addressing some
of the misperceptions surrounding it.
We would
encourage everyone who hears our sermons and reads our books to search the
Scriptures and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal that which is good and life-giving
about our message. As we saw in Part B, much of the beauty of the hyper-grace
gospel has been obscured by mischaracterizations and misunderstandings. Dr.
Brown is not unaffected by this. Although he identifies some very real points
of difference between his message and ours, he also spends considerable effort
critiquing things we have never said.
For instance, on
page 37 of his book, Dr. Brown identifies four statements that he embraces and
we, apparently, reject. They are (1) sanctification is progressive, (2) it’s
healthy to confess our sins to God, (3) New Testament repentance includes
turning away from sins, and (4) the words of Jesus are authoritative. To three
of these claims, most hyper-grace preachers would shout amen! Confession is
healthy, repentance is often evidenced by a turning away from sins, and
everything Jesus said is good and authoritative. The only claim we would reject
out of hand is the first one, that sanctification is a process. (More on this
below.)
From this
passage, which comes early in his book, we can see that a substantial
proportion of what Dr. Brown attacks is a mischaracterization of what we are
actually saying.
Still, in other
places, Dr. Brown is spot on in his summary of our message. He says we claim
that God has forgiven all our sins—past, present, future—and we do. He says we
are opposed to sin, and we are. And he says we never tell believers that the
Holy Spirit convicts them of sin, and we don’t.
Like most
opponents of the modern grace message, Dr. Brown has an incomplete
understanding of what he is opposing. He has it exactly right in some parts,
and exactly wrong in others. And this is fine, because we’re all learning here.
None of us has it all figured out except Jesus.
But while we are
not in the business of passing judgment on one other, it is important to
recognize the differences in our gospels, because what you do and who you
become is influenced by what you believe. To paraphrase Tozer, what you believe
about God is just about the most important thing about you. If the message
you’re hearing paints a mixed-up and confused picture of God, you’ll become a mixed-up
and confused believer.
As we have seen,
the hyper-grace gospel declares that all of God’s blessings come to us through
grace alone, but a mixed-grace gospel says at least some of His blessings come
through our works or performance or obedience. To identify a mixed-grace
message, we only need to look for carrots and sticks.
Does Dr. Brown’s
book offer carrots as a reward for good performance? Indeed, it does. We are
told that we will be rewarded with forgiveness if we confess our sins daily
(chapter 5) and if our repentance is accompanied by deep sorrow and regret
(chapter 6). We are also told that we will be recognized as God’s holy children
provided that we act holy (chapter 7) and pursue a lifestyle of obedience to
New Testament commands (chapters 8 and 12).
And does this
book threaten sticks for bad performance? It does that too. We are told that if
we sin we displease the Lord (chapter 8) and if we fail to deal quickly with
our sin we will no longer enjoy His fellowship (chapter 14). In other words,
your relationship with the Lord is only as good as your behavior. If you do
well, you can expect His favor. But if you stumble, you should expect His
displeasure.
This is
frightening stuff but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Read the book carefully,
and you will find veiled threats and hints of more serious sanctions. For
instance, in chapter 8 Dr. Brown suggests you can get sick and die if you take
communion without examining yourself for sin. Although he says in some places
that you won’t lose your salvation if you don’t do the things he prescribes
(e.g., on page 59), in other places he says you will. He speaks of believers
becoming enemies of God (page 79), hints that if the Jews can be cut off you
can too (page 152), and on three occasions says the terrifying warnings of
Hebrews 10:26–29 apply to Christians (pages 45, 46 and 105). And then on the
last page of his book he suggests that if you don’t fly straight but walk away
from the Lord you’ll forfeit your salvation (page 251).
The implication is
clear; if you don’t keep the rules and do what you’re told, you’re toast!
Dr. Brown would
no doubt see things differently. He would argue that he is preaching the true
gospel while we’re the ones sabotaging it with “destructive error” (page 15).
According to him and other opponents of the hyper-grace gospel, it’s our
message of total reliance on our Father’s grace that destroys people.
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I disagree. What
destroys people is the twisted image of a fault-finding, rebuking God who says
“be very careful how you live,” then makes you sorry when you sin and unchilds
you if you don’t get back in line. What destroys people—and marriages,
families, and churches—are unattainable demands for holy living and threats
that Jesus may deny those He has embraced.
It seems clear to
me that Dr. Brown advocates performance-based Christianity and uses a mixture
of rewards and threats to compel proper behavior. This works-glorifying message
is evident in calls for “bloody sweat” and “effort-filled responses” and in
appeals to emulate men who were known for their godly resolve and discipline.
Hyper-Grace:
Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message
is ostensibly an attack on the
hyper-grace gospel, but in reality it is a scary advertisement for the
mixed-grace gospel. It trumpets the horrific message that while grace gets you
into the kingdom, hard work is required to keep you there. This book may appeal
to your sense of religious obligation and duty, but since it puts price-tags on
the manifold blessings of God, it has little to do with grace.
But one thing Dr.
Brown and I agree on is this: The stakes are huge. Lives are hanging in the
balance. Those opposed to the hyper-grace message worry that we who preach it
are sending people to hell, while those of us opposed to the mixed-grace
message agonize over religious practices that restrict or deny access to God’s
life-saving grace.
What follows is
my chapter-by-chapter response to Dr. Brown’s book
Hyper-Grace
. The page
numbers below refer to page numbers in the paperback version of the book
that
was
released by Charisma House in January 2014.
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