Our Church and the Free Grace Movement

Several years ago, our church was listed as a "free grace" church, at the website freegracealliance.org (edit -- which no longer exists, as of 2017). However, this week I wrote FGA and asked them to remove us from their list of "FGA-friendly" churches. (We are still listed with the 9 Marks ministry, and of course with the Evangelical Free Church). 

When the so-called Free Grace movement was started, much of it was a counter-balance to the elements of doctrinal confusion in John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus. Speaking for myself, I agreed with some parts of Dr. MacArthur's book, but also felt he confused Jesus' demands of discipleship with salvation by grace through faith.

I thought that, by trying to synthesize the two, he was confusing two related-but-distinct areas of truth, and undermined grace.  2017 edit -- he continures to do so. So I sympathized with free-grace criticisms of TGATJ.

There were some very unreliable guides in the free grace movement, such as the late Zane Hodges. But there were other, seemingly more sound voices as well. Our church serves in a region (central Kentucky) that is infested with religious legalism of every kind, in every denomination. So I thought flying the free-grace flag was a good signal to send. 

However, the free grace movement has degenerated significantly in recent years, in my opinion. Dr. Bob Wilkins, president of the Grace Evangelical Society, began denying the biblical teaching of spiritual inability, marking him as a semi-Pelagian. I had felt uncomfortable with aspects of Dr. Charles Ryrie's long-ago teaching that repentance of sin was not necessarily a part of coming to Christ, but I thought Ryrie taught differently in more up-to-date material.  

But then, certain leaders in the free-grace movement also started preaching that it is not necessary to know anything about Jesus' death on the cross, to be saved.  Even a dispensational-oriented church like Middletown Bible Church began publishing on-line articles warning against this heretical idea:  http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/doctrine/crossless.htm

Although our church and the free-grace movement overlapped in a common opposition to legalism, the latter was sprouting off into bizarre directions.

Our church has never subscribed to such ideas as repentance-free conversions,  or the idea that a person should be accounted just without also experiencing heart-sanctification. So calling ourselves "free-grace" was inaccurate at best, and, if Christian people knew the current terms, would give a false impression.

We are saved by faith, not by faith + faithfulness. Christ already died for our future failures of faithfulness. Faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), not a condition of justification.  Salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Christ alone, revealed by Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

But if you think you have no sin, or if you like your sins, or make excuses for your sins, you will not be interested in Christ. 

It is possible for real Christians to backslide, to dawdle, to choose sin over obedience, and not to follow Romans 12:1.  Every time a Christian sins, he or she has defied the Lordship of Christ.

Live that way long enough, as a pattern of life, then you "out" yourself as false. But divine election and the new birth do not instantly produce perfect people.

The cross is central to the salvation message. Peter didn't understand what Jesus was talking about regarding the cross, and yet Peter was still a saved man because he had believed the Gospel that God had revealed in Scripture up to that point. Enoch or Ruth didn't know about the cross either, and yet they too were saved people because they had believed what God had revealed to that point. This is called the progress of revelation.

But that page in the progress of revelation has turned. You can't cite all conditions from the Gospels and claim they are timeless, post-Pentecost. That reflects the re-emergence of a heretical doctrine called hyper-dispensationalism.

What was veiled in Genesis 3:15 ("he shall bruise His heel"), then prophecy in Isaiah 53:5 and Daniel 9:26 is explicit in history, and a necessary part of the Gospel (1 Cor. 15:3).

Paul and Peter preached Christ crucified. Anything less is a distorted message.