The Grace Coma

The fact that the title of Charles Swindoll’s 1990 release, The Grace Awakening, prompted the title for these little thoughts of mine should in no way be construed as a swipe at that author. I love Swindoll’s writings. I always have. The aforementioned book, regularly reprinted, calls believers to not simply believe the doctrines of grace, but to also live according to the power of grace. From time to time, we need such reminders. The “practical religion” dimension of Christianity all too easily descends into a pattern of lists for holy living. Such lists (law) are imposed by one Christian or leadership entity onto others, culminating in believers descending into a spiritual morass of constant striving and moral failing.

However, a number of folks in the past have also said things to this effect, “Wherever grace is preached accurately, someone is going to find a way to twist it.” In fact, Peter may have been the first. Speaking of the Lord’s patience, which leads to our salvation:

… ¹⁵And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, ¹⁶as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.  – 2 Peter 3:15, 16

Is it far-fetched to suggest that the pendulum has swung a bit on this matter of grace (as falsely embraced) and law? While we will always need warnings against trying to secure God’s favor by our own meritorious deeds, I don’t get the sense that too many Christians are trying to do that these days. In many quarters of Christendom, the legalist has been effectively marginalized, and rightly so. But, are modern notions of grace that have pushed aside legalism the same as that grace of which Paul (or, for that matter, Swindoll) wrote?

Grace, improperly understood, leads to license. By grace, we are saved, but saved from what? We are saved from the wrath of God. We are saved from the eternal punishment of our sins. We are saved from the current power of sin over our lives. More and more, I am not so sure that the modern church even acknowledges these things as dangers. 

Grace reminds us that we are free from the law and from the horrors that accompany all attempts to merit God’s favor. We need to be awakened to these truths often. On the other hand, counterfeit grace, cheap grace, easy believism … label it as you wish … is pandemic in this current church age and it renders believers comatose to important themes such as the holiness of God, the heinousness of sin, the depravity of an unrepentant soul, distinct moral positions as old as Genesis, as well as a plethora of other themes essential to orthodox Christian practice. The notion of mortifying one’s sinful natures, that is, accepting some participatory role in fighting one’s own sinful tendencies, is unheard of in many Christian churches.

God’s love has widely been declared as “unconditional,” apparently meaning, that contrary to what Paul would tell us, God is quite okay with being mocked by believers who refuse to abandon or even resist their sinful ways. Off and on, through the ages, the world has scoffed at biblical morals. Many churches have simply caved-in on such matters, as they affirm open homosexuality, some to the point of performing same-sex marriages. Then, they market their disbelief and compromise as “love.”

At some point, the church replaced its God-given mandate to preach the Gospel and to make disciples for Jesus with its own man-conceived mandate of “growing the church.” Compromising the Gospel becomes inevitable whenever it ceases to be central. Certainly, we need to be awakened to grace whenever we fall into a mindset of works salvation. But, when the doctrine of grace is twisted by “the ignorant and the unstable” or by those who preach to tickle the ears of their hearers, believers must be aroused from the coma that ensues.  A gospel that redefines sin is not the Gospel of Christ. Any grace that dismisses essential attributes of God’s character or of His holy hatred of our sin is not the grace of God revealed in the cross. On the contrary, it entirely misses the entire point of both grace and the cross.

¹What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin that grace may abound? ²By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?  - Romans 6:1,2

The stupor of twisted grace wholly misses the point of true grace. If the shoe fits, snap out of it!

My Essentials and Nonessentials, NOT Yours!

In essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. In all things, charity.

This motto for Christian peacemakers was a beloved slogan in the church tradition from which I hail. It was so much a part of what we professed to be, that as a youngster, I assumed one of “our guys” must have coined it. When I learned that was not the case, I heard the slogan attributed to a number of different characters in church history. Eventually, it was attributed to Rupertus Meldenius, an otherwise unknown German churchman, based on its earliest appearance in a printed tract, circa 1627.

I have always appreciated the slogan, whoever framed it, but I also learned something about it early on. It is not really very workable where there is no consensus as to what constitutes an essential and what constitutes a nonessential. My church of origin, which was birthed of an historical unity movement, ironically, could be as dogmatic as anyone else over matters that many would deem opinion. In the meantime, it was quite an eye-opener to see our group labelled as a “cult” by others outside the camp who saw some things differently than we did. 

I did not grow up in a denominational setting. When I read the Statement of Faith for the denomination where I eventually landed, I did not agree on every point. However, the specific member church I joined apparently had some flexibility regarding how much detail they had to put into print. The local church’s statement was briefer, and I concluded that there was nothing that constituted an insurmountable obstacle to my involvement there. But, I wonder what I would have done had I been compelled to affirm each of the denomination’s positions, if it meant recanting some of my own?

If any of the specifics had been deal-breakers for me, I would certainly have continued my search for a home church. If any of them would have been presented to me as deal-breakers from the church’s vantage point, I suspect that I would have been sent on my way. But, what now would be my responsibility if I am granted membership in that church, knowing that I differ on a couple of things, here and there, that I regard to be “nonessential”? 1) I would have a responsibility to keep some things to myself unless asked; 2) I would have a responsibility to NEVER undermine that congregation in any of her positions; 3) I would have a responsibility to not attempt to draw adherents to my way of thinking; and, 4) I would have a responsibility, if ever entrusted with a teaching role, to stick only to the plethora of other topics that edify and unite believers.

On one level, these responsibilities are to the local church that has welcomed me into their fellowship. On a more profound level, my responsibility is to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, each of Whom calls believers to unity.

When I was recently preparing a lesson on Jeremiah, I listened to an overview of the book online. It was helpful. The speaker provided a good sense of the flow of the book. But, about two-thirds of the way into his presentation, he became very strident about a point of view that differed from his own. On a matter that is nonessential to me, he used language such as “evil,” “hellish,” and “needs to be sent back to the pit from which it came.” Predictably, at some point, he had disabled the comments section.

For the sake of unifying behind ministry efforts, most churches adhere to some particular “systematic theology,” an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the Christian faith and beliefs. There is more to it than that, but essentially, the discipline leads us to various statements of faith. I suspect that most people are rooted in the systematic theology to which they were first exposed. Some study and change camps. Some study and stay put. Some tend to embrace the system which helps them to best wrap their heads around the mysteries of God. None of the systems are perfect. They all present hard questions. In my own experience, I seem to have settled on the ones that create the least troublesome questions.

Dr. John MacArthur, who no one would ever accuse of being coy regarding his beliefs, was speaking about some of the paradoxes in the Bible when it came to matters of man’s free-will versus God’s sovereignty, predestination versus “whosoever will may come,” man’s responsibility to persevere in his Christian walk versus the inability of man to lose his salvation, whether the Christian’s life is lived by God versus lived by the person himself, etc. MacArthur acknowledged the paradoxes and absolved himself of any responsibility for explaining them. He is in league with most thinking Christians who acknowledge such paradoxes. He defends his own positions capably, but I noticed that the paradoxes he acknowledges reflect the precise questions that would be posed to him in a debate by someone coming from a different point of view.

What intrigues me is that if these paradoxes exist, and members of differing schools of thought all concede that they exist, then, how important can it really be to WIN an argument about Calvinism, Arminianism, Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism, and so on? By all means, know what you believe. Cling tenaciously to your systematic theology, whatever that may be. But, if we all acknowledge the paradoxes, surely we can all agree on the need to hold to our beliefs with humility and grace.

We call such things (that have been discussed and written on by full-time thinkers for centuries), “nonessentials.” In other words, we do not typically consign one another to the eternal fires of Hell over our respective positions. Yet, we sometimes debate them with a passion that reflects that it actually matters to us that we win. On the one hand, we say that we accept members of another camp as brothers while, on the other hand, we put forth a very powerful vibe that they are somehow lesser brothers, a vibe people pick up on eventually. I never really beat such doctrinal drums that I can recall, but I have known many who seemed to feel a burden to harangue others to their own views of orthodoxy. It often left me wondering how many people through the years have left churches thinking, “I did not think it mattered, but I guess it did.”

There are times when such debates sharpen us. There are other times when it might be wiser to bite one’s tongue, to put one’s hand over one’s mouth, and to abstain from trying to provide an exhaustive explanation for the unknowable workings of God.