Jesus Christ is Lord of All

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Doctrine of "Free Grace Theology" Destroys the Meaning of the Gospel


The Doctrine of "Free Grace Theology" Destroys the Meaning of the Gospel

Introduction to the Doctrine: “Free Grace Theology”

This doctrine gives assurance of salvation to professing Christians who go on living in sin.
Regardless of the way that teachers of this doctrine phrases their teaching and regardless of the contexts of their statements, they present a doctrine which conveys that some Christians remain continually in darkness with no repentance and are still saved.

This Doctrine Discounts the Work of the Cross

1.     The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation to everyone who believes. In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. The righteous man shall live by faith. (Rom 1:16-17)
2.     By a single offering our Savior has perfected for all time us who are being sanctified. (Heb 10:14) Those who have been perfected by Christ’s offering are those who are being made holy.
3.     The work of the cross establishes us in Christ and anoints us with the Spirit, who is God’s seal and guarantee of our eternal inheritance (2 Cor 1:21-22). All who have the Spirit behold the  glory of God and are transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:17-18)

This Doctrine Denies the Eternal Covenant of God For All His People

1.     In God’s eternal covenant, He does not turn away from them, He does them good in all things, He puts the fear of Himself in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Him. He rejoices over them to do them good and faithfully plants them in the land with all His heart and soul (Jer 32:40-41, Phil 1:6, Rom 8:28)
2.     God’s eternal covenant is ordered in all things and secured for all the salvation and desire of God’s people. (2 Sam 23:5)

This Doctrine Denies the Omnipotence and Perfection of the Heavenly Fathering

1.     God disciplines all of those whom He loves and scourges every son whom He receives. Those who are without discipline are illegitimate children and not sons. God disciplines His children for their good so that they may share in His holiness. Those who have been trained by His discipline yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness. This resulting righteousness always proceeds the omnipotent disciplinary action of the perfect Father (Heb 12:6-11)
2.     When we forsake His Law and do not walk in His judgments, when we violate His statutes, and do not keep His commandments, He punishes our transgressions with His Rod and our iniquity with stripes (floggings). Our Savior has been wounded, flogged, and crushed by His Father for our sakes, and the discipline which we endure is nothing compared to His infinite suffering for our sakes. Through His discipline, He does not break off His loving kindness from us, deal falsely in His faithfulness towards us, nor alter the utterance of His lips. For He has sworn long before by His own holiness, which never changes because He cannot lie, that the throne of David, that is, the throne of our Lord Christ, will endure forever like the sun and moon before Him. The witness in the sky is faithful. (Ps 89:30-37, Is 53)
3.     God calls His children to obedience: to be holy as He is holy (I Peter 1:14-16). They are to prove themselves blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom theyappear as lights in the world (Phil 2:14-15).

This Doctrine Makes the “Perseverance of the Saints” Unnecessary

1.     Jesus said that if we continue in His Word, we are truly His discipline and we will know the Truth that sets us free (John 8:31-32). He said that by our endurance we will gain our lives and that the seed in the good soil are those who hear His Word in an honest and good heart, hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance (Luke 21:19, Luke 8:15). He tells us that those who do the will of His Father will enter the Kingdom of heaven (Matt 7:21)
2.     The saints are called to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), to be diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing of us (2 Peter 1:10), to bring holiness to completion in the fear of God (2 Cor 7:1) and to realize the full assurance of hope until the end so that we will not be sluggish, but so that we inherit the promises through faith and patience (Heb 6:11-12).
3.     We have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end (Heb 3:14)

This Doctrine is in Contradiction to the Purpose and Will of the Sovereign God

1.     God’s purpose is for those whom He foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the Image of His Son, so that Christ would be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29)
2.     God’s purpose is that His children are granted His divine power that gives them everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who calls them by His own glory and excellence. He gives them His precious and magnificent promises by which they become partakers of the divine nature and escape the corruption that is in the world by lust (2 Peter 1:3-4).
3.     Christ’s requirement and will for His disciples is that they deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Those who are ashamed of Him and His Words will be put to shame before the Son of Man and Father (Luke 9:26).
4.     Christ gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father (Gal 1:4).
5.     Those who lose their taste are good for nothing but destruction (We are the salt and light of the earth) (Matt 5:13-116).
6.     God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. The word “in” here denoted the entering into a perpetual state or process. He who rejects this is not rejecting man but God who gives His Holy Spirit to us. The Holy Spirit works the ongoing sanctification process in us (1 Thess 4:7).
7.     God’s purpose is for His people to attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of Christ, to a mature man and measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. We are to grow up in all aspects into the Head: Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love (Eph 4:13-16)

This Doctrine Denies God’s Ability or Loving-Kindness to Ultimately Work Obedience in All His Children

1.     God promises to give us a new heart and to put a new spirit in us, to remove our hearts of stone from our flesh and to give us hearts of flesh. He puts His Spirit in us and causes us to walk in His statutes, and we will be careful to observe His ordinances (Ez 36:26-27).
2.     God gives His people a heart to know Him, because He is the Lord, and they will be His people and He will be their God, because they will return to Him with their whole heart (Jer 24:7)
3.     It is God who works in His children to will and to act according to His purpose (Phil 2:13)

For Saved People to Live Continual Unrepentant Sinful Lives is Scripturally Impossible

1.     No one who abides in Him sins. No one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Those who practice sin are of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin because God’s seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God. Those who do not practice righteousness and do not love their brothers are not of God (I John 3:5-10)
2.     The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression. When God says to the righteous that he will surely live, and he trusts in his righteousness and thus commits sin, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered, but in that same iniquity that he has committed he will die (Ez 33:12-13).
3.     We know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. We should not be deceived with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. We should not be partakers of them, for we were formerly darkness, but are now Light in the Lord. We are commanded to walk as children of the Light (Eph 5:5-8).
4.     He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Rev 21:7-8)
5.     Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:17)

This Doctrine Causes Dangerously Inaccurate Interpretation of the Scripture

1.     All of the Pauline epistles, and most of the New Testament books are proposed by Hodges to be written exclusively for believers. Many of these Scriptures are for the edification, rebuke, correction, training in righteousness, and confirmation of regeneration within believers (2 Tim 3:16) Another main purpose is for a testing or examination of one’s faith. We are called to test and examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith so that we may see that Christ is in us. It is possible to fail the test, and for those who are false believers, the failing of the test offers conviction that will hopefully lead to repentance (2 Cor 13:5, 1 Cor 14:24-25). The assumption that such test/examination Scriptures are not meant to remove someone’s [false] hope of salvation when he/she is not truly regenerate is expected to have damning consequences.
2.     When an unbeliever comes into the presence of prophetic words, he is convicted by all, called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are laid disclosed, and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among His people (1 Cor 14:24-25).
3.     Whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God (Rom 3:18).

Justification and Sanctification are Granted to All Believers By Grace

1.     We have been saved by grace through faith and not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:8-10)
2.     Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5)
3.     If anyone is in Christ He is a new creation. The old has gone the new has come (2 Cor 5:17).
4.     We are who we are by God’s grace. His grace towards us is not in vain. The grace of God with us causes us to work for God (1 Cor 15:10)

True Believers Do Sin, but God brings about Repentance in His Time as He Continuously Sanctifies Them

1.     My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (I John 2:1)

2.     If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

3.     How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered!
How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit!
(see entire chapter Psalm 32 written by King David when he repented)

as the watchman who sees the sword coming, The Trumpet Has Been Blown so that the people of God may be warned (Ezekiel 33). This doctrine must not be taught in the house of God. It has likely resulted in condemnation for many in the world.  

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