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  HYPER GRACE DOCUMENTARY (FEAT. DR. MICHAEL BROWN, DAVID RAVENHILL AND ERIC LUDY)
  by Michael L. Brown
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You know, one of the key things that we see in the truth of God's word
is how we are saved. We are saved by grace through faith. So if you're
the devil, one of the things you're gonna wanna touch is those two key
concepts.

If you can mar our understanding of grace and mar our understanding of
faith, what have you done? You've completely uprooted and undermined how
we are saved. Now the Christian actually doesn't even know how he is
saved because his idea of grace is messed up and his idea of faith is
messed up. It's a brilliant tactic.

And that's exactly what we see the enemy doing in our modern generation.
So if you start with the concept of grace, grace oftentimes today is
understood as just a hug of God. Here we are just a mess, which is
definitely true.

We are a mess. And so God comes along and he says, you know what? I know
you're a mess, but I love you as a mess. And so he gives us a big hug.

And you know, he doesn't intend to change us from being a mess. In fact,
he loves us being a mess. And that's called grace, God loving the mess.

Well, that's actually not what grace is in the Bible. You could call it
more kindness, long suffering, mercy, but God loves us too much to leave
us a mess. You see, maybe he loves us while we were yet sinners and
that's when he died for us and he expressed and shed abroad that love.

However, he does not love us in that state or to keep us in that state.
He loves us to help us out of that state. His agenda with us is to
establish our feet upon a rock to wash us clean and to imbue his power
or his life into us to enable us to live out a life that otherwise would
be impossible.

Well, that's called grace. You see, it's grace that rescues us in our
weakened state. Grace does have attributes of kindness and mercy and
long suffering.

That's part of grace, but grace is a lot bigger than that. Those words
already exist in the Bible. Mercy, you don't need to mix up grace and
mercy.

It's a separate concept. Grace is a work. It is an enabling power of God
to accomplish something in our lives.

And so what we see in our modern day is we see the concept of grace
being turned into a license to remain in sin, a license to remain in the
pigsty. It's like, no, God loves me in the pigsty. That's actually what
we see in Jude 1 verse 4. For there are certain men crept in unawares
who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men.

Well, what did these ungodly men do? It says that they turned the grace
of our God into lasciviousness, a license to sin. It's like, no, we have
legal right to this. We're under grace.

They transformed grace into something that it isn't. And denying the
only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. When you turn the grace of God
into a license to sin, it's an affront to the cross.

It's an affront to Jesus Christ. Grace was never given as an excuse for
sin. It was given as a means to have dominion over sin.

And so I think we've got to get back to the intention. I think I put in
one of my books, the whole welfare system in America was designed to
help needy families. Couldn't provide for their children and so on and
so forth.

And so there were food stamps and so on. The problem was they abused the
intent of that and went out and used food stamps for alcohol, traded it
in for drugs and everything else. That was an abuse of the intention.

And so I think we've got to go back to the original intention of grace
to understand that there is an abuse of grace that is not acceptable.
Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth. And of his fullness, we have
all received and grace for grace.

What is this great thing called grace that came through Jesus? A basic
definition of grace is undeserved or unmerited favor. Grace always flows
down. The slave doesn't show grace to his Lord, but rather the Lord to
his slave.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. But a grace without truth is
not biblical grace. Any grace beyond biblical grace is false and
dangerous.

Grace is so much more than unmerited favor. In his grace, God exerts his
holy influence upon souls. With those who abide in Christ, grace teaches
them, grace empowers them, and grace kindles them to the exercise of
Christian virtue, righteousness, and holiness.

When I speak of hyper-grace, what am I speaking of? I'm speaking of a
message that basically says this. Because Jesus has died for us and made
us righteous, and we are now fully accepted in Jesus, that not only have
we already been justified so that God puts us in the righteous column,
not only have we already been justified, but we have already been
sanctified and made perfectly holy in God's sight, so God only sees us
as holy. It's not even that he sees us through his son, but he sees us
as holy.

He doesn't see our sins, and because Jesus died for all of our sins,
past, present, and future, that means that all of your sins have already
been considered forgiven by God. God's already forgiven your future
sins, therefore you never need to confess sin because it's already
forgiven and doesn't exist in God's sight. You never need to repent of
sin because it's already been forgiven and doesn't exist in God's sight,
and any human effort that you put into trying to please God is a denial
of grace and a denial of the cross.

In the New Testament, we see grace, the word translated, around 126
times, I should say around, I think it is 126 times. Out of those 126
times, I think it's around 124 that it's fairly clear, and I say fairly,
about 25 times it's really clear, 124 times it's clear that it's the
enabling power of God. There's one time when someone could say, no, no,
it is a hug.

However, there's still room to argue that no, it also still could be
talking about the enabling power of God, and there's one time that it's
a different Greek word, euprepia, instead of charis, and so we have 126
mentions of the word grace, and there's an overwhelming evidence in the
New Testament that it is to do with power. It is the labor of God to
enable man to function as he ought to function, so what are we doing
nowadays when we're coming up with a completely new definition of grace?
Some of the best-selling books in Christianity, I think Philip Yancey's
book, What's So Amazing About Grace, wins the Christian Book of the Year
award, is quoted by more pastors than any, it's completely redefined
grace, and it doesn't even go to the Bible to define it. Where are we
getting this from? Well, it's turning the grace of God into
lasciviousness.

There's a quote in a book that really messes with the notions of grace,
it's called The Ragamuffin Gospel by a man named Brennan Manning, and in
it he quotes Fyodor Dostoevsky. He says, Fyodor Dostoevsky caught the
shock and scandal of the gospel of grace when he wrote, and this is what
Dostoevsky wrote, "'At the last judgment, Christ will say to us, "'Come,
you also, come drunkards, come weaklings, "'come children of shame.'
"'And he will say to us, vile beings, "'you who are in the image of the
beast and bear his mark, "'but come all the same, you as well. "'And the
wise and prudent will say, "'Lord, why do you welcome them?' "'And he
will say, if I welcome them, you wise men, "'if I welcome them, you
prudent men, "'it is because not one of them has ever been judged
worthy.

"'And he will stretch out his arms, "'and we will fall at his feet,
"'and we will cry out, sobbing, "'and then we will understand all, "'we
will understand the gospel of grace. "'Lord, your kingdom come.'" It's
moving, it has pathos in it, where all of us are like, oh, praise God,
that the gospel of grace accepts us no matter what we're like, except
that's not what the gospel says. The gospel makes it very clear that God
resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble.

If there is a belligerence towards God, if there isn't a turning in
faith and in belief unto Jesus Christ, I'm sorry to say, but the grace
of God is not open to us. It is the humble that receive grace. It is the
penitent, it is the repentant that actually receive the gift of God in
Christ Jesus.

And so what we see is a denial of actually what the word of God says,
and a redefinition of the concept of grace, and it feels good, and it
itches people's ears because they want it to be that way. But the grace
of God was made manifest at the cross, not in an empty hell. We wanna
say, well, if God really is love, if God really is gracious, wouldn't
there be an empty hell? He wouldn't let anyone go there.

That's why he came and shed his blood. The reason he gave up his life
was because he is a God of grace, because he is a God of love. And he
says, turn from your wickedness, believe and you will be saved.

We also see Brennan Manning making a statement, and he says it very
clearly, so I'm gonna read it. This is the gospel of grace. A God who
out of love for us sent the only son he ever had wrapped in our skin.

He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for his milk, sweated
blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was
fixed to a cross and died whispering forgiveness on us all. And you and
I could say, that's all true. Yeah, that's fairly well put.

But what we see is a diminishment of what grace really is. You see, it's
not just that Jesus died. That's an aspect of God's grace at work.

But he opened up the channel for us to access his grace in and through
his work of grace on the cross. You see, it's not just that his grace
was evidenced on the cross, it's that his grace was made available to us
so that we might live. And so that we might not just be dead in our sin,
in our trespasses, but so that we might come to life in Christ Jesus, in
his grace.

And his grace might enable us to live as otherwise we couldn't live.
There's more to the story. It's not just that he died whispering
forgiveness on us all.

How about the gospel of grace includes the fact that on the third day he
rose again. And then he ascended to the right hand of the father. And
you know where we're seated? We're seated in him.

We have been brought near. When we believe in Christ, we're actually in
him. And where he goes, we go.

When he went to the cross, our old man was crucified. When he was
buried, our old behavior was buried. And when he rose again, we rose to
newness of life in Christ Jesus.

And when he ascended, we sit with him at the right hand of authority and
power. We become heirs of salvation. And we've been brought into the
throne of grace where there's a treasure chest of grace.

And it can open up to us. And guess what's available? The very life of
God, it's called grace. The very spirit of God can be imparted to us so
that we can live by grace.

Not just be saved by it, but live by it. The God who did it 2000 years
ago desires to continue doing it in us. I call that the gospel of grace.

You see, it's bigger, it's larger. When we just say, oh, God forgives
us. And so therefore, we still live in Adam.

We still live in this old, sloppy, messy life. No, his grace has been
made manifest to us so that we can live, so that we can actually bear
the nature of God so that we can show this world what Jesus is like. Not
us, his grace does it in us.

And that's the gospel of grace. You ain't seen nothing yet. I'm glad we
are part of it.

In his book, Pure Grace, Clark Whitten writes, little has changed in the
Protestant church in more than 500 years. He believes that Luther and
Calvin got it right concerning justification or how one is saved, but
they missed it on sanctification or how one is perfected into the
likeness of Christ. When Martin Luther stood up over 400 years ago and
with a revelation that just shall live by faith, justification by faith,
and the grace revolution began with Martin Luther, and they tried to
kill him, they tried to burn him, they tried to silence him, okay? The
devil opposed grace.

And over the last 500, 400 and something, 100 years, grace, the message
of the gospel, has been recovered and has been recovered. But it is not
fully recovered yet, friends. The gospel of grace that Paul preached is
not being preached in the majority of churches around the world.

Identifying himself as a new mystic, John Crowder says, just as there is
a new mysticism on the rise, I believe it is coupled with a new
reformation. The good news will be preached with such clarity that even
the days of Luther will seem utterly primitive in its concepts of grace
and faith. Even the reformers were not reformed enough.

In grace, the forbidden gospel, Rob Rufus is quoted saying, the church
today does not need another spiritual revival because revivals come and
go. It needs another theological reformation as it did in the days of
Martin Luther. Reformation will automatically bring about revival.

Perhaps the most well-known hyper-grace preacher, Joseph Prince, refers
to a gospel revolution in his book, Destined to Reign, The Secret to
Effortless Success, Wholeness and Victorious Living. Grace is not a
teaching. It's not a curriculum in a Bible school, one of the topics you
would learn.

Grace is the gospel. Grace is the person of Jesus Christ. Grace is a
person.

And when you encounter the person, grace teaches. There's something
about grace. When you encounter grace, it teaches you.

Grace is a teacher. It teaches you to deny ungodliness and worldly
lusts. Amen, Pastor Prince, preach.

No, we preach grace and grace will teach. Aside from several articles
appearing in Charisma News by Dr. Michael Brown, David Ravenhill, and
others, there has been little exposing and refuting of the New Grace
Reformation, also called hyper-grace. Dr. Brown has also written Hyper-
Grace, exposing the dangers of the modern grace message.

The problem is the message in the so-called New Grace Reformation goes
beyond what scripture says. It mixes in some dangerous elements with it
that go beyond scriptural grace to the point that it's leading many
believers into confusion to the point that it's leading many believers
to become weak in terms of their resolve to resist sin because what does
it matter? God sees me as perfect all the time. So it's actually a
mixture.

It's not a biblical grace message. I call it hyper-grace because it goes
beyond what scripture says. The proponents say it is hyper.

It's the word Paul uses, hyper. Grace should be hyper. Well, not if you
go beyond what scripture says.

Hey, guys, I've got some good news for you this week. You know, there's
this false moniker that's recently been placed on us. There have been a
lot of monikers placed on us, but this one is called hyper-grace, which
in all honesty is a bit of a compliment because you can never over-
exaggerate the depths of God's grace.

Now, let me tell you something, boys and girls. You haven't even sniffed
the cork yet. This glory train's gonna be so ADD hyper, you're gonna
have to put it on Ritalin.

You can't over-exaggerate grace, but on the other hand, you can
underestimate Jesus. And that is exactly what the adversaries of the
gospel are doing these days as usual because it's really the scandal of
the gospel that is so scandalous. Grace is personified in Jesus.

He came into this world full of grace and truth. So when a person says
you can go too far with grace, what they really mean is, what they might
as well say is, you can go too far with Jesus. And I say, no, you can't.

And so you can't go too far with grace. No, you can't. You overrun the
grace space and you've left grace and you moved into disgrace.

Now, now and then you'll meet some... Probably the most prominent, best
known teacher that would be in this camp today is Joseph Prince. Again,
I constantly hear from people who've been helped and liberated and
blessed by his teaching. And then I hear from others where it's
reactionary, where they've thrown out the baby with the bathwater, where
we can't even call them to holiness or perseverance because of their
reaction against certain scriptures.

Andrew Womack would be a well-known teacher. Both of them somewhat in a
word of faith camp. There are well-known grace authors like Steve
McVeigh or Clark Whitten has become better known in recent years or Dr.
Paul Ellis.

They all emphasize a number of the same key points and they all have the
same reaction to our counterpoint. So even though it's not monolithic,
there's a lot of similarity from one teacher to the next. And you'll
find that many of the books repeat a lot of what Joseph Prince says
originally.

To be fair, the hyper-grace movement does not overtly teach that grace
is a license to sin. It's all about grace. Amen.

And there's always someone who's afraid that when you preach grace,
you're getting people licensed to sin. But Romans 6, 14, if you look on
the screen, I just wonder sometimes people can read. It is so clear,
Romans 6, 14 tells us, for sin shall not have dominion over you because,
for, you are not under law, but you are under grace.

So wherein comes this fear that when you teach grace, when people live
under grace, they will live a licentious lifestyle, they will steer away
from holiness. I find that when I'm under grace, my attraction to Jesus
becomes stronger and stronger towards holiness, greater and greater, and
my attraction towards sin gets lesser and lesser. How many can say amen
to that? When you hear stuff like you heard today, or what you heard
today, does it kind of just make you wanna run out and sin all over
town? Just be lascivious all over town? That's a dirty word, isn't it,
lascivious? No, no, no.

Does grace allow us to sin? Now, grace preachers are often accused of
allowing people to sin, but in reality, this accusation is absolutely
false. No one who truly preaches grace is saying that it is all right to
sin or giving people permission to do what is wrong. The hyper-grace
accusation has built up this straw man argument that's simply not true,
that we're somehow preaching license to sin.

Grace is not license to sin, it is freedom from sin. I am still trying
to figure out who are these mythical preachers who say you should go sin
to your heart's content. I suppose with Facebook, there could be plenty
of nutjobs out there saying that, but I don't know how I got looped in
with any of it.

We've been preaching God-given holiness that manifests in real God-given
right living for years. Grace is not a coverup, he's a person. Grace is
literally defined as the divine influence of God upon a man.

It's like a wind that fills your sails and drives you and works mightily
through you with his supernatural energy. You can only live holy when
you realize that's who he made you to be. Nevertheless, hyper-grace is
an exaggeration and distortion of biblical grace.

The end result being similar to that of the grace changers which the
apostles spoke against. If you preach like that, people go out and sin.
Notice that people will still sin? Biblical grace is wonderfully
important because every one of us is saved by grace, by God reaching out
to us when we didn't deserve it.

If God gave us what our sins deserve, if God treated us justly, and
outside of grace, outside of the cross, we'd all be damned and doomed
forever. So we're all indebted to God. We're all indebted to the fact
that he reached out to us when we were lost, that his son died on the
cross for the things that we did.

And when people speak of grace, they sometimes say it's God's riches at
Christ's expense or it's unnerved favor. That's the heart and soul of
it. But the amazing thing about grace is it doesn't end there.

It's not just I was saved by grace 42 or 43 years ago, way back then.
No, God's grace has continued to work in my life, forgiving me as I fall
short and as I look to God for mercy, and also empowering me to live a
new and changed life. So to the extent we understand God's grace, we can
live free of condemnation, we can live transformed lives, and we can
really exemplify to the world who Jesus is through transformed lives.

The scriptures tell us that we are saved by grace. Our salvation is a
free gift, not earned or merited by our own works. God, who is rich in
mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we
were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit
together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to
come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through
faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works,
lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk
in them.

God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was
given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed
by the appearing of our savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished death
and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. But when
the kindness and the love of God, our savior toward man appeared, not by
works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy,
he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy
Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our
savior, that having been justified by his grace, we should become heirs
according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying, and
these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have
believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.

These things are good and profitable to men. God loved us while we were
sinners by sending his son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Jesus came to
seek and save that which was lost, not to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance.

The Pharisees said, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
sinners? This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what manner
of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. The Pharisees
did not understand grace. By grace, God has initiated and offered
salvation to sinners.

We weren't received because we were good enough. We were received
because God is gracious. Boasting is excluded because this was not
something we deserved or merited by any good works of our own.

By God's grace, he accepted us, forgave us, and redeemed us. But in
those same passages, Paul went on to say that we are his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, and those who have believed in
God should be careful to maintain good works. Paul is a pattern of how
God's grace turns a lost, sinful, hateful person into a beloved brother.

By grace, Paul was forgiven, received, taught, and changed. He said, And
I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted
me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a
blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man. But I obtained mercy
because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love
which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of
whom I am chief. However, for this reason, I obtained mercy, that in me
first, Jesus Christ might show all long-suffering as a pattern to those
who are going to believe on him for everlasting life.

Scripture is actually very clear on the fact that grace is not merely
just a hug from God. It is enabling power. It is power to perform that
which is otherwise impossible.

It's power to actually obey God. We couldn't obey before. There was
something we wanted to do, but we didn't have the substance within our
souls to be able to actually pull it off.

But now the grace of God has been revealed in Jesus Christ, and we have
what we need in Christ Jesus, not in ourselves, in Christ, to be able to
actually live out the life that we're called to, which is impossible,
actually. So technically, grace is power to live the impossible life.
And so what I wanna do is I wanna just give a brief overview of some of
the key concepts of how grace is used in the New Testament just to back
this point.

We see in 1 Corinthians 15.10, but by the grace of God, I am what I am,
says Paul. And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain.
But I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of
God, which was with me.

Well, what's laboring in Paul? The grace of God. That's not a hug. So
what we see is that grace is given that we might labor more abundantly.

In 2 Corinthians 9.8, Paul is again making this argument. He says, God
is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you, always having
all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. So what do
they need to have sufficiency in all things and to abound to every good
work? Grace.

You see, grace enables the Christian to actually do that which they're
called to do. So we see that grace is given that we may have sufficiency
in all things. And grace is also given that we may abound to every good
work.

In Romans 1.5, Paul is saying, by whom we have received grace and
apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.
So they received grace for the strangest thing. I thought it was just a
hug to cover over our sin.

No, that's not the way grace is used in the New Testament. He received
grace for obedience to the faith. So grace is given for obedience to the
faith.

In Acts 4.33, and with great power gave the apostles witness of the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. Well,
grace is given as power for witnessing of the resurrection of Jesus. And
then in 1 Corinthians 3.10, according to the grace of God, which is
given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and
another buildeth thereon, but let every man take heed how he buildeth
thereupon.

So grace is given in order that we may lay foundations. In other words,
this is a master builders toolbox. He needs grace.

How is Paul gonna go about and be a master builder of the church? Well,
he does it with grace. And then in Ephesians 3.8, to me who am less than
the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach.
Why did he receive grace? To preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable
riches of Christ.

So grace is given for preaching among the Gentiles. Let us therefore
come boldly, it says in Hebrews 4.16, under the throne of grace that we
may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. So grace is
given as our means of help in time of need.

So what does God give us in a time of need? He doesn't just give us a
hug. He gives us help, practical help. Well, what is that help? It's
grace.

And in Hebrews 12.28, wherefore we receive in a kingdom which cannot be
moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear. Grace is given whereby we may serve God
acceptably. And then in 1 Peter 5.10, this one's a loaded scripture.

But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by
Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, make you perfect,
establish, strengthen, and settle you. Grace is given to make us
perfect. Grace is given to establish us.

Grace is given to strengthen us. And grace is given to settle us. And
then in Ephesians 2.8, for by grace are you saved through faith.

And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Grace is given to
save us. And then Acts 18.27, and when he was disposed to pass into
Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him, who
when he was come helped them much, which had believed through grace.

Grace is given to enable others to believe in Jesus Christ. This is
powerful stuff. Grace works.

You see, it is the work of God. The cross is the work of God, is an
expression of grace. But what do we need now to live the Christian life?
We need God to work, to work within us, to work for us.

He ever lives to make intercession for us, not just on the cross, but he
ever lives to do it. So he lives, and the way he does it is through
grace. That's the term for it in the Bible.

God laboring on our behalf to accomplish what only God can accomplish.
In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of his grace. Grace covers our sins, but
allowing sin and covering sin are two different things.

Paul said that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. On the
other hand, Paul also asked the rhetorical question, what shall we say
then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How
shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Hyper-grace teachers
agree with these passages being understood in this sense.

Paul argued things like, well, shall we sin that grace may abound? May
never be. It's an impossibility. How shall we who are dead? Once you're
dead, you're dead.

How can we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? Jesus has set us
free from sin that we might not be slaves of sin any longer, but we must
act upon this. In order to obtain God's grace or favor, we must repent
and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.
Peter said, repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit.

Thus we are saved by grace through faith. We have access to God's saving
grace through faith in Christ. Paul wrote, therefore, having been
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ
through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we
stand.

But that's only the beginning. Grace says both, neither do I condemn you
and go and sin no more. Biblical grace is saving grace.

It's transforming grace. You know, by grace you're saved. You know,
Ephesians 2, eight and nine.

You go back a couple of verses, it says you were dead in trespasses and
sins, but God made us alive. And so grace has got that power to make us
alive, to transform us, to change us from what we were, to become new
creatures in Christ Jesus. All things are passed away.

I mean, that's the power of grace is the power to change. And Paul says,
you know, you're no longer under sin. Grace, we're no longer under the
dominion of sin.

Grace has a greater dominion of sin's dominion. And so we've got to
understand that saving grace is transforming grace. It's the power of
God working in us and through us to bring about God's desire result of
having children in his own likeness and image.

Paul went on to say that grace has freed us from slavery of sin to
become slaves of obedience to God. For sin shall not have dominion over
you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we
sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not.

Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you
are that one slave to whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or
of obedience leading to righteousness. This is not fear that being under
grace will cause life and life anxiousness. Because the Bible states
clearly in Romans 6, 14, if you look up here, for sin shall not have
dominion over you for or because you are not under law, but under grace.

But what we have believed is that when you are under grace, sin will
have dominion over you. We've been hoodwinked by the devil. The word of
God is so clear when you are under grace and not under law, sin shall
not have dominion over you.

The word sin there is a noun. You can put faith and shall not have
dominion over you. Sickness shall not have dominion over you.

Poverty shall not have dominion over you. When? When you are not under
law, but under grace. As far as Joseph Prince is a person, I don't think
his intention is to get people to sin.

I think the fruit of his teaching leads to that, leads to a loose
lifestyle, it leads to carnality and so on and so forth. You know, I
think that's the fruit. I don't think he's teaching, you know, go out
and sin, do whatever you want sort of thing.

But I think the doctrine ultimately leads to that. Notice Romans 3.25
says, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. But
the hyper-grace movement teaches that Christians have been forgiven of
their past, present and future sins.

In his book, Unmerited Favor, Joseph Prince writes, his grace is
cheapened when you think that he has only forgiven you of your sins up
to the time you got saved and after that point, you have to depend on
your confession of sins to be forgiven. God's forgiveness is not given
in installments. Paul Ellis says, forgiveness seems to be a blind spot
for many people.

We just can't get it into our heads that God has forgiven us completely
and for all time. In his sermon entitled, Totally Forgiven, Totally
United, Totally Filled, Ryan Rufus says the following. You have been
totally forgiven.

You haven't been partially forgiven. You have been totally and
completely and utterly and fully and absolutely forgiven of all your
sins, past, present and future. Amen.

Most Christians don't have any trouble believing that Jesus forgives
them of all their past sins. But many Christians have trouble believing
that Jesus has already forgiven them of all of their future sins. They
struggle with that.

So they feel they have this need that if they sin, they've got to
confess the sin and repent of the sin and be cleansed of the sin and
they enter into all of these dead works, faithless works, because they
don't have a revelation of total forgiveness. The idea that God has
already pronounced our future sins forgiven is unscriptural and it's at
the heart and root of the error of the hyper-grace message. He cleansed
me of my sin.

Past sins. Present sin. Future sin.

He cleansed me of my sins. I'm clean. You are already forgiven.

So if you ever make a mistake, just tell God you're sorry and say, thank
you, Jesus. My sins are forgiven. But if we understand that we have been
completely forgiven for all of our sins, past, present and even future,
because all of our sins were future when Jesus died.

Sometimes people say, you mean God, you're saying God has forgiven me
for sins I haven't even committed? And I'll say, well, when did Jesus
take your sins into and upon himself at the cross? Well, how many of
them have you committed then? None of them. They were all future at that
time. Yes, God's forgiven us for the sins of our lifetime.

And when we understand that, that we have received total forgiveness,
then we're able to relax about ourselves. God took sovereign initiative
out of his goodness of his grace to have his son crucified at the cross,
whereby he forgave all of our sins, past, present and future at the
cross. All of us are forgiven when we accept Christ of our past, present
and future sins.

According to the hyper-grace message, the moment you're saved, God not
only says, I forgive you for everything you've done in the past, I
forgive you for your present and past guilt in the language of
Colossians 2, wiping out the IOU that was against us, that written debt
that we owed all this to God that we could never repay. The hyper-grace
message also says, the moment you're saved, God pronounces your future
sins forgiven. The moment we're saved, God puts us in the righteous
column, the forgiven column, the column of being his children.

And he now relates to us differently. But if I fall short, if I blow it,
it's appropriate to say, Father, wash me, cleanse me, I sin. It's
appropriate to confess our sins.

It's appropriate to ask to be forgiven. Now, here's where the hyper-
grace people are right. We're in the forgiven column.

In other words, God's not dealing with us as lost sinners who need to
repent and be saved again. In the language of Jesus in John 13, we've
had a bath, we're ready to cleanse, but our feet get dirty as we walk in
this world. So we need to get our feet washed.

That's what 1 John 1.7 and 1.9 talk about. But this idea that God has
already pronounced my future sins forgiven leads to all kinds of other
errors. For example, God will never bring up to me my past sin.

He doesn't say to me, Mike, you shot heroin 43 years ago. You stole
money from your father. No, I've been forgiven.

That's under the blood. Well, if my future sins are already forgiven,
then why would God bring those up to me? What do you do with Jesus'
teaching in the Sermon on the Mount? That if we don't forgive others,
God won't forgive us. Simple.

You say those words don't apply to us today if you're in the hyper-grace
camp. Those were just for the Jews before the cross. What do you do with
James, the fifth chapter, speaking about a brother who's very sick? God
will forgive.

That's it. If it was already forgiven, why is God gonna forgive it then?
What about in the fifth chapter, James, verse 16? Confess your sins one
to another. Well, why are we confessing our sins one to another if God's
already forgiven them? We shouldn't have any consciousness of them
anymore.

If my sins are already forgiven, the Holy Spirit won't convict me, and
on and on. So this is the basic root error in the hyper-grace teaching,
the idea that the moment you're saved, God pronounces your future sins
forgiven, and he will never deal with you based on those future sins
again. A provision was made, but pardon has to be received the moment we
repent.

I have, and I was gonna write a blog about this. This is hand cleanser,
sanitizer. Everybody carries one almost.

You know, you get it in various sizes and so on. I've had this literally
for years and years. I paid for it, possibly five years ago at least.

I paid for it. It was paid for, but it continues to work. Now, I don't
use it just once.

You know, I take it out and I use it once, and I never have to use it
again. No, I can use it when necessary. It was paid for.

Provision was made when I paid for it. Jesus Christ made provision for
our cleansing at the cross, but it's ever active in that sense. It's a
new and living way.

He ever lives to make intercession. Jesus spoke about being forgiven on
an ongoing basis, not that God forgave all of our sins, past, present,
and future. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray, give us each
day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive
everyone who is indebted to us.

Our forgiveness is conditioned upon our forgiving others who sin against
us. Jesus also taught, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

And whenever you stand praying, forgive. If you have anything against
anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your
trespasses. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Note what Jesus said in the parable of the unforgiving servant. First of
all, Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin
against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus responded, I do
not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Therefore
the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle
accounts with his servants.

And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who
owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master
commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he
had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before
him saying, Master, have patience with me and I will pay you all.

Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him
and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his
fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And he laid hands on him
and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, have
patience with me and I will pay you all. And he would not, but went and
threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. So when his fellow
servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and
told their master all that had been done.

Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked
servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you
not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity
on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers
until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly father also
will do to you, if each of you from his heart does not forgive his
brother his trespasses.

In the parable, the servant had already been forgiven, but he was
delivered to the tormentors because he did not forgive his brother.
Being delivered to the tormentors cannot possibly be the fate of a saved
person. The servant's past sins were forgiven, but the forgiveness of
his future sins was conditioned upon his forgiving others.

When a forgiven Christian does not forgive his brother, God's
forgiveness will be revoked and the penalty will be reinstated. If you
refuse to forgive others, even though you have already been forgiven by
God, then you won't be forgiven after all. He says, forgive others and
then you'll be forgiven.

If you don't forgive others, God won't forgive you. And it's like, we
don't teach this. I mean, Billy Graham is not in a stadium telling
people you wanna be forgiven.

Well, if you forgive others, then God will forgive you. But if you do
not forgive others, God will not forgive you. That's not the message
that Billy Graham preaches.

That's not the gospel that we share today with unbelievers. Dr. Ellis
claims that before the cross, Jesus preached conditional forgiveness,
forgive to be forgiven. Dr. Ellis has a real problem with the
conditional forgiveness taught by the Lord Jesus.

He writes, Jesus said, if you do not forgive men their sins, your father
will not forgive your sins. This is not good news. This is bad news that
should make a shake in our boots for it links God's forgiveness to our
own.

It is not grace, it is law. It is quid pro quo and tit for tat. It is
something you must give to get.

Later, we will answer the question, are Jesus's words for us? It is
sufficient for now to quote the apostle Paul who wrote his epistles
after the cross. Still forgiveness is imperative for Christian living.
He says, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies,
kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another
and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another,
even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. How many people who are
professing followers of Jesus, if they were honest, wouldn't have to say
at some points along the way, you know, there's a person over here that
I haven't forgiven them, I haven't forgiven them. Well, if that's the
case, I would say to that person, you better be afraid, you better be
very afraid, because by your own understanding of doctrine, you won't be
forgiven by God because you've not forgiven others.

And in reality, what that then points us to is the finished work of
Jesus Christ on the cross was not effective because your forgiveness,
your unforgiveness has nullified the cross. It is not that unforgiveness
has nullified the cross. Jesus made it clear in Matthew 18 that the
penalty would be reinstated if the forgiven servant did not forgive
others.

Unforgiveness is ungodly in a sign of perilous times, as Paul said in
Romans 1, 28 through 31, and 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 5. I said I was
nearly finished. I lied, but I'm forgiven. Many hyper-graced teachers
have stated that their teachings on grace do not give us a license to
sin, but according to them, sin does not separate a person from
fellowship with God.

Joseph Prince writes, because you did nothing to deserve his presence in
your life, there is nothing you can do that will cause his presence to
leave you. Philip Yancey, talking about grace in his, I wanna say it's
an award-winning book, What's So Amazing About Grace. Grace means there
is nothing we can do to make God love us more.

No amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of
crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is
nothing we can do to make God love us less. No amount of racism or pride
or pornography or adultery or even murder.

Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can
possibly love. I cannot moderate my definition of grace because the
Bible forces me to make it as sweeping as possible. God is the God of
all grace, in the Apostle Peter's words.

And grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and
nothing I can do to make God love me less. It means that I, even I who
deserve the opposite, I'm invited to take my place at the table in God's
family. He's making it sound like the Bible is forcing him to make this
as the definition of grace.

But that actually isn't what grace is. You see, we are cut off from
grace under the law of sin and death. We sin, we die.

The tree of life has been cut off to us. There's cherubims with a
flaming sword and they block the way to the tree of life. But the way
has been made available to us in Christ Jesus.

And so we have been brought into the grace of God, which we could call
Jesus, the life of God, the power of God, but that has been cut off to
us. And in that life, we live. And so grace is the manifest presence,
the enabling power, the gift of God unto us in the person of Jesus
Christ.

And it's not just that he forgives us of our sins. We are wretches and
he forgives us. It's that he actually imparts to us his life.

There is a throne room, it's called the throne of grace, and it's been
made open to us and so that we can boldly enter into it to obtain mercy
and to find help, grace for help in time of need. It's not just God
loving us and overlooking every fault that we have. It's God intimately
acquainted with our life, saying, I know what you need and I've made it
available to you.

Come to me and I will supply you with grace so that you might live.
There's nothing that you can do to make God love you more. No amount of
spirituality, trying to impress how legalistic you are with other
people.

There's nothing that you can do to make God love you less. No sin, no
error, no evil that you can commit. I mean, look at David, look at Paul,
look at Peter.

They all committed terrible crimes. Nothing you can do to make God love
you more. Or nothing you can do to make God love you less.

An infinite God already loves you as much as God possibly can. And that
if we could understand that, then we'd have a little glimpse of what
God's grace is. Such a statement is misleading because many will equate
God's love to God's fellowship.

But there is an important distinction between love and fellowship. God
so loved the world that He gave His Son, but He does not have fellowship
with the world because they have not received His Son. Those in the lake
of fire are not going to be thinking that there was nothing they could
do or not do to make God love them more or less.

Yes, God loved even them, but He loved them by sending His Son. In this,
the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only
begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be
the propitiation for our sins.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
God is love. God sending His Son was grace or unmerited favor toward us
in His love.

But if you reject God's Son or rebel from Jesus Christ, then you are
rejecting His love and fellowship. He who believes in the Son has
eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but
the wrath of God abides on him. And so those that are watching who think
that sin changes God's attitude toward us, I'll tell you, this will set
you free if you understand that our sin doesn't change how God feels
toward us.

He loves us the same all the time. He doesn't love us because of how
wonderful our behavior is. He doesn't reject us because of how bad our
behavior is.

He loves us because He is love, and that's His nature to love, and
that's what He does. God's love for us is not the same thing as
salvation, or else there would be universal salvation. God doesn't stop
loving us when we disobey Him.

However, that doesn't mean He is going to give us everlasting life
either. If a congregation has to put someone out of fellowship for the
purpose of church discipline, that does not mean they don't love the
person anymore, but sin does affect God's attitude toward us. Jesus
said, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I
have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

In Grace, the Forbidden Gospel, the author writes, Jesus already paid
the full price so that we could have unbroken fellowship with the
Father. This means that when we make a mistake, it does not break our
fellowship or right standing with God. It is false to teach that our
fellowship with God cannot be broken.

Jesus said to His disciples, if anyone does not abide in me, he is cast
out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them
into the fire, and they are burned. If we do not abide in Jesus and
thereby produce fruit, then we will be cast out and burned. But God will
not cast you out for making a mistake in ignorance.

The author of Hebrews says, looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of
the grace of God. Lest any root of bitterness springing up cause
trouble, and by this many become defiled. Lest there be any fornicator
or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his
birthright.

For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he
was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it
diligently with tears. As the hymn says, there is a time we know not
when, a point we know not where, that marks the destiny of men to glory
or despair. There is a line by us unseen that crosses every path, the
hidden boundary between God's patience and his wrath.

There comes a point where our fellowship with God can be broken if we
fall short of the grace of God. Consider Jesus' words in Revelation
3.20. He said, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my
voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he
with me.

This passage is often quoted by evangelists for unbelievers, but Jesus
was standing outside of the church. This church was not in fellowship
with Christ, but Jesus was knocking on the door for any individual who
would let him in for fellowship. Jesus loved this church, but he was
standing outside and calling them to repent.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and
repent. Then all of this jargon that I've invented, you know, I'm out of
fellowship, now I'm back in.

I went to church, oops, I said the Lord's name in vain. Now I'm out of
fellowship again. Now I'm back in because I did my quiet time.

Oops, you know, I stubbed my toe and cursed and whatever. Now I'm out
again. This in and out and in and out of fellowship thing.

Well, the scripture says that we are one spirit with him. Anyone who has
joined himself to the Lord, Corinthians says, is one spirit with him.
Andrew Farley mocks the idea that Christians can lose their fellowship
with God, citing 1 Corinthians.

But Paul also said in 1 Corinthians, do you not know that you are the
temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone
defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God
is holy, which temple you are. God never, never, ever, ever, ever
withdraws his presence from you, ever.

You're in union with him. I would say persistent, deliberate sin
ultimately cuts a person off from God. I don't think one sin by any
stretch of the imagination, if you are truly a born again believer.

First of all, John says he that is born of God does not commit sin,
meaning he doesn't practice sin. We all stumble in many ways and we're
not immune from temptation and falling and so on. But I don't think the
first sin, you know, God sort of wipes his hands off us and say, you
know, I can't wait to get rid of you sort of thing.

No, God's got incredible patience. We've got the story of Jezebel in
Revelation 2. And God said, I gave her time to repent. I gave her time.

God's got incredible patience. You know, he waited 100 years during the
construction of the ark, not willing that any should perish. And so
having said that, I don't think we should by any means, you know, test
the patience of God.

I think a lot of people misconstrue God's patience with God's
permission. And that's a dangerous thing. In other words, you know, I
can still prophesy.

I can still whatever, speak in tongues. I can still, you know, some
particular gift that I have is still operating. People are still getting
saved under my ministry, even though I'm sleeping around or whatever.

You know, we are, and therefore it can't be that big of sin in the eyes
of God. Otherwise he would have sort of killed me long ago. No, that's
God's patience, not God's permission.

There were two ways in which an Israelite could be cut off from God.
One, if he never applied the blood to the doorpost, you know, going back
to the Passover. In other words, if he did not avail himself of the
blood, the death angel would have taken him.

But he says, after having applied the blood, if he refused to remove
leaven from his house, the Bible says he was cut off. In other words,
God's intention is I redeemed you by the blood of the lamb. Now that
you're redeemed, I expect you to walk in purity, in a sanctified way, if
you like, because he said seven days, you shall remove leaven from your
house.

Seven is always the number of perfection, always a number of completion
and so on. And so God was saying, I've redeemed you by the blood of the
lamb. Now it's your job to get rid of any leaven in your house, leaven,
which is a type of sin.

And it says, if you don't do that, in other words, if you don't walk in
obedience to my word, then you will be cut off. But it wasn't one day,
it wasn't one hour, it wasn't one minute, it was seven days. In other
words, it was a period of time.

So I think, you know, we need to understand, God is patient with us. But
I think if we persist in sin, ultimately there is a cutting off. Now,
when that day comes, when that time comes, I don't know, you know, we
can't put it down to so many days or so many hours, but my spirit will
not always strive with men forever.

I don't want to test the patience of God, you know, especially when I
can avail myself of the blood of Christ and walk in liberty and freedom.
Self and sin are not listed among those things which cannot separate us
from God. There are no external forces which can separate us from God,
but our own sins will separate us from God.

In fact, Isaiah the prophet said, that your iniquities have separated
you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he
will not hear. Don writes, the old life has been destroyed. You can dig
as much as you want, but you will find no remnants of this old life
buried in the gospel.

This makes joy and happiness come effortlessly for the believer. Ryan
Rufus says, there is no sinful nature in there. There is no sin.

There is no unrighteousness. No, your spirit has received fullness, full
perfection, full righteousness. John Crowder writes, I no longer even
have an independent self that is capable of pleasing God.

It is no longer I, but Christ. There is no separate individual you.
Christ has replaced you.

Saved people don't sin. Romans chapter five, we mentioned last night,
for just as through the disobedience of one man, the many were made
sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be
made righteous. Shackle over now, repair me or not.

The core foundation of what we were drinking, guys, you gotta
understand, we are drinking from the source of this revelation that we
are no longer sinners. We are no longer some fake sinner hybrid that you
have to spend your whole life trying to overcome that sinful nature,
beat up that old man, beat up that old nature, put to death that old
nature. This is absolute, absolute anti-Christ garbage from the pit of
hell.

It is the core foundation of religion. It's this idea that you, as a
believer, are still a sinner. Something that's a very dangerous
deception is kind of a new Gnosticism.

It says this, well, 1 John 3, that whoever is born of God cannot sin
because the seed of God remains in him, therefore he cannot sin. Well,
how do we understand that? We understand that in terms of habitually
practicing sin. If you truly know the Lord, then you cannot habitually
continue to sin.

If you do, then 1 John says, either you never knew God at all, you're
just a liar, right? So what is the hyper-grace extreme interpretation?
It would say this, the seed of God remains in me, therefore I can't sin,
but I do sin. No, no, no, that's not really me. I am a spirit, and my
spirit is perfectly born again, and my spirit is perfectly redeemed, and
my spirit can't sin.

All sin is of the flesh, and since my flesh is not really me, if I do
something wrong, it's not me. It's sin that is doing the evil work. It's
not actually me.

One of my friends called the pastor of the church that he was attending,
and he said, I just need a yes or no answer. Do you sin? Yes or no? And
the pastor said no. And then he proceeded to explain, what I mean is I
am a born-again spirit, my spirit is perfect, my spirit cannot sin,
therefore I do not sin.

Whatever's born of God cannot sin, and if there is sin, it's my flesh,
and that's not really who I am. Again, utterly bizarre. I've seen it
defended.

I've not heard it defended by mainstream teachers in the hyper-grace
camp, but some just a little bit on the fringe, they've been teaching
it, they've been defending it, and again, it's this separation, this
gnostic separation of spirit from material. The fact is God deals with
me as a whole human being, spirit, soul, body, and I will stand before
him and give account for the deeds I did in the body. Again, another
dangerous deception.

We all sin, even after we get saved, but God does not see our sin any
longer. He sees Jesus. In Jesus, there is no sin.

When God looks at someone who has been born again, he sees Jesus
standing there in our place. If you have been born of God, you do not
sin and you cannot sin. This interpretation is obviously inconsistent
with the rest of John's epistle and the rest of scripture.

John says also, now by this we know that we know him if we keep his
commandments. He who says I know him and does not keep his commandments
is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly
the love of God is perfected in him.

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices
righteousness is born of him. Whoever commits sin also commits
lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested
to take away our sins and in him there is no sin.

Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him
nor known him. Little children, let no one deceive you.

He who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous. He
who sins is of the devil for the devil has sinned from the beginning.
For this purpose, the son of God was manifested that he might destroy
the works of the devil.

Whoever has been born of God does not sin for his seed remains in him
and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. In this, the children
of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not
practice righteousness is not of God nor is he who does not love his
brother.

Clark Whitten says that Christians can sin but they're not sinners.
Jesus' blood cleanses, washes. Though they be as crimson, they shall be
as wool.

Though they are red, they shall be white as snow. It cleanses us of our
sins, removes them from us as far as the east is from the west. That's
why you're not a sinner.

You can sin but you're not a sinner. Does that make sense? To Clark
Whitten, it is on the basis of the forgiveness of sins alone that one is
counted righteous. But John told us that those who have been truly born
of God do not practice sinning.

Therefore, John said it is manifest by their deeds who are the children
of God and who are the children of the devil. Whitten said that
unrighteous deeds do not make a righteous person unrighteous and that
righteous deeds do not make an unrighteous person righteous. Now let me
ask you this.

Does the unrighteous deed that the righteous person does make the
righteous person unrighteous? No. Deeds didn't make him righteous to
start with. Deeds don't make you righteous or unrighteous.

You understand? There's only one way to become righteous or unrighteous,
standing with God, and that's through the blood of Christ. That's faith
in Jesus. That's His finished work produces that.

You don't. You can't ever. So does the unrighteous deed that the
righteous man does make the righteous man unrighteous? No.

All right, let me ask you this. Does the righteous deed that the
unrighteous man make the unrighteous man righteous? No. No.

You don't get righteous by doing deeds. It's by faith in Christ. You
believe.

But the prophet Ezekiel wrote, The righteousness of the righteous man
shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression. As for the
wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall because of it in the day
that he turns from his wickedness. Nor shall the righteous be able to
live because of his righteousness in the day that he sins.

When I say to the righteous, he shall surely live, but he trusts in his
own righteousness and commits iniquity. None of his righteous works
shall be remembered, but because of the iniquity that he has committed,
he shall die. Again, when I say to the wicked, you shall surely die.

If he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right, if the
wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and walks in
the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live.
He shall not die. None of his sins which he has committed shall be
remembered against him.

He has done what is lawful and right. He shall surely live. Yet the
children of your people say, the way of the Lord is not fair, but it is
their way which is not fair.

When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he
shall die because of it. But when the wicked turns from his wickedness
and does what is lawful and right, he shall live because of it. Yet you
say, the way of the Lord is not fair.

O house of Israel, I will judge every one of you according to his own
ways. Do righteous deeds make people righteous? No. Do righteous deeds
keep them righteous? No.

It's a permanent, listen, it's a permanent God-performed miracle.
Righteous. I don't feel like that.

Always. Forever, really. But I am.

I don't care whether you feel like it or not. You are. If you believe in
Jesus.

Certainly belief in Christ is essential. Abraham believed God and it was
accounted to him for righteousness. But Abraham was not a wicked man.

By faith, Abraham obeyed. The apostle John wrote, if you know that he is
righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of
him. Scripture teaches, in him we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

But must a Christian continue to confess their sins in true repentance?
Joseph Prince says, my friend, this is the assurance you can have today.
The day you received Christ, you confessed all your sins once for all.
That verse said that he wasn't counting people's trespasses against
them.

Does that mean that I don't need to ask for his forgiveness? Bingo. In
fact, it insults the finished work of Christ when you do ask for
forgiveness. I want to tell you now, there is no scripture in the new
covenant.

For new covenant believers, that tells you that you need to continually
confess your sins and repent of your sins and ask for forgiveness of
your sins and get cleansed of your sins. Why? Because one sacrifice for
all time, for all of your sins has already dealt with every single one
of your sins. It's absolutely right and appropriate for believers to
confess their sins to God.

It's what you do in a relationship. If I was short with my wife one day
and then I left the house abruptly and then I came back two or three
hours later, you better believe the first thing I would say is, honey, I
am so sorry. Please forgive me that that was completely wrong.

I can't believe I treated you like that. Forgive me, that's wrong. And I
was so insensitive.

I didn't even call. But it's what you do in a relationship. It's common
courtesy.

I interacted with a hyper-grace teacher once and said, would you do that
with your wife? He said, of course, but I'm not married to God. I have a
different relationship with God. I thought, what in the world you're
talking about? All the analogies in scripture, God and Israel, the
husband and wife and Jesus and the church, the husband and wife and the
relationship we have and the intimacy we have.

Of course. And 1 John 1, 9, which is not written to unbelievers.
Contextually in 1 John, it's clearly believers.

Scholars recognize that of 1 John. And the Greek is speaking of ongoing,
continuous, not a one-time thing. If we confess our sins in an ongoing
way, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.

Now, here's the point. This is what's so important. I'm not confessing
my sins in order to be saved.

And I'm not confessing my sins with the notion that if I miss one sin
one day, I'm going to hell. Again, there's some people that live like
that. And then they hear the hyper-grace message and you don't need to
confess, just agree with God that you're righteous and that your sins
you're already forgiven.

And it's helpful for them because they've been so sin conscious that all
through the day, oh, I didn't confess the sin right. Oh, I confessed it
with pride. And they're in this continual rut.

If I fail to confess a sin, let's say the end of the day, I did not
confess to the sin of prayerlessness and I was oblivious to the fact
that I was too busy to commune with God that day. I'm not going to hell
if I fall asleep and die in the middle of the night. That's not what
it's about.

It's relational. It's the forgiveness that comes within the family. Of
course, it's right.

Of course, it's proper. It's common etiquette in a relationship and it
helps us keep our conscience clear. And it helps us be conscious of
failings in our lives.

In other words, if I just kind of look the other way as if it never
happened, I could harden my heart. I could become accustomed to doing
something wrong. Whereas when I get alone with God, I said, father, I'm
so sorry.

I'm your child. I love you. I didn't act in accordance with that today.

It's not really who I am, but what I did was ugly and I shouldn't have
treated that person like that. Lord, please forgive me. Wash me.

There's communion that comes out of it and there's a sense of fresh
cleansing that comes out of it. That's a healthy thing, not an unhealthy
thing. There was a young man who wrote to me from New York.

He's now in his 20s, but ever since he was 13 years old, he was bound to
pornography and he'll watch it almost every day. And he says this, and
Pastor Prince, as a martial artist, you know, I'm highly disciplined and
I use all my discipline as a Christian to try to overcome this bad
habit, but I couldn't overcome it. It's an addiction.

But when I heard your message that when you sin, confess, I am the
righteous, that you're still righteous in Christ. I have so many
testimonies of people who are bound to drugs, addicted to cigarettes,
all right, and all kinds of bad habits, okay, eating disorders. While
they are indulging, while they are doing it, I teach them, confess, I am
the righteousness of God in Christ.

They'll still do it. My God confessed it. And when they're confessing,
the devil will say, you are a hypocrite.

How can you confess that? But the Bible says, when you receive the gift
of righteousness, you will reign in life. And when you reign in life,
your addictions don't. When you reign in life, the evil habit doesn't.

When you reign in life, the devil doesn't because you are reigning.
Nowhere does the Bible teach that reigning in life is achieved by
confessing you're righteous when you're actually unrighteous and
continuing in sin. According to Ryan Rufus, many Christians, when they
sin, they feel unrighteous.

They feel dirty. They feel unholy. They feel like they've let God down.

They feel like God is no longer pleased with them. And they feel like
they need to, oh, I need to do something. They feel guilty.

So that guilt drives them to want to do something to get rid of their
sin or to get rid of the guilt of their sin. That guilt wants to lead
them to try to get rid of their sin. So they feel like they need to
confess, God, I've got to confess my sins.

I've got to repent of these terrible sins. I've got to get cleansed of
these sins. I've got to promise that I'll never do this sin again.

We are not called to confess our sins. We are called to confess our
righteousness in Jesus Christ. Rufus goes so far as to say that to ask
for forgiveness is a sin.

But as a new covenant, born again believer, to now go and ask for
forgiveness for after you sinned, after you sinned, to now go and ask
for forgiveness is a sin. It's the sin of unbelief. It's the sin of
unbelief because you don't believe in the finished work of the cross.

You're trying to add to it. You're trying to do something. You don't
realize it was already done.

Hyper grace has redefined the confession of sins to the confession of
righteousness. You see, once you start listing all your sins, you will
never run out of things to repent of. In contrast, the person who
understands grace says to God, God, thank you for forgiving me.

Thank you that I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Thank you
that the blood of Jesus Christ covers all of my sins. The hyper grace
teachers go so far as saying we must repent of repenting and that
repentance is idolatry.

So often we try to repent and prove our repentance and show how sorry we
are. That's idolatry, you know. You know why it's idolatry? Because if I
think I have to show my sorrow and I have to wall one's self-
condemnation and I have to rededicate myself and promise God this or
that, then what I'm really saying is I don't believe the work of the
cross was enough to deal with sin.

There's a contribution I need to add to it. And what I add is going to
put it over the top. Idolatry.

Let's just relax. We're forgiven. Let's just believe in the finished
work of Christ.

Ongoing repentance is idolatry? Writing to the Corinthians who are
already Christians, Paul the apostle said that they were clear in a
certain sinful matter because of their godly sorrow which produced true
repentance characterized by indignation against sin and fear of God. For
even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I
did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry,
though only for a while.

Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to
repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner that you might
suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance
leading to salvation not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world
produces death.

For observe this very thing that you sorrowed in a godly manner. What
diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what
indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what
vindication. In all things, you proved yourselves to be clear in this
matter.

Speaking to the hyper-grace community, Michael Brown asked, We agree
that the Holy Spirit never condemns us for our sins as believers, but
does he ever make us uncomfortable when we sin? To which Paul Ellis
responded, Jesus called him the Comforter not the Discomforter, so I
guess not. Yes, the Holy Spirit is the Comforter and Helper, but the
Holy Spirit is given to them that obey him. Peter said, And we are his
witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has
given to those who obey him.

And the Holy Spirit does not comfort those in disobedience. Notice the
refrain from Revelation, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches. What did the Holy Spirit say to these churches?
Jesus said to these various churches, I have this against you that you
have left your first love.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first
works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from
its place, unless you repent. You have there those who hold the doctrine
of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children
of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual
immorality. Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which thing I hate, repent, or else I will come to you
quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel,
who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to
commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave
her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent.
Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed and those who commit adultery
with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds.

I will kill their children with death and the churches shall know that I
am he who searches the minds and hearts. I will give to each one of you
according to your works. I know your works, that you have a name, that
you are alive, but you are dead.

Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to
die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember,
therefore, how you have received and heard, hold fast and repent. I know
your works, that you are neither cold nor hot.

I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and
neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say,
I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not
know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and
repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and dine
with him and he with me. Obviously, the Spirit spoke words of discomfort
to the churches to help them repent of their sins. Does the Holy Spirit
convict unbelievers of their sins? Well, that is a common view that
you'll hear all the time, that the Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of
their sins.

And for that matter, you'll even hear the Holy Spirit convicts believers
for their sins. But that's not true. That's not what the Bible says.

In fact, when we teach that, we're reinforcing a faulty idea. Over in
John 16 and verse 8, it says when the He, the Spirit comes, he'll
convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment,
concerning sin because they do not believe in me. That's central.

Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you no longer
see me and judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged. But
this thing of the Holy Spirit convicting unbelievers of sin, he said
convicted of sin because they do not believe in me. What we need to
understand is that sin is not an issue.

God through Jesus or in Jesus at the cross has dealt with the whole
issue of sin. The Bible says that he came to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus, said, behold,
look, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

Over in 1 John 3, he said, you know that he appeared to take away sin.
That's exactly what Jesus did. So when we talk about being convinced,
unbelievers being convinced something about their sins, he puts that
phrase with it.

It is that they don't believe in me. Believe what? What unbelievers need
and believers too for that matter is to be convinced that Jesus has
taken our sin away. The Holy Spirit never comes to any of us and says,
you know, you need to stop, you know, using bad language and you need to
stop getting drunk and you need to stop.

He doesn't come to us about that because God has dealt with our sins.
What he does is he comes to us and says, let me convince you about who
you are. Let me convince you about what Jesus has done.

McVeigh further claims the Holy Spirit will convict an unbeliever of
only one thing, his unbelief in Jesus Christ. He will show that person
where he stands so that he can enter into the experience of knowing God
through Jesus. McVeigh misunderstands John 16, 8 through 11.

And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of
righteousness and of judgment of sin because they do not believe in me
of righteousness because I go to my father and you see me no more of
judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. In the passage, sin
does not refer only to the sin of unbelief. The Greek word hamartia is
often translated as sins, plural.

For example, And she will bring forth a son and you shall call his name
Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Then Peter said to
them, repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of sins. Peter responded to the people, repent
therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.

And Jesus said it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to convict of sins.
It is God's grace that the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins. But
according to Joseph Prince, the Holy Spirit never convicts Christians of
your sins.

He never comes to point out your faults. It does not take a revelation
from the Holy Spirit to see that you have failed. However, when you know
that you failed, what you do need is for the Holy Spirit to convict you
of your righteousness.

When you sin, look to the cross and say, Lord, thank you. It's faithful.
If you don't do that, something inside you, your DNA is very smart.

When you condemn yourself, it seems like the cells of your body say, he
wants to condemn himself. He wants to hurt himself. Let's create a
disease.

Doctors call it psychosomatic, autoimmune disorders when your body
fights against the cells. People are sick today, not because of sin. Sin
is taken care of.

People are sick because of condemnation. Condemnation kills. So when you
sin, what do you do? Look away from self to the cross and say, Father,
thank you.

There is my judgment. There is my beating. And all the cells in your
body go, peace, boys, relax.

The price is paid. It is finished. It is finished.

Hallelujah. It is well. Many adherents of hypergrace, when they hear the
word convict, they think it means condemn.

You are now guilty, convicted. The court convicts you of this crime.
Biblical conviction does not mean that.

When the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, and by the way, the same
word that's used for convict in John 16, that the Holy Spirit will
convict the world of sin. That same Greek word is used for rebuke or
reprove in quite a few other passages in the New Testament, including
Revelation 3.19, where Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke and
discipline. Same Greek word there for rebuke.

Therefore be zealous and repent. So condemnation is, you're guilty, away
from me. Condemnation is, gavel comes down, convict it, out of here,
next.

You know, next criminal, bring them in, and then we'll send them away.
If you're a child of God, you never come under his condemnation. If
you're a child of God, Romans 8.1, there is no damnation.

There is no doom. There is no condemnation for those who are in Messiah
Jesus. Conviction is God's loving rebuke.

It's a good thing God makes us uncomfortable in our sins. There's some
people that their nerves are dead and they can put their hands literally
on a burning stove and they don't know it. But the problem is, it's
still gonna burn and that's gonna damage their hand even further.

If we become insensitive to our sins, that opens the door to all types
of deception and backsliding and compromise. So the Holy Spirit in his
love doesn't condemn us, not what conviction means there, but he
lovingly rebukes us, makes us uncomfortable, so that we'll turn from
that sin, which is so hateful and destructive, and turn to God and
receive his mercy. The word effortless is also used by Andrew Womack in
the title of his book, Effortless Change.

The word is the seed that can change your life. In the book, he writes,
Effortless change, it sounds impossible. Yet that's what the word
reveals about how the kingdom of God works.

He continues, In this book, I want to share with you some truths from
the word of God that can totally transform the way you understand and
approach change. If you receive these truths into your heart and apply
them to your life, you'll be able to see change take place in your life
effortlessly. Joseph Prince teaches, My friend, there is no middle road.

You cannot mix your own efforts with God's grace. He says, When you
receive completely what Jesus has done for you, your doing will flow
effortlessly. Prince says, While success to the world comes by one's
self-effort, willpower, and striving by one's own strength, God's way to
supernatural effortless success is for you to depend totally on his
unmerited favor.

It's very interesting that many hyper-graced teachers will talk about
spirituality being effortless. The image would be of a tree. It doesn't
make an effort to grow.

It just drinks in the water and it grows naturally. Or a little child.
The little child doesn't make an effort to grow.

You don't sit there and stretch. You just eat and drink and sleep and
you grow naturally. On the one hand, that's totally true.

100% true. It's what Psalm 1 speaks of, what John 15 speaks of, the
abiding in God. And as we abide in God, we just bear fruit naturally.

And in that sense, it's effortless. On the flip side, it takes an effort
to remain united with him. It takes an effort to meditate in the word
day and night, recite, repeat, speak the word, get it in our heart and
mind as Psalm 1 and John 15 speak of, Jesus talking about his words
abiding in us and us abiding in him.

And throughout the New Testament, there are exhortations, be it Jesus
telling us to take up our cross, deny ourselves and follow him, be it
Paul telling us in 1 Corinthians 9 to run our race so as to win and to
discipline our bodies so that we won't be disqualified or the image of
Hebrews 12 of persevering in our race and encouraging us, hey, we
haven't yet resisted sin to the point of shedding our blood and talking
about the need to endure. In fact, it's a theme often repeated in
Hebrews. You need to endure.

You need to persevere. And spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6, this speaks
of a wrestling. This speaks of a battle.

There are many, many passages throughout the New Testament that speak of
this. In fact, in my Hypergrace book, when I address the question of
effortless spirituality, I first affirm where I agree and that we find
rest in Jesus, that we cease from our religious strivings and we do come
to him and find rest for our souls, as he says in Matthew 11, verses 28
to 30. But then I interview Jesus.

I interview Paul. I interview Peter. I interview other New Testament
authors.

And I say, is spiritually effortless? And I respond with verse after
verse after verse after verse. Now, the reason this is so important is
because many times when I've posted, say, on my Facebook page, on Ask
Dr. Brown on Facebook, I'll post a verse about persevering or enduring
or running our race or an exhortation from another Christian leader.
People will be saying amen.

And then someone, a Hypergrace adherent will chime in, that's just
religious works. That's just sin management. That's just behavior
modification.

I'm not into that, man. Spirituality is effortless. I'm thinking, why
are they rejecting Scripture? Dead words.

Law. Old acts. Inch.

Dirty art smell in the room. I set you free. To no longer strive.

On the contrary, Jesus said, strive to enter through the narrow gate.
For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. The
apostles also spoke about striving, willpower and making every effort.

I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God
and men. To this end, I also labor, striving according to His working,
which works in me mightily. Not that I have already attained this, that
is, I have not already been perfected, but I strive to lay hold of that
which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this.
Instead, I am single-minded, forgetting the things that are behind and
reaching out for the things that are ahead. With this goal in mind, I
strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

For to this end, we toil and strive because we have our hopes set on the
living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who
believe. Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven
worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth
accurately. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still
stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach
it.

Let us, therefore, strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by
the same sort of disobedience. For this very reason, make every effort
to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and
knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and
steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and
brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are
increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind,
having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore,
brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.
For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.

For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into
the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The apostle
Peter did not invalidate the work of the cross when he said, Save
yourselves from this perverse generation. The condition of repentance
for salvation is not a purchase price, as Crowder argues.

The condition of repentance and obedience do not change the gift of
grace into a wage. God does require self-effort from us, but the
striving of a Christian is not entirely dependent upon self-effort,
because we are also enabled by God's Spirit and in cooperation with
God's grace. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but
if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace, which was
bestowed upon me, was not in vain. But I labored more abundantly than
they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore,
my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but
now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do His good
pleasure. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all
wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this
end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me
mightily.

The word effortless is also used in the title of Benjamin Dunn's book,
The Happy Gospel, Effortless Union with a Happy God. He writes, the only
efforts necessary for this union with God were Christ's. Just simply
respond with childlike wonder and amazement at the work of Christ.

Just shout, yes, I believe it. John Crowder asks, Does happy, effortless
Christianity sound scandalous to you? Does a daily walk of joyful,
sinless existence seem like an impossibility? Moreover, Crowder says
that real conversion effortlessly leads you to a happy, holy life. The
repeated resistance to the fact that God requires us to make an effort
can only lead to apathy.

In the cases of Crowder and Dunn, effortless spirituality has led to
utter foolishness and devilish mockery of the Gospel. And I think what
this grace teaching does, I should say this hyper-grace teaching, it
absolves the Christian from any sort of personal responsibility. You
don't have to pray, you don't have to fast, you don't have to do
anything anymore.

You just sit there like a bump on the log and a great big funnel and God
does everything for you. I just don't get it. They're reading a totally
different Bible than the one I read.

And the one that all these people for centuries have read. It's a brand
new form of, I hate to even call it Christianity, but a brand new type
of religion that puts all the responsibility on God and absolves the
Christian of any personal responsibility whatsoever. God's grace teaches
us to say no to sin, to live soberly, righteously and godly.

Paul wrote, Zealous for good works. Joseph Prince says, As the moment
you accepted Jesus, God gave you an eternal A-plus for your right
standing with Him. In Pure Grace, Clark Whitten writes, You are like
Him, my friend, and are in a permanent and unchangeable state of
holiness.

When God looks at you, all He sees is the righteousness of Christ Jesus.
The second chapter of Crowder's book, Mystical Union, is called,
Sanctification is not a Process. Crowder says, The moment you decide to
do something to be holy, you have trusted in yourself instead of Christ
for salvation.

He didn't just die with him. This was not a partial death. Just to make
sure he was fully dead, they ran a spear right up into his side, and the
blood, you want to break your anointing? I'm going to break your bones
for you.

I'm going to come break your legs, Make sure you're dead. Don't need to,
you're dead. Not partially dead.

Not on the road to killing yourself, and sanctifying yourself for your
own person. Sanctification is not a process, it's a person. When you get
that theology, the Bible, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, He has become our
sanctification.

When you set apart, you are fully set apart. Sanctification isn't a
process, to be honest. We don't become more and more holy.

No, we become holy once and for all. We become sanctified once and for
all. Now the life we live is the overflow of what has happened.

That miracle overflowing through our mind and through our body. Amen? In
hyper-grace teaching, the idea that sanctification is progressive, is
actually called a spiritually murderous lie. That's a direct quote from
a prominent hyper-grace teacher.

The notion is you start from perfection. That the moment you are saved,
you are completely and totally sanctified and made holy. Now there's a
lot of language in scripture, but you have been sanctified.

For example, 1 Corinthians 6, 9-11, which talks about don't be deceived,
the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God. Then it lists various
sins. Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom.

Then 1 Corinthians 6, 11 says, and such were some of you. But you've
been washed. You've been sanctified.

You've been justified by the blood of the Lord Jesus, by the Spirit of
our God. So you have already been sanctified. That's part of it.

But that's not the whole story. The moment we are saved, God sets us
apart as holy. And He calls us holy ones.

That's how we're addressed in the New Testament. Saints. That's what it
means.

Holy ones. He sets us apart as holy. And now He calls us to live that
out.

1 Thessalonians 4. This is the will of God. Even your sanctification.
Live like this.

2 Corinthians 7, 1. Having these promises of being children of God and
God living among us, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved,
let us cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates body and
spirit, perfecting holiness, completing sanctification in the fear of
the Lord. So we are set apart as holy. Now we are called to live that
out.

So God, dealing with us in space and time, corrects us of our sins,
exhorts us not to displease Him or grieve Him, points out when we do
something wrong. The whole New Testament deals with sin in the lives of
believers. 1 Peter 1, we are called to be holy in all of our conduct
because the way we live, the way we act things out, is very important.

Just saying I'm a holy one, just saying I'm sanctified, is the
beginning. Now as a holy one sanctified, I am to live out my
sanctification. And then there's a final, ultimate sanctification.

1 Thessalonians 5, 23, Paul prays for the complete sanctification of our
spirit, soul, body. If we're already completely sanctified, we don't
need to be prayed for to be completely sanctified. Hyper-graced teachers
will look at what Paul writes in Colossians 2, which says you're
complete in Christ.

And some translations would point to being perfect, meaning that you are
100% perfect in God's sight because He sees you as a new creation
through the blood of Jesus. So therefore, He'll never deal with you
based on your sins. No matter what you do, you're still perfect in His
sight.

You can't grieve Him or disappoint Him or displease Him because you're
perfect. Let's just have Hebrews 10 up there. We'll just read verse 14
for the sake of time.

For by a single offering He has perfected for all time. Say for all
time. How much is for all time? By one sacrifice He has perfected
forever all of those who are being sanctified.

So let me close this question with this. When you come to Christ, you
are perfected forever in the eyes of God. They'll point to Hebrews 10,
which says that we have been perfected, but what that means there is
through the sacrifice of Jesus brought into a place where we can rightly
worship God.

In fact, in that very same passage in Hebrews 10, He talks about our
ongoing sanctification. So this is one of the big rubs. This is really,
really one of the biggest issues.

Christians have taught through the centuries that there are three parts
of sanctification. That positionally, the moment we're saved, we are set
apart as holy. Then progressively, as we grow and walk in the Lord, we
grow in holiness and to the character of Jesus, and then the final,
ultimate sanctification when we are resurrected and made perfectly holy.

According to hyper-grace teachers, there is no progressive
sanctification. You just think. You're now preaching this.

You're preaching be holy. Well, I'm already holy. You're preaching,
well, this is what God requires of you, your sanctification.

I'm already sanctified. Well, let us complete our sanctification in the
fear of God. I've already completed it.

You can see how this can be a real trap. It's like salvation. We're
saved.

We're being saved, and we will yet be saved, the Bible says. There's a
big difference between salvation and conversion. Salvation is that all-
inclusive moment, if you like, when we stand before God with our
glorified body.

That's our ultimate salvation, but we are converted the moment we are
born again of the spirit of God. We're regenerated, but then there's a
process towards maturity. Let us press on to maturity, not laying again
the foundation of repentance from dead works.

All of that is up to you and I. God does not do it for us. My father
used to say Christianity, in a sense, is like a do-it-yourself kit. God
provides you with all the pieces, but you have to put it together.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle. God says, here it is. Now you put it
together.

There's an element in which if a man purge himself from these things, he
shall be a vessel unto honor. There's a self-purging, if I can put it
that way, where God enlightens me through the Word of God that this
particular thing is wrong or that particular thing and so on. I repent
of it and then I move on.

This grace message absolves the believer from any of that. I can't say
it. Lay aside, put on.

You've got that phrase used many times in the Scriptures. I've got to
lay it aside. I've got to put it on.

Put on the whole armor of God. God doesn't put it on for me. He provides
it for me.

God provides, but I have to apply it. That application is up to the
believer. We are warned that the process of sanctification cannot
continue if a believer falls away or continues in sin.

For those who repent and believe Christ, His single sacrifice is
sufficient to present us to God, washing away our sins the moment we
were saved. But there's more. If we reject this once-for-all sacrifice,
if we decide that we can continue in willful unrepentant sin, there is a
fearful warning for us.

For if we sin willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the
truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. But a certain
fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour
the adversaries. Stern warnings like this have been relegated by hyper-
grace teachers.

Obviously, if Christians were already completely sanctified, the
apostles would not have to exhort them to live holy lives, which leads
to sanctification. For example, the apostle John said, And everyone who
has this hope in him, purifies himself, just as he is pure. Hyper-grace
teachers believe that Christians need to be delivered from trying to
please God.

John Crowder writes, It is high time the church gets delivered from God-
pleasing. Likewise, Clark Whitten writes, If you are working to please
Him, you are in for a lifetime of unfinished business, and it will leave
you perpetually exhausted. According to Paul Ellis, There is nothing
wrong with wanting to better yourself, but you have to understand that
in Christ you are already as good and pleasing to God as you ever will
be.

It is not true that Jesus pleased the Father so that we don't have to
please Him. Too many scriptures say otherwise. Therefore, we make it our
aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

Find out what pleases the Lord. For this reason we also, since the day
we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may walk
worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him. No one engaged in warfare
entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him
who enlisted him as a soldier.

But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel,
even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts.
Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you
should abound more and more just as you received from us how you ought
to walk and to please God. For you know what commandments we gave you
through the Lord Jesus.

But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God
is well pleased. Conversely, without such sacrifices, God is displeased.
And again, if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

An ancient Israelite, when he sins, he brings his lamb to the priest in
the tabernacle. And the priest does not examine the sinner, he examines
his offering. He does not look at the offerer.

It's obvious why he is there. He looks at the offering. Today when you
worship God, God is not looking at you.

God is looking at your offering. God looks at the lamb and examines the
lamb. Is the lamb good? Is the lamb without blemish? What do you reckon
about our lamb? Is he good? Is he perfect? Is he without blemish? Is he
altogether lovely? God accepts you in the offering that you bring.

Joseph Prince wrote, Stop examining yourself and searching your heart
for sin. Remember that when someone takes his sin offering to the
priest, the priest does not examine him, he examines the sin offering.
In contrast, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, But let a man examine
himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.
Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed
you are disqualified.

Paul Ellis says, But don't confuse behavior with identity. You are not
defined by what you do. Your identity is Christ, and in Him you are and
always will be 100% pleasing and acceptable to God.

As for seeing Christians perfect, 100% pleasing and acceptable to God,
no matter what they do, nothing could be further from the truth.
Consider what Jesus spoke to the churches in the book of Revelation. Out
of the seven churches, it was only the churches of Smyrna and
Philadelphia that God found to be perfect, 100% pleasing and acceptable.

The five other churches, made up of individual believers, were strongly
rebuked by Jesus. He sees you in Christ Jesus. He sees you in your older
brother.

When he looks at you, he just sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus.
He does not see your faults. He does not see your mistakes.

Well, first of all, if he's a real, genuine believer, he doesn't have
any sin, or he shouldn't have. But if he does sin, obviously God sees
it. He saw the sins of the five of the seven churches of Revelation,
drew their attention to it.

You know, God doesn't wear rose-colored glasses and sort of see
everything through the blood of Jesus. No, He sees us as we are. The
reason He disciplines us is because He sees things that need to be
chastened.

Every son He receives, He disciplines. so, obviously, He sees our
condition. He brings that out.

Paul saw the condition of the man that was living with his father's wife
1 Corinthians 5 and said, you know, it needs to be dealt with. He says,
you've not mourned, you've not grieved, and so on. Then when he writes
the 2nd Corinthians, he brings in the point, he says, you know, you've
got godly sorrow.

You've sort of finally woken up and it's brought you to repentance. So,
again, there is another case of repentance for the believer. So, yeah,
God sees us.

Paul certainly saw the condition of the church. He said, you know, your
babes, your carnal, he pointed out and the Word of God points out. Now,
it's not for condemnation.

It's so that God can deal with the situation. It's like going to a
doctor and the doctor says, listen, you've got this disease or whatever
it is, we need to operate. Yet John Crowder says, whenever someone is
saved, the battle against sin is decisively over.

He also writes, we are not climbing an unseen ladder. We have already
arrived. The only thing that differentiates you from a Muslim, from a
Buddhist, from a Hindu, is that you've already arrived.

But the Apostle Paul wrote, not that I have already attained or am
already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which
Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself
to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which
are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Holiness is not about doing this or not doing that, about your clothing
or your hairstyle or whatever it is.

It's not about your behavior. It's not about do's and don'ts. It's all
about being occupied with the lovely one, Jesus.

The commandments of Christ and His Apostles are an important part of the
Gospel of the Grace of God. In the Gospel of John we read, For the law
was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Jesus epitomized grace and truth.

Even though Jesus did not come to perpetuate the law of Moses, this
doesn't mean that Jesus had no law. Jesus' commands and His eternal law
are not opposed to grace. Jesus and the Apostles referred to the Old
Covenant law of Moses in the following terms, Until John the Baptist,
obsolete, growing old, ready to vanish away, is passing away, abolished.

While the law of Moses was the inspired word of God in the Old
Testament, its civil and ceremonial ordinances are not imposed upon
Christians in the New Testament. Since we have heard that some who went
out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying
you must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such
commandment. Peter the Apostle said, Now therefore why do you test God
by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers
nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ we should be saved in the same manner as they.

When the Apostles say things like you are not under law but under grace,
and the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ, they are contrasting the Old Covenant law of Moses with
the New Testament. In those passages, grace is being used as a synonym
for the New Covenant, primarily because the forgiveness of sins is a
major theme throughout the New Testament. But that is not to say that
the New Covenant has no law.

A very common sentiment today is the notion that, look, I'm free, I have
liberty in Christ Jesus, I don't have to worry about what I do and how I
do it, I don't need to dot I's, cross T's, that's legalism. And you
know, I'm not a fan of legalism anymore than anyone else would be.
However, what we see is this concept, this marring of a concept of being
free, or having liberty in Christ Jesus.

You see, we're a slave. We're a slave unto sin in our Adam condition.
However, there is one that has come, he's known as the last Adam.

And he has accomplished something that actually, when we turn to Jesus
Christ and believe, there's a new law in effect. The law of sin and
death, sin, you die, has been trumped by a higher law, the law of
believe and live. And so when we believe in Jesus Christ, we have life.

And when we have life, we are free from our old Adam state, called the
flesh. We're no longer ruled by our carnal or baser instincts, but we
are now ruled by a higher life. We are ruled by our Lord and Master,
Jesus Christ.

So what are we free from? Are we free from God? No. We're free from our
old lusts and behaviors, so that we can now live unto God and be a slave
unto righteousness. Before we were a slave unto sin, but now we can be a
slave unto righteousness.

And some people are like, I don't want that, I want to be free from God.
Well, that's not Christianity. If you want life and life abundant, you
give your life unto Jesus Christ.

You see, you're going to be a slave one way or the other. You're either
going to be a slave unto sin and remain on that throne of your life and
die. You sin, you die.

Or you believe and you live. But when you believe and you live, what
you're doing is you're giving up your life as you now know it. You're
coming to that cross, you're dying, so that Christ can now live.

It's old man and new man. That old life is crucified. Paul says, I am
crucified with Christ.

My old man was crucified in Christ Jesus. This is a fact. But then when
you turn to Jesus, you have newness of life.

It's not just that your old life dies and now you're in control and
you're free from that old life, and you're free from God too, and you
just live your own way. No, you're free from the old man, so that a new
man can take the reins. And you are now ruled by the Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.

You have a king of kings and a lord of lords that masters you. That's
good news. It's not bad news.

If we're in control of our own life, we die. We need to be controlled by
God. In general, hyper-graced teachers have created a false dichotomy
between a grace-filled relationship with God and a commandment-keeping
faith relationship with God.

The truth is that a saving relationship with God is characterized by
obedient faith enabled by His grace. Steve McVeigh claims, whether we
see people as living morally or immorally, we're viewing life through a
lens we aren't intended to use. God hasn't designed life to be lived
based on a system of morality.

He has a much better plan in mind for us than that. Paul Ellis writes, a
counterfeit gospel will imprison you within the confining walls of rules
and regulations, but the true gospel proclaims, if the Son sets you
free, you will be free indeed. The New Testament is very clear that a
new covenant has been inaugurated with the people of God.

It's to Israel and Judah and then by extension to all those who believe
in the Jewish Messiah. And this new covenant is not like the Sinai
covenant. That was a covenant even though the laws were good and
perfect.

Paul says in Romans 7 the law is holy and just and good. Read Psalm 19.
Read Psalm 119.

The law is something praised and God is to be thanked for his wonderful
commandments and statutes but it was written on stone, not on our
hearts. So the law is over here telling me, Mike Brown, don't commit
adultery. Mike Brown, don't worship idols.

Mike Brown, don't steal. And I myself fall short as a fallen human being
and that now condemns me and that's why Israel suffered the way it did
in the Old Testament Scriptures because it was constantly falling short.
That's why God said he would make a new and better covenant, one where
he would put his law on our hearts.

So Paul says in Romans 6 as he's exhorting us and encouraging us to die
to sin and live to God, he says you're not under law, you're under
grace. Now by the way, he is telling us that to encourage us to live a
holy life. He's telling us that to help us live an overcoming life.

However, the hyper-grace camp often reacts against commandments
themselves, laws themselves. One hyper-grace teacher said if God wrote
the law, the Ten Commandments on our hearts, it would kill us. No! If he
writes his law on a new heart that's been redeemed by Jesus, it's now
our nature to do it.

That's why the New Testament is filled with commandments. In 1
Thessalonians 4, when Paul's exhorting the Thessalonians there, he uses
the word for exhortation, which is basically a commandment word. This is
what we command at you.

And that's why Paul can freely quote from the Ten Commandments in
Ephesians 6. And he says, children, obey your parents and the Lord for
this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first
commandment with a promise. Paul quotes from the Ten Commandments and
gives it to the Ephesians as such.

So in point of fact, the law is good in and of itself. We are bad.
That's the problem.

So God made a new and better covenant where he changes us from the
inside out and puts his laws on our heart. So that means we can read all
of the word and be enriched by it, be changed by it, helped by it,
edified by it, learn about the holiness of God through it, but not be
under that system of law as a system of justification. Legalism is bad
in itself.

Law is not bad in itself. And sometimes hyper-graced teachers make that
failure to distinguish. And they think that somehow law in itself is
bad.

Law brings wrath because of the sinfulness of man. Law is the strength
of sin because of the sinfulness of man. As new creations, we now love
the law of God, which is written on our hearts, and we say, I delight to
do your will, as per Hebrews, the 10th chapter.

And the hyper-graced camp has too broadly defined the law. They
understand the term law as any command in the Old Testament or New
Testament that requires from us some work of obedience, whether it was
given by Moses or Jesus. For instance, Eric Dijkstra defines law as
trying to change yourself through self-effort, rules, or willpower.

I mean, think about it for a second. Think about it. Basically, you've
got two taps to deal with.

On the one side over here, we talked about this last week, there's the
tap of the law. Everybody say law. By law, I mean this.

We try to change ourselves through self-effort, through rules, and
through willpower. You can go ahead and throw that up on the side
screens. We try to change ourselves through self-effort, through laws,
and through willpower.

But the New Testament writers specifically refer to the law of Moses
under the Old Covenant when they speak about the law. Hyper-graced
teachers understand Paul to be referring to any works of righteousness
whatsoever when he says law. When the Bible speaks about the law, it's
speaking about God's word of command.

And when it speaks about the gospel, it's speaking about God's word of
promise. Remember, when I say law gospel here, we can nuance this in a
thousand different ways. That's not my intention here this morning, but
we've got to understand this is the genre of command and the genre of
promise.

The gospel of grace that Paul preached is not being preached in the
majority of churches around the world. That is a fact. It's not
critical.

It's a fact. They still mix law and grace together. Alright.

Prince says the more we try to be righteous, we fall from grace. After
you are righteous, as a gift, God gives you the gift of righteousness.
The more you try to be righteous after that, you fall from grace.

In the context of his epistle, Paul is clearly referring to
justification by the law of Moses, namely circumcision and other
ceremonial ordinances. Paul is not rebuking the Galatians for obeying
Jesus Christ or trying to be righteous. In fact, Paul said to the
Galatians, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should
not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed
among you as crucified? You ran well.

Who hindered you from obeying the truth? The problem with the Galatians
was their disobedience in seeking to be justified by the law of Moses,
not that they were trying to be obedient to God. Elsewhere, Paul clearly
stressed the importance of obedient faith and the works of
righteousness. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves
slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin
leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God
bethinked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the
heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of
God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom
of God. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God
for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high
thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to
punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. But
fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be
named among you, as is fitting for saints, neither filthiness, nor
foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather
giving of thanks.

For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man
who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of
God. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth,
fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which
is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the
sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived
in them.

Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal, the
Lord knows those who are His, and let everyone who names the name of
Christ depart from iniquity. They profess to know God, but in works they
deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good
work. This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm
constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to
maintain good works.

These things are good and profitable to men. And having been perfected,
He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. While
Paul is said to be the apostle of the law-free gospel, this can only
accurately refer to his rejection of the law of Moses as a means of
salvation.

Paul was not altogether anti-law, but he was against the idea that
keeping the law of Moses was a requirement for salvation. But Paul
absolutely taught observance to the commandments of Jesus. Paul said,
circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the
commandments of God is what matters.

Paul is clear that grace is for obedience. Through Him we have received
grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for
His name. Though Jesus did come to set us free from sin, Jesus also has
rules.

Grace is not a substitute for obedience or a covering for disobedience.
Grace is for obedience to Jesus Christ. Paul says his message to the
Romans was to bring about obedience to the faith.

And Peter, again, he calls us obedient children. I've often thought, you
know, instead of using the word Christian the way we do, it's become
sort of watered down. It would be neat to call ourselves obedient
children.

Are you an obedient child? You know, that's what God is after. In the
book Grace, the Forbidden Gospel, the author states, at the risk of
sounding critical, it remains a sad reality that the Bible society chose
to combine the Old and New Testaments into one single book. This single
decision has caused widespread confusion within the ranks of believers
throughout the world.

Many of the writings in the Bible before the cross portray God to be a
harsh, cruel being set on destroying and punishing people if they dared
to disobey the set of moral standards represented by the Ten
Commandments and the other laws. There's some other things that I've
seen in the hyper-grace camp that concern me. Along with the denigration
of the law in a wrong way, not in the spirit of the New Testament, but
in a wrong way, there's often a denigration of the Old Testament as a
whole.

One hyper-grace author in his book said that the worst thing that ever
happened for believers is that the Old Testament and New Testament were
put together in one book. And now people have a wrong view of who God is
because of the God of the Old Testament. I wrote to him and said, do you
actually believe this because I'm taking issue with it in my book? He
said, oh yeah, 100%.

That's terribly dangerous. That is a heretical idea. And that's the old
heresy of Marcion who said that the God of the Old Testament was
different than the God of the New Testament and that the Old Testament
should not be part of the Christian canon.

Very, very dangerous. When you do that, it's like building a two-story
house and cutting out the first floor. You're going to bring a collapse
with that.

The God of the New Testament is the same God of the Old Testament who
destroys and punishes those who disobey Him. There are even examples of
this recorded in the New Testament after the event of the cross. For
instance, the angel of the Lord struck Herod so that he died.

Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give
glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. Also, after the event
of the cross, Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit and fell down
dead as a consequence for their sin.

And there were those in the Old Testament who found God's grace. For
example, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the genealogy
of Noah.

Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.
God said to Moses, You have found grace in my sight, and I know you by
name.

Thus God was still a God of grace in the Old Testament and still a God
of wrath in the New Testament. The author of Grace, the Forbidden Gospel
writes, Paul preached a different message than Jesus, but for a good
reason. They were living under different covenants.

Hyper-grace teachers create a conflict between what Paul preached and
what Christ preached. Did Jesus and Paul really preach two different
messages? Two different gospels? What gospel did Jesus preach? We read
that Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Then Jesus went about all the
cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel
of the kingdom.

Most of Jesus' parables and teachings described the kingdom of God. God
established a kingdom, the king of which is Jesus, the citizens
Christians, and the laws of which are the commandments of Christ. The
gospel message of the kingdom of God is consistent throughout the New
Testament, beginning with John the Baptist who came preaching in the
wilderness of Judea, preparing the way for Christ and saying, Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the
gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. What
gospel? The gospel he just preached.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus said, I must preach the kingdom of
God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.
Then Jesus commanded his disciples to go to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel and preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
Furthermore, Jesus said, And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached
in all the world as a witness to all the nations. And then the end will
come.

This is the one and only gospel that Christians are to preach in all the
world until the end comes. The gospel of the kingdom. Did the message
change after the cross? Or after the resurrection? Luke, the historian,
recorded, The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus
began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up, after
he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom
he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his
sufferings by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty
days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

The gospel of the kingdom was also the message of the earliest
Christians. But when they believed Philip as he preached the things
concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, both men and
women were baptized. What about Paul? Did Paul really preach a different
message than Christ and the other disciples? Of course not.

And Paul went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months,
reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. So
when they had appointed Paul a day, many came to him at his lodging, to
whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God,
persuading them concerning Jesus, from both the law of Moses and the
prophets, from morning till evening. Then Paul dwelt two whole years in
his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the
kingdom of God, and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him.

From John the Baptist, to Jesus, to the apostles, to the apostle Paul.
The gospel message has always been the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Paul only believed in and preached one gospel.

In fact, Paul had zero tolerance for any other gospel, in Galatians 1,
8-10. What about the gospel of grace? Paul considered the gospel of the
kingdom of God and the gospel of grace to be one and the same. Paul
said, But none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to
myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I
received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of
God.

And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching
the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Notice how Paul used these
terms, gospel of the grace of God, and gospel of the kingdom of God,
interchangeably and synonymously. Paul never referred to more than one
gospel.

This gospel of the kingdom is the gospel of grace. There is only one
gospel. It is an act of grace that God sent us the gospel of the kingdom
of God, the message of salvation, also called the gospel of grace.

But the hyper-grace movement teaches that Jesus' ministry was under the
Old Covenant, so His teachings are not for us. Mike Kapler and Joel
Bruschi have a podcast called Growing in Grace. In a blog post called
How Much of What Jesus Said is for Us Today, Bruschi essentially says
that Jesus' ministry was part of the Old Covenant, and therefore His
teachings are not for us today.

For instance, he says, Jesus' words about forgiveness in the Lord's
Prayer is a Jewish mandate, and not for Christians. He argues, Jesus'
words as recorded in the Gospels were often intended solely for a
particular group of people, most often His fellow Jews. What we're
saying is that the New Covenant didn't begin at the start of the book of
Matthew, but it actually began after the death of Jesus.

Jesus did indeed have an Old Covenant ministry that led up to His death
and resurrection, which then brought about the New Covenant and ended
the Old Covenant. Under the Old Covenant Jesus spoke many times as a Jew
to Jewish people. Under the Old Covenant, including Jesus' Old Covenant
teachings in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if they didn't forgive
others, God would not forgive them.

But under the New Covenant, which is completely new and is completely
separate and different and much, much better than the Old, we have
already been forgiven of all sins because of nothing less than the blood
of Jesus. Everything is changed in this New Covenant after the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Joseph Prince argues that some things that Jesus
said in the four Gospels were spoken before the cross, before He had
died for our sins, and some were said after the cross, when He had
already won our complete forgiveness and rightfully given us His
righteousness.

It is the latter that applies to us, believers under the New Covenant
today. Hyper-Grace teachers point out how the New Testament was in force
after the death of Christ. Here's the big thing.

The New Covenant began upon the death, burial, and resurrection of
Jesus. The writer of Hebrews says a covenant is not of effect until the
death of the one that wrote it. So Jesus then lived under the Old
Covenant.

When He talked about forgiveness there, He was called a minister to the
circumcision, a minister to the Jew. It was a law mentality. Hebrews 9,
verse 16 and 17, they say this.

They say a covenant is only in force when there's been a death. Now,
what does that mean? It means that a covenant, even the New Covenant, it
did not begin with baby Jesus in a manger. Now, I know, I know you go
get your Bible, you grab it off the shelf, and you look at Matthew
chapter 1, and you flip back one page, and in big block letters it says,
the New Testament.

Well, what I'm saying is, that's not right. That's not the beginning of
the New Testament era. It's not the beginning of the New Covenant.

A covenant begins not at a birth, but at a death. The dividing line of
human history is not baby Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. The dividing
line of human history is Jesus hanging on a cross.

A covenant is in force only when there's been a death. And so, what does
that mean then? Well, it helps me understand, what's Jesus' motive as
He's saying, cut off your hand, pluck out your eye, sell everything.
What's His motive? His motive is to say, you need me.

You need the New Covenant. And how am I going to show you that? Tough
love. I'm going to show you through exposing the fallacy of works
righteousness.

Now, I want you to ask yourself, when did this New Covenant really
begin? I mean, when did it all get started? Because I'll tell you, we go
to the Bible, and we turn to Matthew chapter 1, and then we flip back
one page, and in big block letters it says, the New Testament. Now, the
publishers put that there, but let me tell you, that's not really the
beginning of the New Testament. The New Testament does not begin, the
New Covenant does not begin, this new agreement, this new contract does
not begin on any page in a book.

It doesn't begin with baby Jesus in a manger either. It begins with
Jesus Christ hanging on a cross. Yes, the death of Christ was necessary
as he was the mediator of the New Covenant, but this does not negate the
teachings of Christ prior to the cross.

Though the New Covenant was not in force until the death of Christ,
according to Hebrews 9, the terms and conditions of the covenant were
given in Jesus' earthly ministry while he was still living. In fact, one
of the major characteristics of the New Covenant is that God would write
his laws on the minds and hearts of his people. In Hebrews 8, 8-12, the
author quotes Jeremiah 31, 31-34, prophesying of the New Covenant.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write
them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. Thus, in the New Covenant, not only are our sins forgiven, but
God also writes his laws upon the minds and hearts of his people.

It's not that hyper-graced teachers altogether dismiss the pre-cross
teachings of Jesus, but they do argue that the purpose of Jesus'
teachings is not for our obedience, but for teaching the hopelessness of
the Old Covenant. In the Naked Gospel, Andrew Farley writes, Peter,
James, John, and Paul wrote epistles about life under the New Covenant.
Years earlier, Jesus was teaching hopelessness under the Old.

The audience wasn't the same, the covenant wasn't the same, and the
teachings aren't the same. It is these preachers of law that love to
quote scriptures from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John out
of context, forgetting that the crowds who Jesus was preaching to were
Jews. These Jews had been polluted with hundreds of years of preaching
of the Old Testament law, hearing day after day that it is their
obedience to the law that will cause them to become righteous, and that
their level of morality and good performance will earn them God's
acceptance and blessings.

Is it true that Jesus was teaching hopelessness under the Old Covenant?
Jesus was ushering in the Kingdom of God and New Covenant. Jesus himself
said, For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. In other
words, the Old Testament law was until John the Baptist.

Then, Jesus inaugurated something new. Jesus said, The law and the
prophets were until John. Since that time, the Kingdom of God has been
preached, and everyone is pressing into it.

Since the time of John the Baptist, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is
preached, and Christ's commandments are the law of that kingdom.
Christ's commandments far surpass those of the Old Covenant law of
Moses, and he ushered in a higher standard of righteousness. In the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quoted from the Old Testament, saying, You
have heard that it was said, but I say to you, Moses said that, but
grace and truth says this.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder,
and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you,
that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in
danger of the judgment. Grace is always a higher standard than the law.

In other words, it doesn't lower the bar, it raises the bar. The law
says, thou shalt not commit adultery. That's the law.

But I say to you, grace, because he came full of grace and truth,
whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery.
That raises the bar. One is just, don't commit adultery.

Now it's, boy, if I even look at a woman, you know. And all the way
through Matthew 5, he makes a statement, and then he raises the bar. So
grace is not, I think a lot of people think that grace is some sort of
chink in God's armor that you can sort of drive a truckload of sin
through, and it doesn't worry him.

No. Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him
give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you, that whoever
divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to
commit adultery.

And whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. Again, you
have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely
but shall perform your oaths to the Lord. But I say to you, do not swear
at all.

You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. But I tell you not to resist an evil person. You have heard that
it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good
to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you. How does the grace reformation respond to the Sermon on
the Mount? They say the Sermon on the Mount is not for us. In his book,
Extra Virgin Grace, Ryan Rufus writes, Matthew 5.1-7.29 is the Sermon on
the Mount.

Is this sermon intended for the church? Absolutely not. It is intended
for the self-righteous. It is a pre-salvation preach that exposes self-
righteous pride and performance and reveals the need for God's
righteousness as a gift through faith in order to see the kingdom and
become children of God.

Unless you really understand grace, don't go near the Beatitudes. They
will mess you up. Teaching the Beatitudes to Christians produces
legalism and religious pride or condemnation in them.

We must rightly divide the Word of God to see what Jesus was saying and
trying to achieve here. The Beatitudes are not for the church, but were
for unbelieving Israel. The church doesn't need the Sermon on the Mount.

If you were to ask Jesus if he intended the sermon to be a standard that
the church measures itself against, he would either start rolling around
on the floor screaming with laughter or bow his head and weep. This is a
pre-salvation message that is delivered to self-righteous people who
think that they are doing well with righteousness because they can keep
some of the law. Once this message has done its job, it has served its
purpose, and we then move on to the way of the Spirit.

But Jesus himself said, It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh
profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are
life.

That includes the Sermon on the Mount. Introducing his commandments in
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Whoever therefore breaks one of the
least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in
the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven.

In conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Not everyone who
says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who
does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your
name, and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to
them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will
liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain
descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house,
and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who
hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, will be like a foolish
man who built his house on the sand, and the rain descended, the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great
was its fall. Furthermore, Jesus says that keeping his commandments is
evidence of our love for him.

If you love me, keep my commandments. He who has my commandments and
keeps them, it is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by
my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. If anyone
loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will
come to him and make our home with him.

He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you
hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. If you keep my
commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's
commandments and abide in his love. You are my friends, if you do
whatever I command you.

And John the apostle wrote, Now by this we know that we know him if we
keep his commandments. He who says, I know him and does not keep his
commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Now he who keeps
his commandments abides in him, and he in him, and by this we know that
he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us.

By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and
keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments. This is love, that we walk according to his commandments.

This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you
should walk in it. Even after the event of the cross, after the
resurrection, and after the inauguration of the new covenant, Jesus gave
the great commission and said, Go therefore and make disciples of all
the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have
commanded you. Jesus' words are clearly for us in the new covenant.

Christians are to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, If you abide
in my word, you are my disciples indeed. It is by abiding in the words
of Christ that we are his disciples.

It is by keeping his commandments in the gospels that we abide in him.
Perhaps one of the best pictures of salvation is found in John the 15th
chapter, where Jesus says, Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can
you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me, and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you
can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a
branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the
fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in
you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be
my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my
love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have
kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. One of my greatest
concerns with hyper-grace teaching is it relegates virtually all the
teaching of Jesus before the cross to the Jewish listeners then.

And it says, for example, Sermon on the Mount does not apply to us
today. The Lord's Prayer does not apply to us today. The parables about
reward and punishment don't apply to us today.

That was for the Jewish listeners before the cross. It's a tremendous
concern to me. Number one, as a lover of Jesus, I want to drink in every
word he says.

I want to embrace his words. John the 15th chapter says that if we
remain united with him and his words remain united in us, abide in him,
his words abide in us, ask what will be done for us. The Great
Commission in Matthew 28, Jesus says as we make disciples, we teach them
to observe everything he commanded us.

The Greek tense is referring to what he previously taught. John 14, he
said the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance the things that he
taught. Why? So the apostles could write them down.

Why did they spend so many years preserving his teaching, passing them
on orally, and then decades later putting them in written form for the
body if it was just for the Jewish believers before? It is so misguided
and so destructive, and it takes away the call to take up our cross, the
call to deny ourself, the call to leave everything and follow him. Think
of all of the calls to discipleship, all of the calls to obedience, all
of the lofty ethic of Jesus that was put there for us. Not just for
those who would hear it for a few years and most of them would reject it
or not even understand what he was saying.

No, this is given to us. That's why Acts 1 says that Luke writes in the
former treatise in the Gospel of Luke, I spoke about everything Jesus
began to do and teach. Now it continues.

This is not something that has a break from the words and deeds of
Jesus. They continue through us today. And it's a very, very serious
thing to say that the words of the Savior, which some Bibles they put in
red ink so that will especially recognize their importance that they
should basically be put in invisible ink.

That's very dangerous. As Christians, we ought to take the words and
commands of Christ seriously. But hyper-graced teachers will say that
nobody really believes every word Jesus said because if they did, then
they would have to cut off their hand and pluck out their eye.

It is for unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor. Amen. You know, when
Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, he said love your enemies.

We've got problems loving our neighbor, let alone our enemies. He said
if your right eye offends you, pluck it out. Throw it away from you.

If your hand offends you, cut it off. Have you seen any church, anyone
doing that? The church would look like a huge amputation ward. If your
right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.

For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than
for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes
you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. For it is more profitable
for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be
cast into hell.

Matthew 5, 29-30. If we truly obeyed these verses, there would be a lot
of Christians without eyes and hands. So in the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus said if your eye offends you, pluck it out.

Throw it away from you. If your hand offends you and causes you to sin,
cut your hand off. Has anyone done that? The church would look like a
huge amputation ward.

Well Pastor Prince, you should have come earlier like a few years ago.
Clap your stumps all together. And he says cut off your hand, pluck out
your eye, be perfect, sell everything.

If we were obeying this today, the church would look like an amputation
ward. Of course Jesus did not intend for us to amputate our body parts.
Jesus is instructing us here to take ruthless action against the sins
that will result in separation from God and hellfire.

The eye represents the thoughts, while the hand represents the works.
Thus, you must ruthlessly avoid the thoughts and actions that will
prevent you from entering into the kingdom of God. If there are places
you go, people you associate with, ways you make a living, hobbies or
interests that you have that present great temptation, then you must cut
these things out of your life, even if they be as much a part of your
own identity as your own hand or eye.

Paul instructs us, mortify therefore your members which are upon the
earth. Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil
concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. For if you live
after the flesh, you shall die.

But if you through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you
shall live. If your hand or eye caused you to sin, it would indeed be
better to cut it off than to be cast into hell. But eyes and hands do
not cause a person to sin.

Hands and eyes may be instruments of sin, but they don't cause sin
because sin begins in the heart. Jesus said, Do you not yet understand
that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated?
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and
they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

These are the things which defile a man. It is not to be thought that
Jesus intended for a person to cut off their hand or pluck out their
eye, for that is not where the real problem lies. He speaks
hypothetically.

If it were even your hand or even your eye that caused you to sin, get
rid of it. But it's not even possible for your hand or eye to cause you
to sin. A person's own desires and lusts cause them to sin, not their
eyes or hands.

James said, each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires
and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and
sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. A blind person or a
quadriplegic can still lust, though they have no eyes to pluck out or
members to cut off.

So when Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out,
and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. He is using a
figure of speech to convey the severity of sin, but not the remedy for
sin. Jesus' commandments are not opposed to grace, but they are grace,
and they are truth.

The words I speak are spirit and life. He is the Word. He's the living
Word.

The Word became flesh. He also said that I don't speak and say a thing
unless the Father tells me. So if you say that Jesus' words are not for
the Christian, then you see God's words are not for the Christian.

There's no contradiction in the Trinity. He that rejects me and does not
receive my sayings or my word has one who will judge him. The Word I
spoke will judge him on the last day.

He goes on to say, therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the
Father has told me. You can't get it any clearer than that. The very
words I speak are going to be the things that are going to judge you on
that day.

Christians who seek to love Jesus by obedient faith and oppose the new
grace reformation are vilified as grace-haters, Pharisees, self-
righteous, legalists, or law-keepers who are under works and in bondage.
Joseph Prince writes, Notice that there was one group of people that was
very unhappy with what Paul was preaching, the Pharisees, or what I call
the religious mafia. These religious keepers of the law are still around
today.

The law binds them. When they see believers impacted by grace, they
become filled with envy because they have worked so hard and depended on
their own efforts to achieve their own sense of self-righteousness.
Clark Witten writes, The rock-throwing legalists who fill modern
Christian churches and spawn the Pharisaical preachers they listen to
each Sunday seem to be more dim-witted than the Pharisees of Jesus' day.

They at least walked away without saying a word in John 8-9 and had
sense enough to keep their mouths shut, which is more than can be said
of the mean-spirited Pharisees of our day. According to Rob Rufus,
grace-haters are the legalists who will try to intimidate, manipulate,
and dominate people with the spirit of witchcraft. They are parrots and
puppets, no longer voices for God, but echoes, not pursuing God but
pursuing opportunities for position and prestige.

They are cloned to act the same, dress the same, and speak in the same
religious tones. You know where everyone looks the same, you can be sure
a religious spirit is operating. One of my biggest problems with hyper-
graced teachers and adherents is that they are so graceless towards
those who differ with them.

I don't want to go tit-for-tat with Dr. Michael Brown. I'm sure he's a
nice guy and he can grow a mustache almost as nice as mine. He's the guy
who wrote the book Hypergrace in which he quotes me as many times as
Joseph Prince as the fringe extreme of this movement.

He travels from Pentecostal church to church getting people as scared of
me as they are ISIS, Obama, and the New World Order. Dr. Brown's chief
ministry is built on debating people, and I personally think debate is
just a rhetoric game, so I'm not interested. And the trophy of the truth
goes to the winner of this debate.

Look, it's just as silly and as staged in my opinion, but that's how he
rolls and that's fine. Look, I'll just put out a little teach every now
and then, you can do what you want to with it. Now, if it sounds like
I'm calling Dr. Brown a Pharisee, well he does spend a lot of time
attacking others and breaching the law, but look, I don't necessarily
think he plays well with us, but I'm not going to personally attack him
with an ad hominem argument.

As for his teachings, on the other hand, I will be quite blunt. Many of
his teachings resemble Judaism far more than Christianity. There seems
to be a hyper sensitivity, and the moment you challenge this, the moment
you question some of the teaching, when they say, for example, that the
words of Jesus spoken before the cross, like the Sermon on the Mount,
that was just for the Jewish people before the cross, they don't apply
to us today, and when you challenge that and give them good reason for
it, you get called a law keeper, you get called a Pharisee, you get
called a legalist.

One leading hyper-grace author makes these accusations, not naming
names, but he makes these broad accusations throughout his books, which
means that if you don't agree with his position, those that follow him
think that you're one of those people. You're one of those really bad
condemning, Pharisaical law keeping, grace haters, and you're just
trying to put them back into bondage. So, rather than nuancing things,
and say, look, there are some legalists, and they teach this, and it's
destructive, and there are some in their zeal to please God, they can
get into a performance mentality, and we need to help them see God's
grace.

Instead, they come out as graceless accusers, which means there's
something deeper, some hypersensitivity there that needs to be dealt
with. Because until they have overcome that, they are not really walking
in the grace of God. And let me tell you, a lot of hard-hearted
legalists have trouble accepting this abundant freebie of forgiveness.

Grace is not cheap, it is free. That's the scandal. But unless people
are beating themselves down continually, I don't know, listen to Leonard
Ravenhill or somebody, they can't stomach the idea that God likes them.

In Peter's conclusion and farewell of his first epistle, the Apostle
says, To him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. By
Silvanus, our faithful brother, as I consider him, I have written to you
briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in
which you stand.

Yeah, I was speaking with Dr. Michael Brown on one of his radio programs
about a year ago. And it was about maybe a week before that, just
reading my devotions through 1 Peter. And I got to the end, and I don't
think I'd ever seen it before, and I brought it to Michael Brown's
attention, that he basically summarizes that entire epistle by saying,
you know, the words that I've written to you are about the true grace of
God.

In other words, it was an elaboration on grace. And I'd never quite seen
it that way. You know, true grace implies, obviously, that there is a
false grace.

And you go through 1 Peter, in fact I've got a few notes here. Verse 2,
that you may obey Jesus Christ. Verse 14, as obedient children do not be
conformed to the former lusts, but be holy in your behavior.

Chapter 2, verse 2, long for the pure milk of the Word, that you may
grow thereby. 2 and verse 9, you're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, or a holy people. Chapter 2 and verse 11, I urge you to
abstain from fleshly lusts.

And then he goes on, he himself, in verse 24, bore our sins in his body
on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. I mean,
the whole thing is towards righteousness, is towards purity. That's the
intention of grace.

God giving us the power to live a triumphant life over sin, to have
victory over sin. Sin doesn't have dominion. Grace has got more
dominion.

It's got more power. They think of grace as a sort of a commodity. That
God's got a warehouse full of this grace.

He's trying to get rid of it, you know, and so he's got a fire sale. You
know, so grace is something external from God. No, God is grace.

In fact, Hebrews talks about the spirit of grace. You've insulted or
you've grieved the spirit of grace. Grace is a person.

And it's God's power working in us to bring about, again, his desire
that we might be conformed to the image of his Son. That's God's
ultimate purpose. And anything short of that, then, frustrates or
thwarts the grace of God.

Another concern is that some hyper-grace teachers have gone to bizarre
extremes. Now, this is not the norm, but I see it as a potential fruit
of carrying out the hyper-grace message. Some have now claimed that no
matter what they do, it's been redeemed as holy.

That everything they do is holy and they engage in all kinds of
atrocious behaviors and claim it's redeemed. Now, again, that's an
absolute fringe. But you could get there if you resist the conviction of
the Spirit in your life.

You could get there if you believe that God always sees you as perfect.
Every major hyper-grace teacher would renounce that, but I see that.
It's not a hurry.

We're not fleecing you. I've seen a few on the fringe heading towards
universalism. After all, if the finished work of the cross means there's
nothing for me to add to it at all, well, why do I have to add my faith
to it? If Jesus paid for all the sins of the human race and it was
finished, why must I add my faith to it? There are some, again, fringe.

They would be renounced by all the mainstream hyper-grace teachers. But
on the fringe, they are now saying, why not? One even went as far as
saying, what about the demons? What about Satan? One went as far as
saying that if Jesus did not spend so much time cursing the Pharisees
and rebuking the Pharisees, that Jerusalem wouldn't have been destroyed.
He should have spent more time blessing them.

I mean, it's one of the most insane things I've ever read. Again, it's
on the fringe. But I understand how it gets there.

That's why hyper-grace teachers really need to step back and do a major
course correction because there are things they are saying that are
leading people to these bizarre extremes. Titus chapter 2 verse 11.
We'll close here.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
training us or teaching us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions
and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age.
So what does the grace of God do? It teaches us, it trains us, to
renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled,
upright and godly lives in the present age waiting for our blessed hope,
the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us to what? Redeem us from all lawlessness and to
purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for
good works. Let this be the foundation of our grace teaching and it will
keep us properly anchored.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/dtRVWeoNuvw.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/michael-l-brown/hyper-grace-documentary-feat-dr-michael-brown-david-ravenhill-and-eric-ludy/
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