Privacy Policy for http://propitiation-peace.blogspot.com/

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Masterpiece Revelations

In Philippians 1:8-10, the Apostle Paul said that as we grow in love we will mature to the place where we can tell the difference between that which is good and that which is excellent.


The New American Standard Version renders it, "so that you may be able to discern what is best." There are good teachings out there and then there are excellent teachings. Our Father's intent is that we would recognize the difference. One is what Hebrews calls "the milk of the word" and the other is the "meat of the word."
The two are not the same. You probably know good teaching from bad teaching but do you know a good truth from an excellent truth? Young's Literal Translation describes it as "proving the things that differ."

Look at the two images above. One is a good painting and the other is an excellent paining. Which would you want to have? I confess that because of my lack of artistic sophistication, I'm not wild about either of them. Take a look at them. Which of the two would you want to own?

The top painting in this blog is called "Iris and Butterfly" and was painted by Claire Bull. The piece is fine art and can be purchased for 450 dollars.

The bottom painting is called "Irises" and was painted by Vincent Van Gogh one year before his death. It became the most expensive painting when it was sold for $53.9 million to Alan Bond in 1987.

That's a big difference that illustrates good and excellent. Thus it is in the realm of biblical truth. There are good teachings that will encourage and help you, but there are also excellent truths that can revolutionize your life. Note that Young's Literal Translation speaks of approving those things that differ. Don't make the mistake of thinking that something different is necessarily wrong. Sometimes when we open our hearts and minds to new things that are different to us, we find ourselves growing in grace in ways we couldn't have imagined. Don't be gullible. Check the Bible for yourself to see if the different teaching you may be exposed to fits with what the Scripture teaches. If not, reject it. If it does then embrace it gladly - even if that means admitting that it's something different than you've believed before. That's the only way to grow in grace.

There are excellent realities to be discovered in Jesus Christ. Let us open ourselves to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and the Scripture so that we may see the masterpieces of Divine revelation!

Should We Be Universalists? Trinitarians? Or Just Plain Nuts?

Mike recently asked on Facebook, “Steve, if u don't mind me asking, what made u not believe in the Universalist view, but the Trinitarian one instead? What is the major difference in their views? Thanks! God bless!”

Like Mike, many have asked and many more wondered about the teachings I’m doing these days. I believe my teachings now are simply a greater and more finely tuned expression of the grace I’ve taught for the past twenty years. I'd hope that anybody who teaches will have seen their views and content evolve over two decades. I will always teach grace and hope that, like my personal life, my teachings show a growth in grace over time. The Apostle Peter admonished us to, “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Growth equals change. If we never change, we never grow. There’s no arguing that fact. Here’ my response to Mike’s question:


Thank you for the question, Mike. I realize that many people are wondering about some of the things I’m teaching these days. I’m happy to clarify here what I am and am not attempting to say through my teaching.

First, it is important for me to state that I can’t attempt here to speak as a representative of Trinitarians as a whole. Truthfully, I’m among those who aren’t wild about labels for the reason that seldom can anybody’s viewpoints be adequately defined by a label. I don’t call myself a “Trinitarian” but rather have said that these days I find myself more closely related to that position labeled “Trinitarian” than other positions that label themselves by name within the Christian community. I have learned much from Trinitarian writers like Thomas Torrance and his brother, James Torrance, Baxter Kruger, Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis, Elmer Coyler, Robert Capon, NT Wright, Brad Jersak, Robert Sherman, and others who don’t come to mind right now. I’ve also benefited greatly from some of the early church writers like Saint Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers. I’ve particularly appreciated many of the guests on Mike Feazell’s program “You’re Included” on Grace Communion International’s web site. While I find that I don’t agree with some things said or written by some Trinitarians, it’s the group I “feel most at home with” these days.

Over six years ago, I was introduced to Baxter Kruger’s book, The Dancing God. I was intrigued by his writings and found them to challenge my thinking. His book began a journey that led me to read everything I could get my hands on by both Trinitarian and Christian Universalist writers. (Not to be confused with “Unitarian Universalists” who don’t believe in the necessity of Jesus and His finished work.) I have probably read more books by Christian Universalist authors than some who identify themselves as Universalists. While I am not a Universalist, I have found many good things with which I agree among Universalists writers. In my opinion, Tom Talbott’s book, The Inescapable Love of God, is probably the best book on universalism that has ever been written. I read George MacDonald, Phillip Gulley, Gregory MacDonald, Martin Zender, Clyde Pilkington, Jr., Gary Amirault, Gerry Beauchemin, F.W. Farrar, and others. (In my opinion, one of the great causes of stagnation in growth in the church world today is our unwillingness to read those with whom we may think we will disagree or have been told by our peers that they are “wrong.” Have we become so insecure in our beliefs that we are afraid to be exposed to other views? It seems so.)

Comparing the writings of Universalist authors with the position of Triniatrian authors, searching out the Scriptures for myself, praying earnestly to “see the light,” and seriously grappling to know the truth (staying up all night many times, as my wife can attest), I came to see that, at the least, my understanding thus far had been incomplete. I knew that the Spirit was pulling me forward in my understanding of grace but didn’t know where I would find myself when the dust settled. To be honest, I was afraid because I knew that some wouldn’t like it when I shared with others the pathway down which the Spirit was leading me, but the reality is that when He leads us, we simply go. We don’t ask where we’re going and then decide whether or not we want to go forward. Nobody will ever progress that way. We just “forsake all and follow Him.” I simply want to understand God’s truth as He reveals it to me. To do that always requires an open mind and willingness for Him to change us.

Mike, you asked about the differences between Universalism and Trinitarianism. I’m not one who could do the best job answering that, since I’m still a neophyte when it comes to Trinitarianism. I will answer your question by giving you the reasons I am not a Universalist.

First, and foremost, I am not a Universalist because I have a difference with them concerning the matter of reconciliation. Many of the Universalists I have read suggest the idea of “ultimate reconciliation,” means that ultimately everybody will be reconciled to God the Father. Contrary to that viewpoint, my position, and that of Trinitarianism, is that everybody has already been reconciled to the Father through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. I understand the biblical teaching to be one, not of an ultimate reconciliation of humanity, but rather one of historical reconciliation - one that happened already. Paul wrote, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” When and where did this happen? The fact is that it really happened “before the foundation of the world” but it found its expression in time 2000 years ago at the cross. It isn’t something yet to happen. It is something that has happened. See Romans 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18; 2 Cor. 5:20; Col. 1:22. The reconciliation isn’t an ultimate reality. It’s a done deal or, to put it another way, “It is finished.”

Mankind’s problem isn’t that we aren’t reconciled to the Father. It’s that they don’t know. That’s why Paul said that God has “committed to us the word (message) of reconciliation. "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.” In other words we proclaim, not a potential gospel but a pure gospel that “It is finished!” It isn’t being finished when you believe. You can believe it because it is already finished! You have been reconciled! Now be reconciled! In other words, "believe it!" (Like telling a guy, “You are a man. Now, be a man!")

The gospel isn’t some sort of existential news that becomes true because somebody believes. We believe it because it is already true. A blind man may not see what’s around him but it’s there whether he sees it or not. His subjective experience of blindness doesn’t negate the objective reality around him. A lost man had to be home to begin with or else there would be no reference point to give the word “lost” its meaning. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see!”

A second thing about Universalists (generally speaking) that doesn’t resonate with me is their continuous focus on heaven and hell, to the exclusion of every other aspect of our faith. I readily admit that I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there is more talk about our ultimate destination than about our here-and-now destiny in Christ.

I understand the Universalist passion for inclusion and share 100% in their enthusiasm for that reality, but that inclusion is much greater than simply what happens when we die. Being joined together in the communal Life of our Triune God has staggering implications for all aspects of life in this space-time dimension in which we now live, however temporary it may be. I like how Trinitarianism focuses on the supreme importance of our sharing in the perichoresis(interpersonal dance) of the Father, Son and Spirit here-and-now.

A third thing about Universalists is that I don’t see the place for the kind of absolutism they, generally speaking, hold in their viewpoint about who ends up in heaven. I was a hardcore, nonnegotiable Calvinist for almost 30 years and I see the same kind of resolute insistence on the position of most Universalists that I saw and held as a Calvinist.

I understand that we all passionately believe what we believe, but many biblical topics aren’t as clear-cut as those who hold various viewpoints would have us believe. Immaturity causes a person to argue that he “just believes what the Bible says.” We all could say that, but the more pertinent question is, “What does the Bible mean by what it says?” That question is not as easily answered as rabid proponents of any position would have us believe. Maturity recognizes that Bible believers who show a high level of intellectual honesty, who skillfully use exegetical tools of interpretation and who trust the Holy Spirit to guide them still come to different conclusions.

I was a Calvinist because I could “prove it” from the Bible. I have seen the “Biblical proof” for Universalism and will say that both viewpoints are very compelling purely from an exegetical standpoint. (I am sure Arminianism has an equally strong biblical argument, but that’s one I haven’t studied in depth as I have the two I’m discussing in this article.) What are we to do when the Bible seems to clearly present more than one way to understand a matter? Do we go to war with each other in an attempt to see who can pile up the highest stack of verses? Do we argue that my verse has greater weight than your verse?

It seems that the better way would be for us all to hold our views with humility. There are indeed nonnegotiables in the Christian faith, but much of what we argue about doesn’t fall in that category. As Brad Jersak pointed out in one of his books, it’s not that the Bible tells us too little about some topics to form an opinion. To the contrary, it seems to tell us too much. We all tend to zero in with a hard focus on the verses that support our underlying position while the verses that would contradict our views seem to become a part of the fuzzy background of Scripture. It’s not that we ignore them, it’s that we honestly don’t see the verses that contradict our existing views.

I hope the Universalists are right that everybody ends up in heaven. Wouldn’t every Christian want that? “God is not willing for any to perish but that all should come to repentance.” Is it wrong for me to want the same thing that my Father wants? Does that make me a Universalist? Hardly. I suggest that perhaps a greater problem than the Universalists adamant insistence that everybody will go to heaven is the angry reaction from many Christians over the very idea.

There are texts that appear to stand in tension on this subject. In my opinion, that leaves us at the place where we may hope but would be presumptuous to insist that we know with certainty what happens with anybody after they breathe their last breath. Who knows what happens in that transient moment as one passes through the veil from this life to the next? There is no time with God, so how can we say what takes place in that moment when the spirit is separating from the body?

Who am I to think that I have such perfect understanding of Scripture, of the mind of God, of the heart of a man, or of how the eternal plan of the Almighty will unfold to brashly state how it will be – end of discussion.

I remember struggling with the Scripture and the Spirit very, very early one morning when I first began to examine the possibilities on this topic. I prayed in frustration, “Lord, why didn’t you make this easier to understand???” I sensed a gentle word that literally came into my mind answering, “I am not a puzzle to be solved. I am a Mystery to be explored.”

Therein, lies the answer. The flesh insists on definitive answers. The Western World thrives on them. But our God transcends our rational minds and refuses to be perfectly understood and rejects our insistence that we have indisputable answers to every question.

What are we to do then? The answer is to love. We are not to be known by our theology. We are not to be known by our answers to questions of soteriology, eschatology or any other biblical topics. And we certainly are not to be known by labels. They will know we are Christians by our love.

So that’s what I want to do. I want to love. I am not a Universalist but nobody would be happier if they’re right. While my views many not perfectly align with every Trinitarian, I love their proclamation of all of mankind’s inclusion in the finished work of the cross, a teaching I believe is completely biblical. They don’t, however, push further than Scripture warrants by insisting they infallibly know the eternal outcome of that reality for humanity.

All mankind is included in the finished work of the cross. That I believe. Beyond that, dogma becomes presumptious and not warranted. Love hopes all things. However, when any topic is riddled with biblical ambiguity, as I believe this topic is, humility must be the Siamese twin of hope. If that approach is wrong, just say I'm nuts.

Grace Revolutions Aren't New

Allow me to begin by introducing you to somebody. I’m sure you’ve at least heard of him, but it’s important for you to know him for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because I hope you’ll see him as a distant relative of sorts – a kindred spirit. You may end up identifying him as somebody whose life was a template for the direction you’ll want to take in your own life.

I hope you’ll come to feel what he felt about the things he saw and that you see. I hope you’ll react similarly to how he reacted to those things. Many people who know his story would call him a hero. The strange thing about it, though, is that when you end up walking the course he traveled, many of those same people will despise you. The man was, without a doubt, a world-changer. It’s no exaggeration to say that, in many respects, your life today is what it is because of him.

But I get ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, on a day that began like any another ordinary day for him. As things turned out, that day brought change to his life that came as fast as a lightening bolt. Life works that way sometime. We’re walking along, minding our own business, when suddenly God cuts in on us and, in a moment, everything is different. But more about that later. For now, back to his walk down a dirt road on a rainy day.

The lightning cut through the dark sky, like jagged arrows of high-charged anger being hurled at him by God Himself. The menacing clouds hung low over him and there was no place to hide. In fact, there was nothing to do except either submit to the fate of certain death or run. So he ran. He ran fast and he prayed as he ran. "Help me, Saint Anna and I will become a monk!” he cried in desperation. He ran faster and faster, trying to get home before the justice of the Almighty finally balanced the books on his ungodly life by engulfing him in one of the fiery bolts that he was so desperately trying to escape.

Thus began the spiritual journey of Martin Luther, the man who would spend many years of his life struggling to be the kind of priest who would make God proud. Little did he know on that day in the storm that the commitment he made to God would lead him through far greater storms than the one he was praying to escape right then. He only thought he had seen a storm. Those that would later be brought on him by the self-righteous leaders of the religious world in which he lived would make this one look like a stroll in the garden on a sunny day. I told you he is seen as a hero today, but many didn’t see it that way then.

On that note, and before we move on with Luther, I want to ask you to make a mental note to yourself right now. Self-righteous, religious people can be as mean as hell. Please don’t be offended by that statement. I don’t make the statement lightly, nor do I intend to be profane. To some old-fashioned churchgoers it may sound like I’m using bad language here or just being mean, but I’m not. I’m using the H-word in the way it’s used in the Bible, so don’t get skittish. That’s one of the things empty religion does to people – makes them paranoid about things they don’t need to be paranoid about. Political correctness has high-jacked the church world just like it has the rest of western culture.

I’ll go ahead and tell you now: I’m hoping to challenge you to become a revolutionary of grace and no revolution has ever been ushered in through political correctness. So the sooner you get used to plainspoken truth, the easier it will be for you to move forward. Contemporary religion has sanitized a generation of church-going people without sanctifying them. It has caused many to think that blunt truth boldly spoken is less than gracious, but nothing could be further from the truth. If ever there was a time when the church needs plainspoken truth, it’s now. Gracious ministry is grace-filled ministry and grace seeks to save people even when they don’t know that’s what is doing.

The hypersensitive prefer a domesticated god in a domesticated church world where playing nice and feeling good are the most important things. However, there are others who believe that the contemporary church world needs divine intervention. They are the ones who intuitively recognize that, just like the church world in Luther’s day, something has to change.

I hope you fit in the latter category of people and if you do decide to become proactive in moving the grace revolution forward, be prepared because – here it is again: Self righteous, religious people can be as mean as hell.

For those who will accuse me of such, I want to assure you that I’m not going for shock value in making that statement. I’m making a literal assertion, an observation made by many who have been sent and used by God the Father to accomplish His purposes. If you doubt the accuracy of the statement, ask yourself who it was that put the Son of God on the cross two thousand years ago. It was the religious mob that was the in-crowd down at the temple that was responsible for His crucifixion. Mean-spirited forces of hell cheered as mean-spirited religious leaders handed Jesus over to be crucified. The self-righteous handed over the Only-Righteous on the scene that day because He was a threat to the stability of the religious system they had spent years getting just right. They weren’t about to let Him mess it up now with all this talk of a Kingdom whose basic tenets of operation stood in stark contradiction to their own. He had to go – end of discussion.

Luther too would come to experience the wrath of the religious in his own life some years after his initial day in the rain. He indeed was a revolutionary who was used by God to shake up and wake up a slumbering mass of people who had drunk the Kool-Aid of religious legalism being served up in the church world of his day. That didn’t happen right away though. As is the case for many who come to discover God’s grace, not only for salvation, but for Christian living, Luther spent a number of years between his initial surrender to God and the time when he came tor understand what God truly wants from us as Christians, which has nothing to do with works.

Ultimately he came to see that there is only one response mortal man can have to a sovereign God and that is to simply trust in what He has already accomplished, to accept and live our lives in celebration of His finished work. “For what work greater than the work of God can we do?” Luther once asked. He went on, “But here the devil is busy to delude us with false appearances, and lead us away from the work of God to our own works.” Although he championed this message as a revolutionary, he traveled the rocky road of self-loathing for years before the fullness of God’s acceptance became clear to him.

As Luther’s understanding of grace broadened, he became increasingly zealous in his attempt to make that reality known to any and everybody who would listen. To him, the essence of our Christian walk is simply to believe and rest in the fulfilled promises of God concerning what He has done on our behalf in Christ.

In his Babylonian Captivity of the Church, he wrote:

For God does not deal, nor has he ever dealt, with man otherwise than through a Word of promise. We in turn cannot deal with God otherwise than through faith in the Word of his promise. He does not desire works, nor has he need of them; … But God has need of this: that we consider him faithful in his promises [Heb. 10:23], and patiently persist in this belief …

God has done the work and promised us that it’s enough that we simply believe that fact. It took Luther time to see and believe it and to lead others to see and believe it. In that way, his world was like ours.

Many fought Luther and many followed him, but at the end of His day grace had triumphed. If you grew up in a church where you were taught that becoming a Christian means believing that the finished work of Jesus Christ at the cross accomplished everything necessary for you to enjoy salvation and that your works don’t have one single thing to do with it, you can thank Martin Luther for that. The church in his day had partially lost sight of that.

Luther’s original intention wasn’t to establish anything new. His desire was for reformation – a re-forming of the church so that it would again be an expression of what He understood the Bible to say that the church is intended to be. He had no interest in being seen as a rebel against the church. He wanted to be a facilitator of change, but in spite of all he could do to avoid it, he began to be seen, not as a facilitator, but as an instigator who refused to leave well-enough alone. Be advised: that’s a risk you will run if you become of part of the grace revolution that has begun in the church today.

Self-righteous, religious folks can’t stand grace for at least one reason. It takes them completely out of the limelight and gives all the glory to God. Tell the church leaders in Luther’s day that people’s good works didn’t move them one inch toward God and, like Luther, you would have been considered a heretic.

Today this fundamental fact about salvation probably makes sense to most who read this. After all, the Protestant Reformation was five hundred years ago and the issue has long ago been settled. Works have nothing to do with salvation. Every Christian knows that. Though it was a controversial matter back then, that fact is a no-brainer in the church world today.

It’s a slightly different grace related issue that will get you into trouble with many in the church today. It’s not about salvation, but about sanctification – how a person becomes holy and then lives a holy lifestyle. Tell many at church that works don’t define salvation and they’ll say a hearty “Amen,” but tell them that the Christian life isn’t defined by works and you’d better take a step back and prepare yourself for the verbal lashing that is likely to follow.

In many ways, Protestant denominations today have lapsed right back into the same errors that stirred Luther to action in his day. The difference is that the controversy then surrounded what it took to become a Christian while today the issue revolves around what it takes to become a good Christian. It’s the same battle, just a different battleground.

To suggest that Jesus is the answer in both instances may seem obvious, but when you look at the message given in the modern church world, an unbiased observer would hardly come to that conclusion. Ask almost anybody in almost any contemporary congregation what a good Christian is and then listen as they describe all the things that person will be doing. They may have learned that at church but it sure didn’t come from the Bible.

The fact of the matter is this: Christianity isn’t about what we do. Neither entering nor living the Christian life revolves around doing. It has only to do with Jesus Christ and nothing else. I didn’t say we won’t do anything so please don’t read into my words something I haven’t said. Of course Christians do, but we don’t do to be good Christians. We do precisely because we are good Christians. We’re good Christians, not because of anything we may do or not do, but because our good God has put His good Spirit in us where He lives and defines us, giving us our very identity. Your goodness has nothing to do with anything you do. It’s because of what He has done.

Against my better judgment, I’m going throw out a bone here by mentioning works in their proper context. Yes, Christians do good works. There, I’ve said it. I’m sure somebody will read that statement and feel like a smoker who gets his first long draw after not having had a cigarette all day. If that’s you, savor the moment. Yes, we work. It’s inherent to who we are. I hope you feel better now, but I warn you – it’s going to have to last you because most of what I ever say or write isn't primarily about works, but grace.

You realize of course that I’m teasing the legalist here, yet at the same time I’m not kidding. Many need to detoxify from the addiction to works and stop having the need to constantly be reassured about the whole subject.

I can almost hear the voices now: “People may misunderstand what you’re saying and think works don’t matter at all!” That’s a risk anybody takes who teaches the pure grace of God, but it is a risk that must be taken if we’re going to avoid diluting the truth of the gospel. To make grace clear, we just have to run the risk.
The great Bible expositor, Martyn Lloyd Jones wrote:

The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.

I hope you’ll begin to find yourself more and more addicted to grace and a biblical understanding of what it means to relax and simply allow Christ to live out His life through your lifestyle. If you get antsy when somebody like me talks about works not being the foundation of Christian living, keep reading. Like Luther’s experience in the storm, maybe you need a spiritual lightning bolt that turns your whole life in a new direction.

Works -- it always has been a hot topic in the church. It was the subject that triggered the revolution that led to reformation in Luther’s day and it’s the subject that the growing grace revolution hinges on today, five centuries later. Despite the fact that the Apostle Paul himself said that works and grace are impossible to mix , those who speak out boldly against works-righteousness as the basis of Christian living had better be prepared for resistance. The religious world hasn’t changed since Paul’s day or, for that matter, even Luther’s day when he addressed the subject as it relates to salvation.

Some have argued that “going too far with grace” can cause people to grow lax about sin in their lives. They imagine the Summer Youth Trip at the Local Community Church turning into a “Girls Gone Wild” video. That kind of assumption is totally ungrounded in reality. It ranks right up there with “There’s a boogey-man under my bed.”

Grace doesn’t cause people to go wild in sin. That’s a ridiculous idea perpetuated by two groups of people: (1) Those who are fearful because they don’t trust the Holy Spirit inside other people to lead them and (2) those who are afraid that they will lose control over other people if they actually begin to believe this grace teaching is true.

You can’t go too far with grace. That’s like saying, “don’t go too far with Jesus.” Paul wrote in Romans 5:17 that it is by the abundance of grace that we learn how to reign in life. The real threat to the church isn’t that we will go too far with grace, but that we won’t go far enough. Paul told Titus that the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodly behavior and empowers us to live like the righteous people we are. Show me somebody who is sinning and calling it grace and I’ll show you somebody who is telling a blatant lie. They’ve embraced disgrace and have given it a slanderous new name.

Do you feel an inner defense mechanism suddenly kick in when somebody like me starts to talk about how works aren’t the basis of the Christian life? If so, I encourage you to ask yourself why. Is it because you’re afraid that grace might cause people to become lazy or even passive? Grace won’t do that. The Apostle Paul commented on his own level of work when he said, “I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Paul was willing to put his works ethic in the Christian life up against anybody. What was it that he said gave him such a strong motivation for works? It was the grace of God at work in him. You don’t have to be afraid that grace will make people lazy. True grace never does that. To the contrary, it motivates us toward authentic righteous works as opposed to mandating artificial religious works that only masquerade as being righteous.

In the contemporary culture of church life, where teaching grace as the norm for Christian living is so conspicuously absent, to point out the need for change can be misunderstood. It could sound to some like grace revolutionaries are against the church of Jesus Christ simply because we call for change in areas where we see unbiblical approaches. Be assured that another thing grace won’t do is turn people against the true church, but not everything you see out there is the true church. Religious, legalistic lunacy inside "the church" is another matter.

Some time ago I wrote an article in my newsletter about the danger of legalism in local churches. I was plainspoken, giving examples of what it looks like when a congregation is in the throes of legalism. Shortly after the article was published I received an email from a man who was outraged.

“How dare you be so critical of me and my church!” he wrote. He proceeded to move on from that point to give a quite articulate and thorough assessment of his opinion of me and of my ministry. I wasn’t surprised. That kind of thing has happened before and will happen again.

When I wrote him back, I reminded him that I had never met him nor had I ever been to his church. The only thing I had done was to describe what legalism looks like in practical terms. He’s the one who connected the dots. I’m not against anybody and I’m certainly not against God’s church.

I don’t want to be known for the things I’m against, but for the things I am for, but . . . A person who loves flowers will hate weeds. A person who loves health will hate disease. A person who loves grace will hate the things that take its place. That’s not unloving. That is love in action.

The very nature of revolution is the uprooting and overthrowing of existing ruling powers in order to establish a new authority. That’s what must happen in the modern church world if we are to continue to make an impact on the world with the gospel. Legalism must be uprooted and supplanted with the message of pure grace.

There has been an undercurrent of change that has been rising to the surface in the hearts and minds of many Christians lately. A generation of believers is emerging who believe that the performance based, let’s-just-rededicate-ourselves-and-try-harder, approach to the Christian life has had its day in the sun and its time has ended. We believe the chance of injecting life into the dead corpse of legalistic religion is a hopeless cause and believe that God’s answer is to restore grace to the center stage of His church.

Research done by The Barna Group indicates that of the 77 million American adults who are churched, born-again Christians, eight out of ten do not feel they have entered into the presence of God, or experienced a connection with Him during worship. Revolutionaries of grace believe that legalism is a leading cause for that and are persuaded that something must be changed. Sensing the undercurrent of that change, we have embraced the growing grace revolution and are trusting in God’s Spirit at work through us and in the modern church world to turn the focus of the church away from the religious dog-and-pony show that is so prevalent today and back to the centrality of Jesus Christ.

We want to reach the whole world with the gospel, but believe that for that to effectively happen we too must fully understand the gospel. If we have any hope of changing the way the world sees Christianity, there has to be a change in the way Christians sees God. We believe that our God is not a tyrannical deity waiting for us to show our appreciation by serving Him as many of us have been taught. He is a God of grace; a God of good will toward man as evidenced by the cross; a God who calls on us to give up the silly notion that we can jump through enough religious hoops to please Him and just accept His acceptance.

The worn out, tired, legalistic approach to the Christian life that many of us have known for most of our lives has been tried in the balance and found wanting. Some of those legalistic habits have become a part of the doctrine of the modern church by simple osmosis. Particular practices have been so embedded in the culture of the church that it has become almost impossible for many to know what is a legitimate part of the church and what is man made tradition that has been added on along the way. When something is done long enough and has been sanctioned by the religious powers-that-be again and again, those things reach a place of privilege where it almost seems blasphemous to question them, but they must be questioned if the grace revolution is to succeed.

Over time it isn’t unusual for sacred cows to disguise themselves as sacred doctrines and to question them risks accusation and attack from those who find great comfort in the familiar and don’t want the predictable world in which they are well vested to be knocked off kilter by the silly nuisance of truth. The truth is that sacred cows aren’t sacred doctrines, but are idols. Grace revolutionaries are those who are willing to pull the mask off these sacred cows, exposing their hideous faces to the light of biblical truth. We don’t do it out of malice, but because we love our God, His Word and His church. They don’t die quietly, but they must die if the grace of God is to have free reign in His church again.

Change is coming. It must and it is. The growing grace revolution will gain momentum as we each come to grip with our own understanding of God’s grace and see it be clarified and fortified by the Spirit of Grace Himself. A Revolution is under way and it is a revolution of love and freedom that flows from the very heart of our God.

God Uses Unlikely People

Many a misguided promise has been made to God during times of crisis. The “If you’ll just let me live . . .” prayer has set more than a few people on a pathway that God never required. Until a person comes to know the heart of God, the default setting is to believe that what He wants most from us is service and sacrifice. Nothing could be further from our Father’s way of grace, but that misguided notion has created needless frustration for many a religious zealot who knew no better.

Twenty two year old Martin Luther’s pledge to become a monk during a lightening storm in 1505 certainly set him on a new course in life. True to his word, later that year he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt and took his monastic vows the next year. He had just received a Master of Arts degree and had been preparing for law school, but now everything had changed so he backed away from his previous plans. After all, he had made a promise to God and, given what had been at stake, that promise couldn’t be forgotten.

Luther was a diligent student and was determined to please God, whatever it took. He spent long hours in prayer, fasted often, gazed on religious relics in hopes of nurturing his spirituality and was obsessed with confessing his sins. In fact, one time his confessor told him to go away and come back when he had something worth confessing.

Ironically though, as time passed he grew more and more frustrated with his own spiritual development. In spite of all his sincere efforts to become more holy, he found himself feeling more and more unholy and absolutely could not shake off the tormenting awareness of his own sinfulness. He tried and tried hard to be the person he thought God wanted him to be. He would later remark, "If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them." He said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul."

This phase in Luther’s life is important to recognize because it is an unavoidable part of the personal development of a grace revolutionary. Revolutionaries are passionate people by nature. That’s true even if what we are revolutionary about is our faith. Have you tried with all your heart to be the person you’ve believed God wants you to be but, like Luther, found yourself feeling more and frustrated instead of more and more free? If so, that’s good. You’re on the way to discovering the meaning of personal brokenness, a necessary step on the way toward the place of being mightily used by God.

As much as we might like to bypass brokenness, it just can’t be done if God is to really use our lives. Personal brokenness is the doorway to public usefulness in God’s kingdom. Jesus said it is only when the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies that it will bring forth much fruit. In God’s economy of things, life comes out of death, strength comes out of weakness, and daylight breaks out of the darkness. That’s how it works.

The phase in life is one of restlessness. Don’t think that it’s a bad thing if you’ve felt restless because this time is actually a transitional stage. It’s a time when God is preparing you for a greater level of spiritual growth. The starting point isn’t restlessness about the church or other people, but about yourself and your own spiritual journey. Like Luther, many of us have experienced and thought the answer was to pour more effort into our spiritual walk. Ironically, God uses this time to bring us to the place where we realize the answer has nothing to do with our giving it more effort at all. Instead, it’s about discovering what it means to abandon all hope in ourselves and to rely entirely on His effort.

If you have always felt perfectly satisfied with your own spiritual journey; if you’ve never seen in yourself an inconsistency in your walk that nagged you and caused you to feel like you just couldn’t live up to what God expected; if you’ve never tried to boost your religious activity in an attempt to grow spiritually, what you’ll read here probably won’t connect to you. Those who think they have it all figured out and are in perfect step at all times aren’t candidates for grace. That’s not a criticism. That’s just the way it is.

If, on the other hand, you have seen in your own experience a gradual decline of enthusiasm in your Christian life; if you have dedicated and rededicated yourself to God with promises that you were going to do better in living the Christian life; if you have felt that your spiritual walk was a rollercoaster, an endless cycle of up and down ability to feel like you’re successfully living the Christian life and you felt that you had to find a way to consistently live the life you know you’re called to live, you may well be a grace revolutionary in the making. Some struggle a long time after committing themselves to God before they connect to the fact that it takes the same grace that brought them in to lead them on. Until they reach that place, they just keep giving it all they have.

Twelve years passed between the time Martin Luther entered the monastery and when he took the public stand in Wittenberg that would become the defining moment of his legacy. During that time, he tried with all his might to live a life that pleased God and gave him a sense of personal fulfillment, but as time passed he became increasingly unhappy. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. He became more and more miserable as he grappled with the whole concept of the righteousness of God and how a person can have it. He especially hated the passage that talked about living with the righteousness of God in our lives, because no matter how hard he had tried he could not achieve that goal. It became an obsession with him that caused him to feel rage at times, both toward himself and toward God. He found it almost maddening that despite all his efforts to walk a righteous pathway, the only thing he could find was a restless pathway and nothing he did could change that.

Don’t think for a minute that you don’t qualify to be a grace revolutionary because you aren't spiritually strong enough. As strange as it may sound, that is exactly what does qualify you. It is only when we are aware of our own weakness that we will truly trust in Gods strength because it is only then that we fully realize we have no other choice.

So if you’ve felt frustrated about your own life, take heart. God is using that dissatisfaction to move you into the place where He can transform you by His grace. Before we can be used by God to change the world around us He must change us. We have to become fully persuaded of the true nature of grace and personally experience the transformation it brings. We can’t take people to where we haven’t been. We must accept our personal weakness before we will ever learn to cast ourselves in complete abandon upon the empowering grace of God.

I was a believer for twenty-nine years before I began to understand this principle of brokenness. I thought what God wanted was for me to be more dedicated and to try harder. Like Luther and, I suspect like you, I often revved up my own religious rpm’s in an effort to move further down the road toward the sense that I was living the way God wanted me to live but, in spite of all my efforts, frustrations mounted and discouragement came on me often. I lived in what I have called the motivation -- condemnation -- rededication cycle.

People are leaving the traditional church world in droves for this very reason. They’ve been told that their greatest need is to be more committed to God when what they needed to hear is that God is fully committed to them. It is only when we realize this truth that we find the motivation and ability to fully commit ourselves into His hands.

Let me put it another way so that if you haven’t connected with this idea of brokenness yet, it may become clear with this explanation. If you’re waiting to get your act together before you will step up to act as an ambassador of Christ, spreading His grace in this world, you’ll wait forever.

Don’t think for a moment that God uses people who have worked out their spirituality to the place where they’re in a different league than you. The truth is they are more like you than you may want to know, but you need to know it because, by knowing that there are no Super Saints, you may be more likely to believe that God can use you to advance the cause of His grace in this world and, even more difficult than that these days, in His church.

One guy said to me, “If you only knew the things I’ve done, you’d know why God couldn’t use me.” “Really?” I asked. “Are the things you’ve done worse than murder? Adultery? Stealing? Lying? Drunkenness?” Read the list of those mentioned in Hebrews 11, the “faith-chapter” that lists those set forth for us as examples of faith from biblical history. Look at their lives individually. They did everyone of those things and more.

As you consider their sins, remember that the sinful things they did were, for the most part, after they had been called by God and began to follow Him. So don’t try to fall back on the yeah-but-my-sins-were-done-after-I-trusted-Christ excuse. So was theirs.

Check out that list in Hebrews 11. Then go back and look at the things the Old Testament tells us about what they did. After doing that, you may be inclined to ask, “Is this the best God can do if He wants to give us a list of people who had great faith and were mightily used by Him?” Yes, it is. So don’t think God can’t use you.

Don’t believe for one minute that anybody who sets himself up above you today, as if he has some spiritual advantage you don’t have, is telling you the truth either. This whole idea of there being super-saints in the church today who are somehow different from the rest of us is an enemy tactic meant to discourage us from thinking God can use us. When we see them we may feel like we don’t measure up, but just remember looks can be deceiving. In spite of the way some religious leaders present themselves to us, the truth is that people are just people. We all have the same kind of struggles, doubts, temptations and weaknesses. If you doubt that, then ask yourself again why God listed the kind of people He did in Hebrews 11. Maybe there’s a higher quality of saints in the world today? Maybe back then He listed them because there weren’t so many good examples as there are today? Yeah, right. You know that’s not true. People have always been the same and God has never looked for perfect people to use. He only looks for people who will completely trust Him – nothing else. You might not be able to clean up your act the way you’ve wanted to in the past but He isn’t asking you to do that. He’s just asking you to trust Him. You can do that much, can’t you?

There are no second-class citizens in God’s kingdom and you don’t have to think for one moment that you lack anything that would keep you from rising up at this very moment to be used by God. In Jesus Christ, you have been made complete because you have all of Him and in Him resides the fullness of Almighty God Himself.

Living As Yourself

“I’ve never known what I want to do with my own life,” a young mother said to me at a after I had spoken about living our God-given dreams. “I want to fulfill God’s plan for my life, but I can’t figure out what it is. I don’t even know what I want to do,” she continued.

After asking her a few questions, I said to her, “We’ve just met, so I obviously don’t know you. But I’d like to offer one common reason that often applies when people can’t seem to identify the unique plan that God has for them. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” she answered.

I continued: “A very common cause for people not being able to figure out what they want to do with their life is that they’ve never given themselves the freedom to think about what they want because they’ve spent their whole life trying to please other people.”

I paused. The lady starred at me for a moment, then looked at her friend beside her with an expression of disbelief. “He hit that one on the head, didn’t he?” her friend laughed.

It didn’t take a counseling genius to figure out her problem, just forty years of talking with thousands of people like this young woman. A great number of people have never realized God’s wonderful plan for their lives because they’ve never allowed themselves to consider their own desires. Without doing that, they can seldom discern God’s will for themselves.

God gives you the desires of your heart. He places them there, but if you don’t know who you are you may spend your whole life trying to fulfill other people’s plan for your life. Many a frustrated person has struggled with finding fulfillment in life because they’re trying to be something and do something they’ve never been directed by God to do.

The meaning of grace, in part, is “divine enablement.” By His grace, God enables you to be all that He has called you to be and do all that He has created you to do. But remember this: His grace doesn’t empower you to be and do what somebody else has indicated for you to do. You live in union with the Triune God of heaven. His Life dwells in you and sees to flow through you in powerful expressions of creativity expressed through love in this world.

Who He has made you to be is wonderful, so you must resolve to be that person. Any effort to be somebody else is an affront to Him because it suggests that you (or others) better know who you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be doing. Don’t live for other people. It will wear you out.

Instead, live from the union you share with your Father through Christ. Know that you are empowered by His Spirit. Then you will be free to be and do all that you were designed for. The Apostle Paul once said, “I’m not trying to be a people-pleaser! No, I’m trying to please God. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be Christ’s servant” (Galatians 1:10 New Living Translation).

If you want to find fulfillment – if you want to be and do all that you were created to be and do – stop living your life trying to run the course other people set for you. Your desires count because God has placed them there.

Allow Jesus to express boldness through you. Rise up and seize the day, filled with optimistic faith in the Creator who designed your blueprint for living. Let Him live through you and watch your life be transformed!

If You Don’t Forgive Others, God Won’t Forgive You

There are times in each of our lives where we might be holding unforgiveness towards someone else. If you take that statement at face value — “If you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you” — it would mean there are unforgiven sins in your life. If there are unforgiven sins in your life, and you were to die without them being forgiven, then I suppose you would be separated from God forever, wouldn’t you? At the very least, we would be in big trouble even in this life if God looks at us and sees unforgiven sins.

Not surprisingly, this teaching creates a lot of anxiety among Christians. Others might preach at us and tell us we ought to forgive. They make it sound so easy. But it’s not easy. All of us have been hurt by others; some of us severely. We do people a disservice by heartlessly pounding on them to forgive those that have injured them, and it can be even more heartless when we use Bible verses to pound them with. How much greater is the damage when our teaching causes people to feel that God rejects them because they have been unable to forgive others for inexcusable actions.

However, we still need to make good sense of the Bible’s teaching on forgiveness, because the difficult verses in question come from Jesus Himself. Jesus says at the end of His model prayer (that we’ve called “The Lord’s Prayer”),

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you your transgressions. Matthew 6:14-15

If we read those words alone, then it seems like game, set, and match. How could we come to any other conclusion than to believe that our forgiveness totally depends on our forgiveness of others? However, we must never forget that verses must never be interpreted on their own out of context, but must always be interpreted in light of the whole Word of God.

Jesus did say those words, but let me remind you again of the need to consider when Jesus was speaking, to whom He was speaking, and what he was doing. Those are things you have to remember whenever you interpret the Scriptures. Not everything Jesus said is to be applied to you personally, because everything changed at the cross.

TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT THE SCRIPTURES

When Christ died, the Old Covenant was made obsolete, and the New Covenant was brought into existence. The night before He died, Jesus took cup and passed it, saying,

This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Luke 22:20

Covenants in the ancient world were almost always inaugurated by the blood sacrifice of an animal. That practice was similar to a contract today being put in force through signing on the dotted line. Jesus was indicating beforehand that His death would bring into reality the long-promised New Covenant. This New Covenant is both different and superior to the Old Covenant, the Law of Moses:

But now He [Christ] has obtained a more excellent ministry, by a much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. Hebrews 8:6-7

This means that Jesus’ death not only inaugurated the New Covenant, but it also simultaneously brought the law, the Old Covenant, to an end:

When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. Hebrews 8:13

I can’t overemphasize the importance of getting this: When Jesus taught, He was speaking according to the law to people living under the law. Whenever you read the words of Jesus recorded in the gospels, you must keep this in mind. When Jesus taught, “You must forgive in order to be forgiven,” He was magnifying the demands of the law in order to provoke people to understand their need for Him as Savior. But when He died, was buried, and rose again, the New Covenant was inaugurated by His death, and things changed.

That’s why you read in later New Testament writings a different order of reasoning. First, the New Testament teaches us that we are forgiven already:

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace. Ephesians 1:7

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.Colossians 2:13

Then, on the basis of the forgiveness we have already received, the New Testament urges us to forgive others — but notice the change in order:

Be kind to one other, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.Ephesians 4:32

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Colossians 3:12-13

Do you see the distinction there? Before the cross, the Bible says you forgive to be forgiven. But after the cross, the Scripture teaches that we forgive because we have been forgiven.

CLARIFY YOUR THINKING

The idea that if you don’t forgive others God won’t forgive you is an Old Covenant teaching, even though we hear it from the lips of Jesus. It was prior to the cross, which is where the law ended. Why did the Lord teach it? Because He often held up the law to raise the awareness of sin in the people’s hearts, so that it would pave the way for them to recognize their need for a Savior. By His death, burial and resurrection, He accomplished the work, and the good news is now preached in His name.

Today, to tell someone that if you don’t forgive others God won’t forgive you is to tell a lie. That’s not applicable in the New Covenant. The truth is, we forgive others because we have been forgiven. As I acknowledged in the beginning of this challenge, forgiveness is often difficult, if not impossible for us on our own. We need supernatural power to find forgiveness in our hearts. The best source of that power is a heart that has been changed by first receiving the amazing grace and forgiveness of Christ.


(This blog is one of the chapters in my new book, 52 Lies Heard In Church Every Sunday (And Why The Truth Is So Much Better) You can order a copy by clicking this link:
http://gracewalkresources.com/item.asp?cID=0&PID=635 )