The Hyper-Grace Gospel: A Response to Michael Brown and Those Opposed to the Modern Grace Message (4 page)

A mixed-grace gospel combines the
unmerited favor of God with the merited wage of human-effort. “You are saved by
grace but you maintain your position through right-living,” is an example of a
mixed-grace message. “God gives you grace so that you can keep His commands,”
is another. These sorts of messages contain an element of grace but ultimately
push you to trust in yourself and your own efforts.

Any mixed-grace
message can be recognized by the presence of carrots and sticks. Carrots are
the blessings you get for obedience; sticks are the penalties you pay for
disobedience.

The modern
mixed-grace message offers the following carrots: If you confess, you’ll be
forgiven; if you do right, you’ll be accepted; if you act holy, you’ll be holy.

And what happens
if you don’t do these things? What are the sticks of the mixed-grace message?
Fail to perform according to prevailing codes of conduct and you’ll lose your
forgiveness, you’ll lose your fellowship, and, if worse comes to worse, you may
lose your salvation.

None of this
sounds like good news to me. Yet tragically this is the sort of message that
millions of people hear every week. They don’t hear about Jesus; they hear
about carrots and sticks.

Why do people buy
into this mixed-up message? They do it because it seems right and fair to them.
Their whole lives they’ve been told, “If you do good, you’ll get good, but if
you do bad, you’ll get bad.” Some people call this living under law. Others
call it karma. But it’s sowing to reap and it has nothing in common with grace.

This is how Bono
describes the difference:

At the center of
all religions is the idea of karma. You know, what you put out comes back to
you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ... It’s clear to me that karma is
at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along
comes this idea called grace to upend all that “As you reap, so you will sow”
stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences
of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a
lot of stupid stuff.
[12]

Another reason why some buy into a
mixed-grace gospel is because they feel obliged to prove their worth to God.
“Jesus died for you,” they hear. “What will you do for Him?” That’s a bad
question because there is nothing you can do to compensate Him for His
priceless gift. Here is a better question:

How can I repay the
Lord for all His goodness to me? (Psalm 116:12, NIV1984)

You cannot repay the Lord for His
goodness. It’s an insult to even try. What you can do is “lift up the cup of
salvation,” make a toast to the Lord, and say “Thank you, Jesus!” (see Ps.
116:13).

Bite into any
mixed-grace message and you will taste a bitter fruit. You will feel the
pressure to perform and smell the fear that comes with failure. You’ll make
promises to God and then you’ll break them. You’ll resolve to try harder only
to fail again and again. You’ll become burned out and bummed out.

Since a
mixed-grace message puts the emphasis on you and what you have done, your
identity will become defined by your productivity. You will start to think of
yourself as God’s servant instead of His beloved son or daughter. Worst of all,
you will end up distracted from Jesus and fallen from grace.

Don’t swallow any
poison that comes with a spoonful of grace. And don’t subscribe to any message
that leads you to trust in yourself and your works instead of Jesus and His. To
paraphrase Watchman Nee, “You can try or you can trust and the difference is
heaven and hell.”
[13]

And if by grace,
then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.
(Romans 11:6)

You may have heard that God gives us grace
in order to do good works, but this is misleading. God does not give you grace
so that you can work. He gives you grace because He loves you. Period. Those
who receive from the abundance of His grace do indeed work and often they work
harder than anyone else, but that’s neither here nor there.

The issue is not
what you’ll do for God but what you’ll let Him do for you. Will you trust Him a
little bit or will you trust Him the whole way? Does His grace merely get you
in the front door or does it keep you safe to the very end?

As Jesus said,
the only work that counts is the “work” of believing in the One He has sent
(John 6:29). This is the chief takeaway of the hyper-grace gospel.

The hyper-grace gospel is easy to
recognize for it is nothing more than boasting about Jesus—who He is and what
He has done and what you can now do because of what He has done. If the message
you’re hearing causes you to fix your eyes on Jesus, and moves you to shout for
joy and give thanksgiving and praise for all He has done, chances are you’re
hearing the hyper-grace gospel.

While a
mixed-grace gospel is recognized by the presence of carrots and sticks, the
hyper-grace gospel is marked by invitations. Here’s one: “Come to me, all you
who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Here’s another:
“I want to come in and be with you” (Rev. 3:20).

A mixed-grace
gospel
drives
people with the law, but the hyper-grace gospel
draws
people with love. This is how Martin Luther distinguished the two messages:

A lawdriver insists
with threats and penalties; a preacher of grace lures and incites with divine
goodness and compassion shown to us; for He wants no unwilling works and
reluctant services, He wants joyful and delightful services of God.
[14]

In a quest for holiness a mixed-grace
preacher may preach a little law, a little self-help, or a little pop
psychology, but it’s all just a flesh trip. In contrast, a hyper-grace preacher
preaches Christ alone. Whatever your need, whether it’s salvation or
sanctification, your supply is found in the One who promises to meet all your
needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:19).

In this world you
will have trouble. If you are facing the giants of sickness, poverty, and loss,
the last thing you need is religious formulas or trite theology. Your greatest
need is for a revelation of Jesus Christ who is Lord above all. When you see
the One who is greater than all the giants, your mouth will be filled with
laughter and your heart with songs of joy. This is the fruit of the hyper-grace
gospel.

But don’t take my
word for it. Let’s hear from some other grace preachers. Look carefully at the
following good news announcements. Note the absence of carrots and sticks. See
how they all point to the grace of God as revealed in Jesus.

·
        
Paul: “Christ died, was
buried, then rose. He reigns!” (see 1 Corinthians 15:3–4,25).

·
        
Martin Luther: “The
gospel is nothing else but laughter and joy … This was first spoken unto the
Jews; for this laughter was first offered to that people, then having the
promises. Now he turneth to the Gentiles, whom he calleth to the partaking of
this laughter.”
[15]

·
        
Spurgeon: “None but
Jesus! None but Jesus!”
[16]

·
        
Malcolm Smith:
“Preaching the gospel, we are announcing the news of the revelation of who God
is and how He feels about us. We stand on the street corners of the world
shouting the news that God is not the way we thought He was—He loves us! ...
This is the greatest news in the world …”
[17]

·
        
Andrew Wommack: “God
loves you and is extending forgiveness for your sins. Everything that comes as
a result of salvation—like forgiveness, righteousness, healing, deliverance,
and prosperity—comes to you by grace through faith. It’s not based on your
performance, but God’s grace.”
[18]

·
        
Joseph Prince: “The
gospel is the gospel of Christ, and everything is about Jesus. It’s not the
gospel of morality and character, and it definitely isn’t the gospel of money
and prosperity. But do you know what the gospel does? It produces all of those
things. The true gospel of Jesus Christ always produces godliness, holiness,
morality, character, provision, health, wisdom, love, peace, joy, and much
more. They all flow from the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
[19]

·
        
Robert Farrar Capon:
“If the gospel is about anything, it is about a God who meets us where we are,
not where we ought to be.”
[20]

·
        
Dudley Hall: “Grace is
a message of unconditional love from the Father of the universe. It’s the free
offer of the eternal life. And we can experience it all in the gritty now as
well as in the sweet by and by.”
[21]

·
        
Max Lucado: “Grace is
everything Jesus. Grace lives because He does, works because He works, and
matters because He matters. He placed a term limit on sin and danced a victory
jig in a graveyard. To be saved by grace is to be saved by Him—not by an idea,
doctrine, creed, or church membership, but by Jesus himself, who will sweep
into heaven anyone who so much as gives Him the nod.”
[22]

·
        
Jerry Bridges: “We are
brought into God’s kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive
both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience
by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive
strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The
entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace.”
[23]

·
        
Tullian Tchividjian:
“The gospel of Jesus Christ announces that because Jesus was strong for you,
you’re free to be weak. Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose. Because
Jesus was Someone, you’re free to be no one. Because Jesus was extraordinary,
you’re free to be ordinary. Because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to
fail.”
[24]

·
        
Benjamin Dunn: “The
scandal (of the cross) is that though your sin was great, God’s love was
greater … It is a scandal of love. We couldn’t provide a sacrifice, so God
provided one for Himself—in Christ. We couldn’t climb to Heaven, so Heaven came
to us—in Christ. In Christ we see the grand display of the heavens invading the
earth. This scandal is designed to make you blush. Its intention is to make
every cell in your body scream with thanksgiving and joyful praise!”
[25]

·
        
Judah Smith: “That’s
the gospel. It’s good news for everyone. It’s not good news just for people who
are already good, for those who are self-controlled and disciplined enough to
have all their ducks in a row. It’s good news for the people who can’t even
find their ducks. They haven’t seen some of their ducks in years. Their lives
are a mess. But they can come to Jesus and find instant acceptance.”
[26]

·
        
Paul White: “It is
grace that saves us and then it is grace that keeps us.
We are defined by
grace.
Everything we have is a free gift of God, given to us for Christ’s
sake.”
[27]

·
        
Various: “The Son of
God became the Son of Man that the sons of men might become the Sons of God.”
[28]

·
        
Anna Bartlett Warner:
“Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
[29]

The hyper-grace
gospel is simple. You don’t need to read Hebrew or Greek to get it. Nor do you
need to go to seminary or Bible school. To paraphrase Joseph Prince, the
hyper-grace gospel is so simple it takes theologians to complicate it.
[30]

There
may be 1001 versions of the mixed-grace gospel but there is only one
hyper-grace gospel and it is this:
God loves you
. Simple! The reason I
have put so many quotes above is not because this message is hard to grasp but
because the love of God is extreme, over-the-top, and utterly hyper.
God
loves you.
We will spend eternity unpacking those three little words and
exploring the immeasurable reaches of His love. It’s what we were made for.

Yet
we can make this gospel simpler still. We can go from three words to just one
and that word is
Jesus
. Jesus is what the love of God looks like. Jesus
is the love of God in action. Jesus is the love of God come down.

The
hyper-grace gospel is the revelation of Jesus. It is the announcement that He
is the beginning and the end, the first word and the last. It is the confident
assurance that He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on unto
completion. It is the happy revelation that in Christ, your searching is over
and you have found your eternal resting place. In Him, you are already home.

Jesus
is the hyper-grace gospel!