A Radical Invitation

Has the first word of the biblical salvation message has been lost through disuse? Given the climate and message of today's evangelical church, one has to wonder. Jesus preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The Apostles preached, "Repent!" Even when just counseling the woman caught in adultery Jesus said, "Go and sin no more." Let me ask you, is that the kind of thing you preach?

Where is the "REPENT!" in today's preaching? It just isn't part of the evangelical fabric that's in fashion these days. Have we become so afraid that people will not respond to that nasty little word that we have abandoned it and now depend on manipulation and marketing instead? When we rely on such measly human efforts that utilize enticement and stroke the flesh, what sacrifice is any respondent prepared to make?

The discipleship crisis the American church is in today starts with the message that initially enlists today's supposed disciples. Folks that enter thinking they don't have to turn, won't turn after they enter. I'm not a fan of fire and brimstone preaching--faith, not fear, is the only motivation that sustains a life of following Jesus--but to become a Christian a person must embrace their own death and trust Christ to raise them to a new (and better) life. People today, though all-modern-and-educated, must  still hear and respond to the call to repent and follow Jesus, as any disciple in any former age did.

Christianity is about a radical change in direction, a night and day difference in one's life. The result of a new birth cannot be the same old, same old, for birth means leaving an old way of life for a new one, or it's not birth at all. For those would who style themselves as radical and innovative preachers in this day and age, the message that actually matches that characterization starts with the word REPENT! Now that's a radical invitation that stands a shot at producing new life.

Sugar-coating the Bread of Life

Sugar coating: originally a process in the food industry whereby sugar or syrup was applied in some fashion to the surface of a food product, making the product sweeter and thereby more delectable. Often used in conjunction with food that was less tasty or desirable in order to increase its consumption; e.g., the breakfast cereal industry, or as in the song in Mary Poppins.

Why would the salvation wrought by Christ need to be sugar-coated? In itself, of itself, it already promises knowing our Creator personally, living forever without disease, decay or death, and being free from doing stupid things we will rue but do regardless (among other things). Could there be a sweeter deal? Salvation is an absolute dream come true, but being a disciple of Christ comes at a cost even though it is truly free.

Salvation entails the saved acknowledging that they don't run the show and so they bow to the leadership of Jesus.

In this day where willfulness is celebrated and self is elevated, the temptation is to assume that most of the people we're trying to coax into the Kingdom of God won't buy into such an arrangement. So, repentance is soft-pedaled, sin and judgment is back-pedaled, and continuing on in life as it was with Jesus merely added is floor-pedaled. Can such a vitamin supplement approach to the gospel actually cleanse the conscience or ready the soul for a welcome in the age to come?

It's not those who call Jesus, "Lord" who are saved but those who actually do as he says.

Buying into the gospel means selling everything else we had before the gospel came into our lives and going full-bore after Jesus. Families may ostracize or desert us. Riches may have to be abandoned. Sexual pleasures will not be guaranteed to us. Just because we had a dream doesn't mean that God has that same dream for us or is bound to help us to achieve it. This the price of Jesus being Lord.

A gospel that doesn't stop us in our tracks is not going to get us on the right track.

I like toast with breakfast. As a kid, I particularly liked cinnamon toast. When mom made it, most of the sugary coating was shaken off back into the bowl. When I got my hands on it, I usually found a way to load those tasty slabs of cinnamon goodness with more sugary sweetness. If mom ever saw what I was doing she would never have stood for it, but then she cared about my health and wanted me to enjoy having teeth for the rest of my life. 

Making adjustments to the gospel makes what is adjusted no gospel at all. If we truly care for those we try to win with the gospel and want them to be whole throughout all eternity, we need to stick to the truth that sets sinners free. Coming to grips with who and what Jesus is and following him exclusively is food and drink indeed. If we want to feed the folk we preach to something that can nourish them eternally, we need to stop sugar-coating the Bread of Life, and start preaching Jesus as Lord straight up.

Hypergrace

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?"  (Luke 6:46 NASB)

Hypergrace is an approach to God's favor in which acceptance and love are extended from God to the believer without any expectation or demand. Under such a view, Christ's work on the cross, which secured salvation, ended any need for such from the one trusting in Christ. It sounds absolutely heavenly to those who've labored under a regimen of works-righteousness, and is a deal too good to pass up on for those who just don't want any urgency or intensity to be required in responding to God. No one wants to go to hell, after all, but is grace of this sort actually available?

If it is taught in the scripture, then it certainly is. So, is it taught there? Not in the least!  Hypergrace is a doctrine which cannot float in light of scripture.

It springs a leak in the Sermon on the Mount.

It takes on water in Romans 12.

It searches frantically for life jackets in Ephesians.

It gurgles the death throes of the drowning in the book of James.

It sinks to the bottom in the Letters to the Churches in Revelation.

[Not to mention how this, this and this crush it's sunken corpse into nothingness]

Hypergrace is for the lazy at heart and the blind of mind. It is for those lost in the childishness of sin--wanting their cake and to eat it too--rather than those surrendered in a child-like faith to following Christ. I've heard its proponents protest that they've never "felt closer" to God than when they've embraced this teaching. But the Gospel is never said to be efficacious through the auspices of what one feels, but only through faith in who Jesus is and what he's done.

Grace describes the attitude of God's heart, a kindness there that breaks the sinner free from the bondage of death and releases him or her into the freedom of new life in Christ Jesus. This grace is never an excuse for sin, nor does it forgive sin as if it did not truly matter after all. Grace forgives sin through an expiating sacrifice of sinless blood that it moved God to provide. God's grace is more than sufficient to deliver the broken and dying sinner through a stumbling journey in life to eternity with him, but is never a substitute for following him as Lord.

If hypergrace actually represents the way God looks on man, and the way man should look on God, then I submit that there was actually no need for the cross and there is no present need for faith.

Grace and Obedience

When I was a kid, the sage advice I often received from my elders was to do what I was told. That may have been the role I was saddled with for that period in my life, but I didn't like it. It chafed against my willfulness and felt oppressive. No doubt, as an adult I have passed on that counsel to others (namely the five that share my surname and grew up in my house) many times over.

I was 20 when Christ became my Lord: too young to be completely past teen rebellion, too old to be treated like a kid. Yet, the scriptures clearly taught me, in regard to my newly found faith, I had to become as a child. Humility, submissiveness and obedience were to be the watchwords of my new existence. Let me tell you: it is no easier to accept such things from God all grown up than it was to accept them from earthly elders when I was a kid.

Americans, maybe humans in general, don't like those words when they're focused on them. We can see the need for someone else to abide by them, perhaps, but not so much ourselves. We want to make our own decisions, pursue our desires, and control our destiny. Meanwhile, the idealized image of the heavenly "Father" we have fabricated in our minds sits sensitively on the sidelines, cheerleading our drive and affirming our ambitions. Isn't that what it means that "God is for us" in the modern vernacular?

Christians, at least those who catch big air surfing the hypergrace wave, go into gag reflex when someone says that God should be obeyed and is not pleased when he isn't. I've seen the claim that God is just as pleased with a Christian who is not obeying him as he is with one who is! A cursory reading of the Letters to the Churches in the Apocalypse is sufficient to put that notion to rest! Whereas that metric could be applied to the concept of acceptance or salvation, it cannot be applied to the experience of relationship.

Obeying God, treating Jesus as if he actually is the Lord, is essential to a vital and productive relationship with him. That is the approach Jesus modeled for us as humans. He loved his Father and obeyed him, and that is why they had such a close relationship. Jesus asks us, "why do you call me Lord, and do not do the things I say?" When it comes to a dynamic experience of God's presence and fellowship in our lives, when it comes to revival, there's no avoiding the fact that we're just going to have to learn to do what we're told.

Anything less is not grace, it's garbage.