As I dialogue with believers across a large spectrum of theological perspectives, it is clear that we often talk right past each other, disagreeing with each other before we even understand each other. Just as often, we uphold our own beliefs by misrepresenting the positions we reject. This does nothing to advance true understanding or dialogue.
While writing Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message, I read the books of the key teachers very carefully, praying that God would show me blind spots in my own life, that He would expose any legalistic thinking within me and that He would open my eyes to any grace insights these teachers had that I might be lacking.
I did not see myself as God’s policeman, and even when a position seemed extreme, I tried to consider the point the author was making rather than reject it out of hand. (To be candid, some positions were so extreme and unbiblical, they had to be rejected out of hand.)
I also interacted with some of the key hypergrace leaders, sharing my differences, making sure I understood them correctly and even offering to send them parts of Hyper-Grace in advance to be sure I was representing them fairly.
And I listened carefully to the testimonies of those who had been transformed by the hypergrace message, wanting to be careful to affirm the life-giving truths they had received while correcting the errors that often accompanied those truths.
It is against this backdrop of careful, prayerful study and interaction that I present four of the most common hypergrace fallacies:
1. The reason people reject the hypergrace message is because they don’t understand it. I’ve heard this objection repeatedly, only for hypergrace adherents to explain to me exactly what I already knew.
Why can’t the disagreement be based on real substance? And with all the claims of a new grace reformation, is it any surprise that committed believers who love the Lord and love the Word are questioning this allegedly new insight into the Scriptures, one which has supposedly been hidden for centuries?
I have stated repeatedly that every hypergrace teacher I have listened to or read has stated clearly that the message of grace does not give us a license to sin. And I have affirmed with them that the more we love Jesus, the less we will want to sin. Absolutely!
Yet hypergrace teachers and adherents will constantly say to me, “How dare you say we are giving people a license to sin. It’s obvious you don’t understand our message.”
To the contrary, it is because I understand the hypergrace message that I reject those parts of it that are unbiblical.
2. Those who reject the hypergrace message are grace-haters. This is as foolish as claiming that those who reject counterfeit money are money-haters. (To be clear, I’m not calling the hypergrace message a counterfeit message, since it contains much wonderful truth; I’m simply making a point by using an analogy.)
Of course, it’s convenient to castigate those of us who reject the hypergrace message, calling us grace-haters and worse. But that’s no better than me saying, “Those who embrace the hypergrace message are holiness-haters.”
Do accusations like this do anyone any good?
In reality, it is because we love the message of grace that we are concerned about the hypergrace message, since it represents an exaggerated, distorted form of grace.
3. Rejecting the hypergrace message means going back into bondage and legalism. It is certainly possible that some people who reject the hypergrace message swing to the other extreme and fall into legalism. (I describe legalism as “rules without relationship, standards without a Savior and laws without love.” In short, legalism is externally imposed religion.)
The fact is that there are plenty of us who reject the hypergrace message and live without a trace of condemnation, enjoying the goodness of God and responding to that goodness with a life of joyful obedience, walking in glorious, non-performance-based freedom, reveling day and night in the Father’s love.
But we reject the hypergrace message because it teaches biblical falsehoods that pollute the message of grace and, over time, can lead to backsliding and spiritual shipwreck.
4. The reason pastors and leaders oppose the hypergrace message is because they want to control people and make money off of them. This is one of the most ugly, judgmental, fear-inducing comments imaginable, but I actually hear it a lot.
Ironically, some of the leading hypergrace teachers have become best-selling authors and have grown large ministries by preaching the hypergrace message, yet their followers don’t accuse them of doing it for money. How interesting! For the record, though, I don’t accuse them of teaching hypergrace for financial gain. Instead, I believe they teach it because they believe it to be biblical, just as I reject the teaching of hypergrace because I don’t believe it to be biblical.
Mocking social media comments like this one, attacking those of us who reject the modern grace message, are all too common: “We must restore the truth of the trinity to the church: money, Bible and minister. We will lose our hold over people and our private jets if we don’t.”
Those who believe such nonsense evidence a lack of grace in their own lives.
The bottom line is that Jesus said that the truth sets us free (John 8:32), and if the message of hypergrace is not true, as I and many others contend, then it is by rejecting that error and embracing the full testimony of God’s Word—thereby embracing God’s true grace—that freedom and liberty will come.
That also means rejecting these common hypergrace fallacies.###
Books by Michael L. Brown — via AMAZON.COM
Dr. Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. Dr. Brown served as a leader in the Brownsville Revival from 1996-2000 and birthed FIRE School of Ministry in 2001. He has preached throughout the United States and in more than twenty nations and has written twenty books on revival, holiness, radical discipleship, and Jewish-Christian issues, along with scholarly works in Old Testament and Hebrew studies. He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience. He hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, The Line of Fire, he is a featured columnist on TownHall.Com et al., and he is the author of many books, one of the latest of which is Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur\’s Strange Fire. Follow him at AskDrBrown on Facebook or @drmichaellbrown on Twitter.
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