As to Eternal Security. I am not sure. There are proof texts on both sides.
These days I am tending toward the belief that we can lose our salvation. I believe that God honors our freedom beyond all else [how else do we explain the state of the church and the world].
When Paul lists those things that cannot separate us from the love of God, he leaves out one thing that can – our own free choice. We chose “in” and I believe we can choose “out”.
Also, and this is much dearer to my heart these days, I am thinking a lot about how we define the word “Christian”. The writers of the New Testament used the word “Messiah” under 10 times to describe Jesus. They used the term “Son of God” 30-40 times. They used the term “Lord” over 700 times. It is impossible to read the New Testament without coming to the conclusion that, as far as they were concerned, the central factor in defining the term “Christian” is the lordship of Jesus.
A Christian is one who has made Jesus his Lord. This means a changed life. Discipleship. When I see little evidence of any intention to make Jesus Lord, I tend to think the person never really met Him. I have a real concern about how we “sell” Jesus these days. Most of the time the message I hear is that Jesus will solve all of our problems and give us “abundant life” which to most of our hearers means “more stuff than my neighbors have”.
We have been so influenced by the spirit of materialism and pleasure that dominates our culture that we define salvation in material terms. This, of course, proves not to work and soon the person says, “I tried Christianity and it didn’t work for me”. They walk away. The sad thing is, as far as I am concerned, they never tried Christianity. If we would define Christianity as the Lordship of Jesus we would have many fewer converts and many more disciples and almost no apostates.
Interestingly, we would then resemble the demographics of the early church. Perhaps we would also resemble the early church in the degree of her power. I have read much of Michael Browns book “Hyper Grace” and so far I agree with everything he says with some question about whether or not we were forgiven in total at the cross or whether we need to receive it in installments as we sin and repent. That may sound like a big question, but for all the reasons I have given throughout our discussion, I think we arrive at the same practical conclusion and that is that repentance is an ongoing form of spiritual breathing which is essential to life with God – for many more reasons beyond the legal issue of the atonement of sin.
I am still thinking a lot about Michael’s arguments and am open to changing my conclusions on this issue but in practical terms it doesn’t make any difference to how I live or how I would counsel others to live. I tend to define my faith in functional terms which means much of the time I can avoid a firm position on many of these debatable questions. I have to go. Thoughts?
Mark
I’ve known Dr. Michael Brown for 20 years. He’s always been a man full of God’s grace and his new book, Hyper-Grace, reflects that grace. It begins with a great testimony of God’s grace in his life through which he was set free from a life of drugs and a decadent rock and roll lifestyle. He then graciously proceeds to share his concerns about the current errors in the hyper-grace movement. He’s has been accused of being in an attack mode. Nothing could be further from the truth. His manner is gentle and he treats those he disagrees with, with the upmost respect.
He goes in clear detail about several areas of departure from orthodoxy; these include the idea that God has already forgiven us of all our future sins the moment we are saved ignoring clear scriptural admonitions that we should confess our sins one to another and that Jesus pointed out the sins in chapters 2 and 3 in the book of Revelation of the 7 churches of Asia minor who were clearly followers of Jesus but had fallen into sin (there’s much more on this matter in the book).
Next he corrects the concept that believers no longer need to ask God for forgiveness by bringing clear scripture testimony to the misguided idea that Christians don’t have to confess their sins to God in clear opposition to scriptures like Matthew 18:21-35 (the hyper-grace camp believes that Jesus’ teaching here is not relevant because it was given before Jesus died on the cross, I guess we need to ignore most of what he taught then since it occurred before the cross. Dr. Brown clearly and graciously shows where this concept is incorrect – there’s a whole chapter on this later in the book).
Then Dr. Brown, with the full support of the scriptures shows that the false concept that the Holy Spirit never convicts Christians is clearly misguided and flies in the face of accounts in Revelation 2 and 3 where we clearly see the Holy Spirit telling the church to listen to a sound rebuke. (If this is not conviction I don’t know what is). There’s much more in his chapter on this as well. He goes on in his book to bring clear scriptural support to correct additional errors that purport that there is no on-going work of sanctification in the believers life as is clearly taught in 1 Thess 4:4,5 and that God is always pleased with us even though scriptures like 1 Cor 11:27-32 warn us that we can greatly grieve God and need to be careful not to do it and that we need to look for ways to please Him .1 Thess 4:1, Eph 4-6.
He also addresses the erroneous idea that spirituality is effortless. He corrects this with many biblical passages like Heb 4:1,11; 10:35-36, 2 Peter 3:13-14. Then there is the misnomer that “God is always in a good mood”. This is clearly refuted by many scriptural passages showing that God’s wrath is as real as His mercy and he will deal with sin. He also shows that all that Christ said applies to us today and we cannot safely ignore it or just write it off as not relevant to us today. I’ve just briefly touched on these subjects but Dr. Brown gives a thorough and in-depth coverage to all the errors in the hyper-grace teaching.
In summary let me quote from the beginning of his book. “I’m afraid that many modern grace teachers, in their zeal to safe-guard the glories of grace, preach their message without fundamental aspects of biblical truth. These would include: 1) God requires holy living from His people; 2) our sins do have an impact on our relationship with God; 3) you can preach grace and preach against sin at the same time; 4) there is much in the Old Testament that remains of foundational relevance to believers under grace.”
In closing let me say this book is written with a grace and gentleness of a man who is secure in God’s grace and is gracious toward others who often misquote him and attack him without really investigating what he’s said. It’s also written by a man who is one of the most brilliant and studied students of scripture. I highly recommend this book.