As I look into “Free Grace Theology”, I am not familiar enough with its history and core doctrines to distinguish between teachers who are pillars and those who are outliers. 

So I could be wrong, but this is what I am seeing as core doctrines from a couple of different teachers:

• Stress on justification by faith alone – to the extent that repentance is not necessary (or is considered just another word for “faith”). 

• Justification and sanctification are strictly separated. Justification is what secures your place in heaven. It happens in an instant when you feel confidence in Christ’s death for your salvation. 

• Sanctification involves good works, certainly, and it is the preferrable path for disciples, but it is not at all necessary for salvation. Believers who take sanctification seriously in this lifetime will simply win greater rewards in heaven.

• Once saved, always saved. Justification, once granted, is irrevocable.   Believers can have confidence their place in heaven has been secured even if they live a morally corrupt life after their initial moment of faith. 

This is a mess and there’s so much to unpack here. 

So here’s one good rule of thumb to avoid getting enmeshed in a misguided theological tradition in the first place: If you are tempted to hitch your horse to any particular theological movement, make sure its roots go back MUCH further than 20th century America. 

I love the concept of the perspicuity of Scripture.

If you’re not familiar with the term, “perspicuity” is the ironically complicated word which the scholars have chosen instead of “clarity”.

So the idea is that Scripture, though layered, nuanced, and sophisticated in structure, is accessible and understandable to the average reader. Although the meanings of some passages have been obscured by differences in culture and time, everything that a person needs to understand God’s plan of salvation is plain enough to the reader.

I do believe Scripture is generally clear … and yet I also believe the average believer has a weak grasp of the basics. 

Why?

Scripture can be complex and dense, but lately I have begun to wonder if the real culprit keeping Americans from understanding the gospel on a deeper level is Tradition. 

In particular, I mean the traditions surrounding all the various theological arguments that quietly rage over centuries. 

Most Christians aren’t even aware of the points of contention – we only know the viewpoint of whatever tradition we grew up with.

The Bible preachers and teachers we listen to rarely reveal their biases up front. Half the time, they probably aren’t aware of their own biases. They are just parroting what they learned in their home church and their seminary. 

Up until recently, I wasn’t familiar with “Free Grace Theology” and now I realize a pastoral colleague has bought into it full force. He’s recommending books and podcasts and I’m trying to research Free Grace and discern what makes it unique. 

(If you’re not familiar, Free Grace emphasizes “faith alone” for the justification of the sinner – good works play no part. And once justified, a person usually goes on to grow in obedience to God, but doesn’t necessarily have to. The justification is irrevocable. Proponents on the “hyper” fringe of Free Grace would maintain that a man who put his trust in Jesus as a child could die a drunken, drug-addicted child pornographer 50 years later … and still gain access to heaven.) 

Now that I’ve gotten experience researching some of these theological arguments – Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Eternal Conscious Torment vs. Conditional Immortality, Divine Foreknowledge vs. Molinism vs. Open Theism, and Penal Substitutionary Atonement vs. every other atonement theory – if I want to understand, I kind of know at least where to start:

The proof texts. What verses are employed to prove the validity of their doctrinal pillars? 

(And … how far have they been removed from their contexts?)

I have learned that some theological viewpoints are held up by bamboo.

And yet defended ferociously with butter knives. 

I’m trying to keep an open mind regarding Free Grace Theology, but so far it doesn’t look particularly solid to me. 

Sorting through doctrinal traditions is fascinating, but also exhausting and confusing.

Not exactly perspicuous! 

I am still seeking guidance from God on what my dissertation studies will result in – since they won’t become a degree. I firmly believe that the Lord led me into the program for a good reason, I just have to uncover it. 

Caleb is encouraging me to do some longform writing on X or start a podcast on YouTube.

Truthfully, I have wanted to write longer content somewhere that would allow for receiving more comments and challenges from readers. Blogspot here is kind of clunky in that respect while X has just instituted a new form for longer essays. 

And YouTube is weirdly attractive to me, but it seems like everyone and his brother has a podcast these days. 

I guess it will boil down to “best fit”.

One of the things that is really on my heart is the need for mentoring/discipling within the church, for both students and adults. 

I could definitely see where a regular video, while not as ideal as in-person discipling, could at least be “better than nothing”. YouTube does allow significant opportunities for interaction, and it is capable of creating “communities” of sorts. 

There’s a large part of me that resists doing X or YouTube either one because I think people setting out to be “influencers” can be goofy, self-deluded, and a little narcissistic.

But then I remember that I am a preacher. 

And, when you stop to think about it, preachers are the OG influencers! 

A whole lot of (Protestant) preachers get very passionate about salvation/justification coming from faith alone, where faith seems to consist of nothing more than mental assent to a propositional truth, specifically “Jesus died for your sins”. (Otherwise, you get into the “dangerous territory” of “good works”.) 

At first glance, it all sounds biblical and there are plenty of proof texts to support the idea. 

But gathering proof texts is not a solid way to build your theological imagination. It feeds into confirmation bias. You end up “studying to affirm” rather than “studying to learn”, as Christian YouTuber Will Hess puts it. 

What you really need is to consider the entailments of your doctrine as well as proof texts that might be used against it.

So here’s a hypothetical for all the diehard “faith alone” types who also promote “once saved, always saved”:

A 20-something young man dies after a drunken attempt to walk across a 3-lane highway in the dark following a heated argument with his live-in girlfriend. He hadn’t stepped foot in a church in years. 

At the funeral, his mother takes consolation in the fact that as a 10-year-old he had walked the aisle at church and put his faith in Jesus. 

Was that a saving faith? Was he justified before God in that moment as a child with a justification he could never lose? Did he wake up in heaven?

I know you and I are not his judge, of course. 

What I am asking is what conclusion your theology would point to.

I have recently felt an inner challenge to wrestle with one more of the big questions of the Christian faith – and that gets scary because you might come to the conclusion that widely accepted and preached ideas don’t actually have as strong of a Scriptural foundation as you have always assumed.

In recent years, I have wrestled with the nature of hell, the doctrine of original sin, all of TULIP, and the definition of “the gospel”.

Now I am exploring “faith alone” and the relationship between “faith” and “works”. What does the Bible mean by “faith”? Is faith the opposite of works? Are works necessary for salvation or not?

This is a BIGGIE and another hot potato that many Christian leaders get very passionate about. 

And I guess I have been largely oblivious to this before, but apparently a lot of people see faith/works as THE major boundary between Protestants and Catholics.  

In other words, it’s another one of those theological topics where, no matter which side you finally find yourself landing, you are bound to be called a heretic by SOMEBODY.

Several people across social media have recently linked to this sermon clip by Alistair Begg claiming it is “the best 3 minutes of preaching you will ever hear”:

I beg to differ. (No pun intended)

The main thrust of this clip is the preacher’s concern that anybody might mistakenly takes “works” to have anything to do with the “ground of our salvation”. 

Yes, we must guard against thinking obedience to Christ plays any role in salvation, for heaven’s sake! 

Begg asks “the old question”, “If you were to die tonight and you were getting entry into heaven, what would you say?”

It might be an “old” question, but it is also a terribly misguided question, for at least two reasons:

First, nobody is getting entry into heaven when they die – not until we’ve all been given resurrection bodies and faced the Great Throne on The Day of Judgment. 

Second, this sort of pop theology scenario of answering the angel’s question at the pearly gates only reinforces what Matthew Bates would call the “truncated gospel” – i.e. “that the ultimate goal for humanity is spiritual bliss in heaven” rather than a more robust and biblical understanding of the gospel as “embodied participation in the new heavens and the new earth” under the governance of Jesus, our King. (Salvation by Allegiance Alone, p.29)

Remember that the first time the word “gospel” appears in the New Testament is in Matthew 4:23, which says that Jesus “went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.”

Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom for three years. What was He saying about His own death during that time?

In the clip, Begg goes on specifically to equate “Jesus on the cross” with “the gospel”. 

But that, brothers and sisters, is a severely truncated gospel. It is serving up one slice of a much larger pie. 

No wonder why people are hungry for more. 

Last year at this time, I started making plans for an anniversary trip to Scotland. The anticipation put a joyful spin on every passing week. Working out the details and making reservations – and even making payments along the way – were all a joy, because each step brought the reality closer.

The promise of that trip energized me on a weekly basis. It was never absent from my consciousness. 

And when July finally arrived, the whole thing came together even better than I had hoped.

This year I am feeling a similar excitement about planning a very different trip.

God willing, this July I will be taking a group of high school and college students with me to Ghana, West Africa. (And hopefully a parent or two will join us.)

So far I have at least four teens who are seriously interested: two gals and two guys. 

Among the young ladies is my daughter, Sarah – and how awesome will that be? 

A couple of the teens from Sardinia Baptist are also interested and I couldn’t be more excited. As one who knows firsthand the way God can move through a mission trip, the anticipation of what the Lord might accomplish during this trip already has me on the edge of my seat. 

Would you pray for us as this team comes together? I would much appreciate it.

And if you want to join us, let’s talk!