Free Grace Q & A

Q. Is it possible to have your sins remitted, but not experience regeneration and the transformation of soul of which Hebrews 10:16 speaks?

A. No. They always happen together, in all cases. Anyone who is regenerate has been forgiven; anyone who has been forgiven has been born again. They are two inseparable branches of the new covenant.

Q. Is it possible to come to Christ without repenting of sin?

A. No. Christ offers himself as Savior for sin. His death was payment for our sins. Eternal life is the taking away of God’s eternal penalty of our sins. Calling on the Savior for salvation from your sins presupposes a change of heart about your spiritual status before God, and your own sins. You admit that you’re guilty of sin, where before you denied it. You want the problem of sin dealt with, instead of excusing sin, or reveling in it.

Q. What is the Gospel? Doesn’t it require a commitment to keep God’s laws?

A. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, and following, is the most concise definition of the Gospel I find in the New Testament. It’s the one I use most frequently. Romans 12:1-2, on the other hand, is not the Gospel. The Gospel never requires anyone to keep God’s laws as a condition for eternal life.

Q. What condition(s) does God require, in order to have your sins justified?

A. Trust in the Gospel alone.

Q. Can a true Christian lead a worldly, carnal life?

A. Yes. Lot and Samson are examples of this from the Old Testament. Hebrews 11:32 says that Samson was a man of faith, and Peter called Lot a righteous man (2 Peter 2:7). Many in the Corinthian church were examples of this in the New Testament (1 Cor. 3:1-4). The Reformed writers who say that there is no such thing as a carnal Christian are flat wrong.

Q. Can a person’s lifestyle expose them as unregenerate, regardless of their claims?

A. Yes, see 1 John 3:7-14. The claim by certain hyper-free-grace people that there’s no connection between faith in Christ and how one lives one’s life, is antinomian and heretical.

Q. How can we tell the difference between an immature, worldly Christian, and a
“tare among the wheat”?

A. We might not always be able to tell, though often we can through careful examination. You will always find something defective in the individual’s view of Jesus Christ and/or the Gospel. Ultimately, God knows who belongs to him. The other eleven apostles didn’t even know Judas was a false believer, in spite of spending so much time with him. Some people hide their sins very well. However, anyone who is exposed as knowingly involved in sin and rebellion against the Lord should be regarded as a non-inheritor of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-11), and put out of the church as a heathen, Gentile, and tax-collector (idioms meaning to regard them as non-Christians).

Q. What can explain significant moral laxity in a Christian?

A. There can be several possible reasons for significant moral laxity in a Christian. They could be regenerate, but have not presented their bodies to the Lord (Romans 12:1), and their thoughts are still greatly molded to the POV of the wicked world (Romans 12:2). They could have been taught a one-sided view of saving grace, in which they have only been taught about how the grace of God brings salvation (Titus 2:11), but not that the same grace teaches us to deny worldly lusts (Titus 2:12). In other words, they may haven been badly discipled, or perhaps not discipled at all. They might not have suffered enough (James 1:3-4). They might be proud or lazy, and either have failed to apply themselves to God’s word, or received it in pride rather than humbly (James 1:21). They might have been taught a hyper-intellectualized approach to Christianity, in which spirituality is defined by having every doctrinal I dotted and t crossed, but without action (James 1:22-25).

Q. Is it possible to be a Christian but be knowingly disobedient to Christ’s authority over your life?

A. Yes, for the following reasons:

• The Lord wouldn’t command us Christians to yield our bodies to God (Romans 6:12-13), or to fear God (1 Peter 2:17) and reject evil (1 Peter 3:11), if those attitudes were automatic, instinctive by-products of regeneration. Because Christians are told to obey these instructions, I assume it’s possible for us to disobey them.

• Peter said it is possible for Christians to be spiritually barren, unfruitful, short-sighted, and to forget our cleansing from sin (2 Peter 1:8-9). This happens because of a lack of diligence (1:10) in the hard work of adding to our basic faith the godly virtues listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7.

• Every sin we commit is an act of lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Since Christians can and do sin (1 John 1:8), therefore, when a true Christian willfully sins, he or she is rejecting Christ’s lordship.

• Lordship salvation teaching in this regard is a form of perfectionsm.

Q. Didn’t Christ tell the rich young ruler that he needed to be willing to give up everything, in order to be saved?

A. Yes and no. Christ never presented the Gospel to the rich young ruler. He reminded him of Moses’ laws, attempting to penetrate the young man’s cloud of self-deception about his own freedom from sin. Christ used the moral law in an attempt to bring conviction of sin. Moses’ law promises eternal life too, but, unlike the Gospel, it offers it on the condition of perfect obedience to the commandments. Christ was trying to make the young man see his own lost condition.

Q. Didn’t Christ teach that people need to hate their father and mother, take up their crosses daily, lay their hand to the plow for the kingdom and never look back, and other similarly demanding standards, in order to be saved?

A. No. It’s important to pay attention to the question of who the audience was. Christ taught those demands to people who were already professed disciples.

Q. Doesn’t the Sermon on the Mount teach rigorous demands for salvation?

A. Yes, because the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ exposition (and amending) of Moses’ law, but taught on the authority of His own deity. Christ never presents the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount. In this sense, the Sermon is very similar to how he dealt with the rich young ruler. It was a pre-evangelistic message meant to strike conviction of sin into the listeners’ hearts.

Q. Doesn’t there have to be at least a willingness to keep the laws of God, in order to be saved?

A. Knowledge of the laws of God is foundational to a true grasp of the Gospel. The grace of God makes sense only to people who see that they are condemned for their sins. But you are not saved by a willingness to keep God’s commandments. The Gospel is about Christ dying on the cross. What did Christ die for? Christ died for your sins. He died for your sin of unwillingness to keep the laws of God. He died for your sin of unwillingness to keep the laws of God that you have committed after you became a Christian. So a willingness to keep the moral laws of God can’t be a condition for your justification, since (a) you cannot, and are not, going to consistently keep that commitment, and (b) Jesus already paid the price for your repeated failures to be willing to submit to His lordship.

Q. But can’t people foresee what living the Christian life is going to mean, what changes it will entail, and for those reasons they reject Christ?

A. Such a person is not yet repentant of their sins. Their desire to be master of their own fate is one of the sins for which Christ died, and for which they will be eternally condemned if they don’t call on Christ’s name to be saved. But the Gospel is not, “Surrender to Christ’s lordship over you, and you shall be saved.” You will never keep that commitment. You have not kept that commitment in the past. You are not now keeping that commitment, as God requires it be kept. I say this because, if it’s part of what God requires to justify you, then you must keep it perfectly. If a non-Christian asks you, “Do I have to surrender myself to Christ’s moral authority over me, to be saved?,” the reply is, No. You don’t live that way now, and you’re not going to live that way after you become a Christian in a way sufficiently good enough for God to consider you having met the requirement.

We are justified by one act of faith (Hebrews 10:14), not a lifetime of faithfulness. Besides, if we believe that new birth follows faith in Christ, then the Spirit of God’s holy law entering the living fabric of our heart (Hebrews 10:16) occurs after we trust in Christ. Unless you subscribe to the Reformed view, which is that new birth precedes and causes faith.