I am Alive and Kicking (and Praising the Lord!)

Dear readers of Free Grace Theology Blog,

Thank you for your continued patronage. Things have been very busy in my life recently. My wife is opening up a restaurant for her company and has been working 13-hour days for the last month. I wake up at 3am, go to work, pick up my youngest children, drop off the carpool, get my kids on their homework, get them a snack, pick up my eldest son from cross-country practice, make dinner, clean up, get the kids bathed, do our devotions and bed-time reading, and get them to bed. By this time it is 8:30, I get a little time with the Lord and get to sleep, sleeping only about 6 hours, and wake up and start it all over again. You think that I would have some time on Saturdays… well, I work 12 hours also on that day which includes my second job. Add to this that my eldest son now attends a charter high school where he is only on campus two days a week and the rest of the time is independent study. It is my job to keep him on track and task, and help him with his home studies. Thankfully there is light at the end of the tunnel, in that the restaurant will finally open sometime next week, and my wife will not have to spend any more time training the front-end staff. She has been training over 80 individuals (servers, bussers, hosts) on all the points of fine dining service.

There are so many things to talk about.

Recently, Zane Hodges wrote an article in the Grace Evangelical Society newsletter addressing many people’s tendency in Christianity to test one’s profession in the Lord Jesus Christ by their adherence to various and arbitrary orthodox doctrines. This he calls ‘doctrinal legalism’. He did a great job of arguing (quite simply, by the way) that their touchstone passage (1 Cor 15:1ff) does not serve the purpose they have projected upon it. I highly recommend this article! You must read it!

I simply cannot do the article justice in a review, for the article is only two pages long, short enough for you to read under 8 minutes, and I would ask you to be the judge. If you want to be mailed this current newsletter, please call (972) 257-1160 and ask for one to be speedily sent out to you, and you can be signed up to be on their free mailing list.

I have been very busy, tired – and a bit burnt out from blogging. Yet I feel as though Zane’s article, the few recent phone conversations that I have had with Zane and Bob Wilkin, and some encouragement from the Lord has blown some more wind into my sails. I plan on writing and publishing something this week which will address current issues in Free Grace Theology.

Ok, ok! I can’t help myself. I will just give a couple of sentences from Zane’s article:

… recently another form of legalism… has achieved a heightened profile. This [theology] maintains that eternal salvation is by “correct doctrinal conviction.” It is not enough to simply believe that Jesus Christ gives us eternal life when we believe in Him for that. We must also believe certain orthodox doctrines which go along with such belief. But these doctrines are not in themselves identical with believing in Jesus Christ for eternal life. Instead these beliefs form a kind of checklist that measures the validity of one’s faith. [emphasis mine] I call this form of legalism theological legalism [emphasis his]. Basically it is salvation for the orthodox![emphasis mine]

Theological legalism [emphasis his] seeks to co-opt Free Grace theology. Indeed, it masquerades as this kind of theology. But this claim is false. [In this form of legalism] [g]race is not given freely to the sinner who believes in Jesus for eternal life. Instead, grace is denied to that sinner unless he subscribes to the relevant theological propositions [emphasis mine]. A recent book entitled Getting the Gospel Wrong prescribes five core essentials that one must believe to get eternal life. If a person fails to believe even one of the five, he has believed a gospel that cannot save him.

But at this point obvious problems emerge. Who determines which theological doctrines are necessary for eternal salvation? The Bible, we are told. But where in the Bible? No single place, we are told. Who then determines what the definitive list contains? The answer, of course, boils down to this: the theological legalist himself! Because if the legalist himself doesn’t tell us, no one will ever figure it out!

[Zane C. Hodges, The Hydra’s Other Head: Theological Legalism, The Grace Evangelical Society’s Grace in Focus September/October 2008

I read today someone from New Tribes Missions who wrote a brief response to Zane’s article. What I found did not contain any thoughtful response to Zane’s arguments, but an appeal to emotion. What I have found in this conversation from the other side is much too much emotion. This type of dialogue does not have any substantive profit... it only poisons the well (which often times it seems constructed for that specific goal!).

The Lord is using Zane Hodges, Bob Wilkin, and the Grace Evangelical Society to expose the errors of our Free Grace brothers and sisters who demand doctrinal conformity as a condition for eternal life rather than only simple faith in the glorious Savior for the gift He so desires to give men and women.

Let us not garble our message by ad hoc inclusion of sundry and arbitrary doctrines in our invitations for the lost to receive eternal life. Let us simply call upon them to entrust their eternal destinies into the able hands of Christ by simple faith.

Praise the Lord for such simplicity and graciousness!