Why I Am No Longer an Evangelical (Part 5a)
Free Grace Theology
Salvation in all its limitless magnitude is secured, so far as human responsibility is concerned, by believing on Christ as Savior. To this one requirement no other obligation may be added without violence to the Scriptures and total disruption of the essential doctrine of salvation by grace alone.1
The other major heresy, prevalent within Evangelical circles, is what has been dubbed Free Grace Theology by its very proponents. Herein, one is saved, solely by believing that the lifeblood of Christ in the Atonement suffices to be granted an imputed righteous (or just) status before God. In terms of salvation itself, nothing more is required. Performing any works, with a view of solidifying one’s salvific status, would be tantamount to adding works to faith (soteriological legalism), hereby diminishing the ontological value of Christ and His work on the Cross. Moreover, as the mandated and reasonable standard of God is absolute ethical perfection, and in that no person can perform a scrupulously perfect work (which also involves motives and dispositions), let alone a life of scrupulously perfect works, this alternative gospel (faith in Christ AND good works) for salvation fails.
For in any conditional AND statement, each and every condition must be true in order for the whole equation to be true. Z is true only if X is true AND Y is true. Since (Y) one’s works are not perfect, Y is not true. Therefore, Z (salvation) is not true.
That is the argument. It would be a valid argument if Free Grace theologians and, indeed, contemporary Protestant Evangelicalism in general did not conflate salvation and justification. These are clearly not the same.
A reasonable person will discern the problem with this understanding of salvation, wherein leading a righteous and just life is optional. If sin and injustice pollute and destroy every pristine environment into which these have been allowed to enter, how could a prudent Sovereign allow such criminals of the heart into His kingdom, even if a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Free Grace Theology logically lends to sins of presumption and lawlessness (antinominalism). “Converts” are solaced by believing in the talisman of Christ’s lifeblood while they continue to live in utter depravity.
There is overwhelming empirical evidence that such “converts,” those who “came” to Christ, often via the Altar Call, exhibit little evidence of genuine conversion and regeneration. (“By their fruit you will recognize them.”2)
I have walked out of a public venue only twice in my life. Once, it was from out of a movie theatre in Hull, Quebec in 1981, which was showing Gore Vidal’s Caligula. I learnt thereafter to always check movie reviews: this, not so much out of respect for these reviews, but to avoid nasty surprises.
The other occasion was in the midst of a service in a Brampton Baptist church. The worship leader assured the congregation that a recent suicide or overdose of a young man (I cannot recall which), who had been “saved” in that church was still “saved,” despite having not attended that or any other church for a long time and acting in ways which did not indicate that he ever actually had faith in Christ.
In hindsight, in what I saw of Caligula, including the infamous Island of Capri scene, Vidal was more faithful to the history upon which it was based (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars) than this worship leader to the God of Scriptures.
I encountered this same heresy in another church I recently audited. The preacher assured his congregation that they cannot lose their salvation, although severe consequences will ensue by not abiding by biblical counsels. The telltale sign for me, however, was an implicit conflation between justification and salvation in their Statement of Faith.
SALVATION
We believe sinful humankind can only be saved by grace through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, that through His resurrection we have the free gift of eternal life, and that by the power of God we are secure in Christ, eternally saved. The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin - past, present, and future, and is sufficient to save anyone who will believe John 10:27-30; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8-9.3
Many advocates of Free Grace Theology understand the problem of lawlessness and thereupon posit that there will be divine consequences for not pursuing holiness after conversion but not the loss of salvation. This soteriological workaround lends to the creation of a caste system of “carnal” and “spiritual” Christians within the church and in their understanding of the Kingdom, incongruent with the egalitarian ethos intimated in “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low.”4
The typical response by critics to this license to sin within impunity, fostered by Free Grace Theology, is to cite a bevy of scriptural prooftexts which insist that without the pursuit of righteousness, a person will not be saved, nor demonstrates that he/she has “saving” faith.
Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.5
If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume all adversaries.6
Moreover, Free Grace Theology undermines credibility in the wisdom of a God who would establish a soteriological scheme which naturally invites such presumption and lawlessness if, indeed, this constitutes the soteriological scheme of the God of Scriptures!
This prerequisite of works for salvation lends, in turn, to the countercriticism by Free Grace advocates, that their theological adversaries are engaging in “Lord Salvation.”
There has long existed an irreconcilable incoherence with Protestant Evangelical soteriology. For there is little incentive or threat to the person who has low aspirations regarding their final destiny and lives their best life now in full sinfulness. For on the basis of the “once saved, always saved” tenet, even “carnal Christians” shall never lose his/her salvation.
Herein lies the central conundrum. If justification unto salvation is based solely upon the merits of Christ’s life and death through faith, why be good? What is the rationally compelling motivation, even if self-interested and base, why one must pursue peace and holiness in love? Contrariwise, how does requiring these other elements of the Christian walk not, at the same time, become extra judicial requirements for justification?7
I have been “gifted” with navigating through this theological labyrinth by a psychological hell I experienced for decades. For the issue which instigated that very psychological hell was a variation of this conundrum, involving the unpardonable sin.
John Bunyan likewise struggled with this conundrum, also implicitly through the unpardonable sin, which he related in painful detail in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). It is perhaps because of his experience that Bunyan likewise expressed this understanding, albeit implicitly, within his later book, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).
Lewis Sperry Chafer, “The Terms of Salvation”, Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 108, Oct-Dec 1950, p.389 (emphasis added).
Matthew 7:16, 20
I see no purpose in revealing the source of this confessional statement. It is hardly unique within Evangelical circles.
Luke 3:5; Isaiah 40:4
Hebrews 12:14
Hebrews 10:26–27
John Hutchinson, “Age Old Questions,” in Faith from First to Last (unpublished).