The Hyper-Grace Gospel: A Response to Michael Brown and Those Opposed to the Modern Grace Message (10 page)

In many hyper-grace books it is common to
find some discussion on 1 John 1:9. This verse is special because it is the
only verse in the new covenant that appears to link confession of sins with
God’s forgiveness. If this verse was in the old covenant it would be no great
thing, but because it’s in the new it stands out.

Clark Whitten
writes:

Whenever the
subjects of sin and the need of confession are raised, this verse is
universally quoted and trotted out as a proof text. Why? Because there aren’t
any others to quote!
[72]

1 John 1:9 is often used to support a
mixed-grace message of conditional forgiveness. “God won’t forgive you unless
you review all of your sins.” Naturally this message is incompatible with grace
and everything else the new covenant says about forgiveness.

Dr. Brown is well
acquainted with the grace-based interpretation of 1 John 1:9. He’s read our
books. However, he has two points of contention:

First, who are
the “we” John is referring to when he says, “If
we
confess our sins … ”?

Some (including
me) have said that John is referring to unbelievers. However, Dr. Brown says
we
means
us
(page 57). John is referring to Christians because we all get
dirty from time to time and need to be re-cleansed.

Perhaps we don’t
need to get too worked up over exactly who John had in mind when he wrote this
verse. I think we can agree that we all need Jesus to cleanse us from sin and
unrighteousness—every single one of us. That’s what John is saying here. “If we
… He will …”

The real question
is whether He will cleanse us from
all
sin or only
some
sin
(specifically the sin we confess). Does He cleanse from
all
unrighteousness or only
some
unrighteousness? Here John is unequivocal.
Jesus cleanses us from “
all
unrighteousness.”

The first chapter
of 1 John contains a number of imperatives that should not be confusing to the
reader. If you are not walking
in the light
you need to get
in the
light
. But if you are
in the light
you don’t need to get
in the
light
because you already are
in the light
.

Similarly, if you
have not been cleansed
from all unrighteousness
, then you need to be
cleansed
from all unrighteousness
. But if you have been cleansed
from
all unrighteousness
, then you don’t need to be cleansed
from all
unrighteousness
because you already have been cleansed
from all
unrighteousness
.

I’m sorry to
labor this point, but it seems John’s words are confusing to some people.

Here’s the second
point of contention: What exactly is confession?

As we saw in Part
B, confession, as John uses the term, does not mean reviewing your sins. It
means “to say the same thing as another” or “to agree with” God (see Myth #2).
In this case we are agreeing that we have sinned and are in need of cleansing.

So far so good.
Yet Dr. Brown further notes that the Greek word for confess speaks of
continuous action as opposed to a one-time act (page 58).

Why does John say
we need to keep confessing? Remember, confessing means agreeing with God. It’s
the definition of faith and the native language of a believer.

In context,
confession means agreeing with what God says about our sins. It means that if I
sin and act unfaithfully I agree with God that He remains faithful and has
cleansed me from
all
unrighteousness including the unrighteous thing I
just did. I agree that Christ alone is the cure for my failings and that
anything I do to atone for my sin will only tarnish the sublime perfections of
His redemptive work.

Contrary to the
recommendations of DIY religion, I don’t need to speak to God about my sins
because Jesus speaks for me (1 John 2:1).

Dr. Brown has a
different understanding. According to him, continually confessing means
continually reviewing your sins for the purposes of being forgiven. When you
got saved you were forgiven. Then you sinned and became unforgiven. In the
heavenly accounts your name was scratched out of the forgiven column and
entered into the unforgiven column where it will remain until you confess. This
is called conditional forgiveness and it is preached nowhere in the new
covenant.

The idea that God
withholds His forgiveness until we confess creates an intriguing problem for
the mixed-grace preacher, for didn’t Jesus say harboring unforgiveness is a
sin? If we don’t confess and God doesn’t forgive, doesn’t that mean God is
guilty of breaking His own commands?

Dr. Brown
wriggles out of this by inventing different levels of forgiveness. There’s the
forgiveness of salvation, which is never withdrawn, and then there is the less
secure forgiveness of friendship which sometimes is (page 59). Apparently, God
harbors only the second and lesser kind of unforgiveness, which I guess means
He’s only a lesser sinner and not a great one like the saint who needs to confess.

Page 59: Dr.
Brown stresses that when we sin we do not need to get saved all over again.
When you sin you are still saved; you’re just not forgiven. Forgive me for
running off on a tangent here, but the suggestion that Christians are not
forgiven unless they specifically confess each sin intrigues me. Since it is
impossible to confess all our sins, especially the numerous sins of omission,
do we conclude that the church is full of unforgiven Christians?

“Paul, you’re
being pedantic. Of course you don’t need to confess
all
your sins. You
only need to confess the ones you did on purpose.” So you’re saying God turns a
blind eye to some of our sin? Because I thought sin was sin.

No matter how
well you dress her, confessing-to-be-forgiven is the bone-ugly love-child of
dead religion and the universal but faithless desire for self-improvement. Her
mouth is full of lies for she would have you believe that the church is made up
of unforgiven Christians worshipping an unforgiving God. If you’ve been dating
this hideous hag, it’s time to end the relationship.

But I digress.

Page 60: Dr.
Brown maintains that we do not confess sins to get re-saved but to restore our
fractured relationship with God. Apparently this is what Jesus had in mind when
He taught us to daily pray, “Forgive us our debts.” Actually, Jesus taught us
to ask for daily
bread
not daily forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness on
a daily basis seems silly to me. What if we miss a day? What if we haven’t
sinned? Can you imagine some of the conversations we might have with God?

“Lord, forgive
me.”

“Why, what did
you do?”

“I don’t know.
This is just a general-purpose confession. Why not put this one in the tank for
next time?”

It would be funny
except there are people out there who actually live like this. It breaks my
heart. These dear folk are bound with guilt and are constantly fretting about
the sins they need to confess. They need to hear the good news of God’s
complete and unconditional forgiveness.

Page 60: I get
mentioned as having “a real problem” with conditional forgiveness. Indeed, I
do. If I trained my children to ask me for forgiveness on a daily basis, even
when they had done nothing wrong, I would be an abnormal father. And if they
sinned and I withheld my forgiveness
until
they repented and confessed,
I would be an unloving father. I would certainly be less of a dad than Dr.
Brown’s father.

I don’t know if
Dr. Brown’s dad was a Christian when he forgave his son but he sure acted like
one:

Bear with each
other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossians 3:13)

We are not supposed to wait until those
who sin against us repent and confess before we forgive them. We’re supposed to
forgive them
as the Lord forgave us
. On the cross Jesus forgave the men
who put Him there (Luke 23:34). These were men who hated Him, cursed Him, and
tortured Him. None of these men confessed or repented. Some of them actually
thought they were doing the Lord’s work. Yet Jesus forgave them all.

This is how it is
supposed to be with us. We are to forgive
as the Lord forgave us
. If we
waited for everyone who hurt us to apologize and ‘fess up before we forgave
them we would become embittered grace-killers (see Heb. 12:15).

Does this mean
hyper-grace preachers are opposed to confession of sin? Of course not. We are
merely saying there is a difference between healthy and unhealthy confession.
Healthy confession, or agreeing with God, helps us receive grace and is useful
for breaking the power of sin in our lives. But unhealthy confession, which is
verbalizing unbelief in the goodness of God and the finished work of the cross,
perpetuates a cycle of Adamic self-reliance and death.
[73]

Page 63: Dr.
Brown disputes the hyper-grace teaching that says “the moment you were saved,
your future sins were pronounced forgiven.” Well if we’re defining forgiveness
as the Bible does (literally, the carrying away of sins), then you’d better
hope this is true because Jesus isn’t going back to the cross. Incidentally, we
don’t say your sins were forgiven the moment you were saved. You were forgiven
much earlier than that.

Pages 66–7: Dr.
Brown quotes at length from an article attacking the “imbecilic, ignorant, or
crazy” logic that says there is no need for Christians to repent or otherwise
deal with “momentary blemishes and spots.” Since I don’t know any hyper-grace
preacher who says such imbecilic, ignorant, and crazy things, I see no need to
respond. For more on the myth that hyper-grace preachers are against
repentance, see Part B (Myth #1).

Just as there is only one verse in the New
Testament linking confession with forgiveness, there is only one verse linking
the Holy Spirit’s conviction with sin (John 16:8). But what a mountain has been
built on that one verse! Here are three points of view:

(1)
  
Dr. Brown says the Holy Spirit convicts
Christians of their sins

(2)
  
Most grace preachers say the Holy Spirit
never convicts Christians of their sins

(3)
  
Some grace preachers also say the Holy
Spirit never convicts anyone—saved or unsaved—of their sins

(If you’re wondering how the third
viewpoint could possibly be Biblical, it’s based on the stunning revelation
that Christ did away with all our sin on the cross and there is nothing left to
convict. The Holy Spirit seeks to convict or convince sinners of that truth.
“Regarding sin, see Jesus. Trust Him.”)

Page 73: Most hyper-grace
preachers agree that the Holy Spirit never convicts believers of their sin.
However, Dr. Brown says that the Holy Spirit, as an expression of His love and
kindness, “makes us uncomfortable in our sins.” He notes that the Greek word
for convict can mean several things but mainly suggests fault-finding and
rebuke (see pages 75–6). But if it’s the Holy Spirit’s practice to find fault
and rebuking us, why did He inspire Paul to write 1 Corinthians 13:5? Perhaps
Paul misheard because apparently love
does
find fault and keep a record
of wrongs.

Page 74: The Holy
Spirit says to the believer, “You have sinned.” Really? Why would the Spirit of
Christ seek to remind you of the sins Christ has carried away? It’s like Jesus
removed your sins as far as the east is from the west but His Spirit went on a
looooong trip and brought them back again. It’s as though the blood of the Lamb
blotted out all your sins (Is. 43:25), but the Holy Spirit wrote them back in
again. It’s like God the Father is sitting on the throne of grace saying, “In
honor of Jesus I choose to forget your sins,” but the Holy Spirit is saying,
“Don’t worry Lord, I’ll help you remember them.” It’s ridiculous.

How exactly does
the Holy Spirit convict us? Through the law, says Dr Brown on page 77. “It is
by God’s law that we are convicted—the very Law that hyper-grace teachers want
to throw under the bus as dangerous and destructive.” And the very law that the
hyper-grace preacher Paul said ministered death and condemnation (2 Cor. 3:7–9).
Put this altogether and you discover that the Spirit of Life is really a
Minister of Death and your loving Father, who said He keeps no record of
wrongs, actually does keep a record of wrongs. Something doesn’t add up.

(Incidentally,
why does Law get a capital “L” throughout Dr. Brown’s book, while grace must
get by with a little “g”? Is Dr. Brown trying to tell us something about the
relative unimportance of grace with respect to the Law?)

Page 77: Dr.
Brown writes that he has been convicted of sin many times while reading the law
and that each time this has caused him to run to God and fall at His feet. His
experience testifies to the true ministry of the law—it helps us recognize sin
and our need for grace. But the law is not the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of
Grace does not minister to you through the law.

Look into the
mirror of the law and you will always feel condemned (2 Cor. 3:9). This may
explain why Dr. Brown defines conviction (
elegcho
) as fault-finding and
rebuke (see page 75). But an interpretation of
elegcho
which is more
consistent with the Holy Spirit’s gracious character may be
expose
, or
bring
into the light
. How does the Holy Spirit convict us? He does it by turning
on the lights, not to shame you (Jesus carried your shame), but to show you the
way to life. Ian Thomas describes it like this:

The Holy Spirit is
like a man with a lamp entering a dark and dirty room, and what you have
learned to live with in the dark becomes repugnant in the light.
[74]

Think of Saul on the road to Damascus
(Acts 9:3). By his own account he was chief of sinners. Then the lights went on
and he became a different man.

I have written
elsewhere about the need for a new covenant definition of conviction, one that
does not emphasize your badness but God’s goodness and grace.

The Holy Spirit’s
conviction has nothing to do with your sin and everything to do with God’s
grace. It’s not about the bad thing you’ve done but the good thing He wants to
do in you right now.
[75]

Pages 79–90: What is godly sorrow?
Apparently it’s when the Holy Spirit makes you sorry for your sin.
God
grieves over you, you sorry excuse for a Christian. You have become an enemy of
God!
Or perhaps the godly sorrow that Paul refers to is the sorrow the
Corinthians felt when they read his letter. Maybe it’s the sorrow we all
experience when we realize we have made a hash of things and grieved our
Father.

Is there pain and
discomfort involved with conviction? Often there is. But this pain is not
inflicted by the Holy Spirit. It is the regret of realizing we have missed the
mark. Do you think Saul was happy to learn he had been persecuting the Lord?

Our hearts
vibrate in harmony with God’s. We sing the songs of love together. But when we
sin we sing out of key. This dissonance affects our heart – it causes
discomfort and makes us want to get back in tune. The problem is we’ve lost our
place in the song. We can’t find the right note. But the Spirit of Grace helps
us. He sings in our ear, on key, and we pick up the tune again.
[76]

Beginning on page
82, Dr. Brown quotes some grace teachers who say repentance is defined as a
change of mind, an about-face. This is not good enough, says Dr. Brown. A
change of mind without an accompanying change of action is worthless. I don’t
know anyone who would disagree with him. But any action will be the fruit of
repentance and not repentance itself.

What sort of
behavior does Dr. Brown expect to see before determining whether your
repentance is sufficient? Since repentance is the result of a Holy Spirit’s
fault-finding and rebuke, he anticipates it will include sorrow and grief (page
84). True repentance, apparently, is marked by regret, tears, and grief-stricken
anguish.

Spurgeon had a
different view:

A curious idea men
have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and
so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. Whence
comes this unreasonable notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I
do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet
there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience.
They are in great error … To repent is to change your mind about sin, and
Christ, and all the great things of God.
[77]

An appeal for an emotional response
possibly makes sense if you define repentance as turning from sin.
Look at
that filthy, yucky thing you did! Quick, turn away!
But repentance is
bigger than that. Every time I learn something from the Bible and change my
mind, that’s repentance. Every time the Holy Spirit reveals something awesome
about the character of God that I did not properly understand, that’s
repentance too. My mind is renewed, it’s changed, and this change will be
reflected in the way I act. I repent every day and typically do so with great
joy rather than sorrow and grief.

Page 82: Dr.
Brown tells the tale of the prodigal son to illustrate repentance. He observes
that the prodigal recognized the folly of his ways and became eager to confess
and get right with his father. Indeed, the prodigal
was
a fool for
trading the life of a prince for the life of a pig. Sitting in the muck and
swill it would’ve been hard not to recognize the folly of his ways. Similarly,
when we make dumb choices we’ll feel foolish too. There’s nothing supernatural
or surprising about this. The real surprise in the story is how the father
reacts to his son’s stupidity.

Does the father
convict the son of his sin? No. Does the father find fault, rebuke, or shame
the son? No. Does the father inflict sorrow on the son? No. Does the father
hear the son’s confession? No. He cuts the son off mid-speech. Then, and most
surprisingly of all, the father starts organizing a party. Do you see? Jesus’
amazing story refutes everything Dr. Brown says about the Holy Spirit’s
conviction and your need to feel sorrowful and unworthy.

This reminds me
of something Andrew Wommack has said:

If you feel like
you’re so sorry, then praise Him for the fact that He loves such a sorry person
as you! Instead of focusing on your unworthiness, thank Him for His goodness.
[78]

Page 90. Several years ago I created a bit
of a stir when I published an article entitled “Three reasons why I don’t
preach repentance (turn from sin).” (Yes, I now appreciate that a title like
that was going to mark me as someone who is opposed to repentance, even though
I said at the time that “there needs to be far more repentance, particularly
from believers.”)
[79]

In the article
wrote that “repentance in the old covenant meant turning from sin but
repentance in the new means turning to God.” On the contrary, says Dr. Brown.
Repentance means turning away from sin and turning to God. I’m not sure if Dr.
Brown is confused or being disingenuous here so let me briefly re-state my
original point.

Turning from sin
makes you neither righteous nor holy. An unbeliever who turns from sin remains
an unbeliever. Consider the Pharisees. They ran away anytime sin appeared—they
were moral people—yet Jesus called them sons of hell (Matt. 23:15).

As the Pharisees
demonstrated on a daily basis, you can turn from sin without turning to God. So
telling people to turn from sin won’t necessarily lead them any place good,
which is why I don’t do it.

Perhaps Dr. Brown
understands this but feels I am giving insufficient air-time to sin. To this I
plead “guilty as charged.” In all things I aspire to be Christ-conscious rather
than sin-conscious. I am not minimizing sin and its destructive effects. I am glorifying
Jesus and His gracious benefits. I see no reason why we should spend half the
time preaching “turn from sin” and half the time preaching “turn to Jesus”. I’d
rather just preach Jesus.

Repentance
for
the forgiveness of sins is an old covenant concept. It’s doing (repenting) to
get (forgiveness). It’s tit for tat and
quid pro quo.
Such thinking has
nothing to do with grace. Repentance in the new covenant is a reaction to what
God has done. It’s the change of heart Zacchaeus experienced after he encountered
the Lord of grace.

In a related note
(see Dr. Brown’s endnote 53 on page 262), I am mentioned for saying that the
word Jesus uses for forgiveness in Luke 24:47 is a noun (a thing), rather than
a verb (an action). Dr. Brown disputes this and lists a few scriptures to prove
that God’s forgiveness is not the noun Jesus said it was. I’m always puzzled
when someone says I’m wrong right after I have quoted Jesus word for word, and
I am surprised that a scholar such as Dr. Brown would seek to challenge such an
easily-proved point. Anyone with access to a
Greek lexicon
can determine whether Jesus was using verbs or nouns in Luke
24:47. But to save you the trouble, and to clarify the point I was originally
trying to make, here are all the New Testament mentions of divine forgiveness
expressed as a verb (
aphiemi
) and a noun (
aphesis
):

Aphiemi
(forgiveness as a verb)