I’d like to ask help convincing my mother of the dangers of the Free Grace doctrine she’s become rather excited about over the past decade.
For those not familiar, the Free Grace movement seems to have organized as a result of Macarthurs’ “The Gospel According to Jesus,” which attacked the “easy believism” that had been becoming more prevelant within Evangelicalism during the 20th century. My impression is that there was little organization behind this theology previously; individual pastors lacking a deep understanding of theology began preaching it, and found it filled pews better than counting costs and taking up crosses. Now, there seems to be a small but noisy organization pushing it. The basic theology is as follows:
1) We are justified freely by grace through faith, not based on works. This sounds reasonable until you look deeper to see that faith isn’t much more than intellectual acceptance.
2) Since justification doesn’t require works, things like repentance, acceptance of Christ as Lord, love for God, obedience, sanctification, and perseverance are all optional.
3) In evangelism, Christians should not emphasize any of the optional items in #2 as they might cause unbelievers to count the costs of belief rather than simply believe.
4) More mature believers should spend the majority of their time trying to understand what is really being said by the many verses in the NT seem to require the items listed in #2 of all Christians. This often requires very deep study and convoluted reasoning as the plain meaning can be quite tricky to avoid.
I’m pretty clear (I think) on the basic theological problems with this. I found an excellent refutation of this theology on monergism.com. If this theology is new to anyone and they would like a good biblical understanding of its deficiencies, I would strongly encourage reading this:
Response to the "Free Grace" Movement by Phillip L Simpson
My question concerns my mother who has become very energetic in her support of this. I’m primarily concerned because she leads a large women’s bible study (50+ attendees) AND is in charge of producing outlines/questions for many similar studies across the US. I would be in the wrong if I did not make every effort to correct her given the large influence she has and number of people who are likely hearing this dangerously unscriptural teaching. She seems to have learned this from a friend and lay teacher who studied under Earl Radmacher (a ringleader of the Free Grace movement). She frequently goes to either with questions.
I know that’s a lot of background for a question. What I’d appreciate help with is how best to help her realize how wrong this teaching is. It’s tricky because any question I ask related to this will send her right back to her friend or Dr. Radmacher. If I ask her to read anything substantive, she declines as she’s too busy writing lectures/studies. She’s also becoming increasingly suspicious of bible translations as they were obviously influenced by nasty Calvinists. She’s also concerned about me listening to sermons by 5-point Calvinists like John Piper and I doubt she will carefully weight what I say if I try to argue this with her. (*yes, I know Piper isn’t unanimously adored on this board, but I don’t care. I’ve learned and grown a great deal through him. And yes, I also know he’s a 7-point Calvinist; but please don’t tell my mom!) I’m reasonably convinced there is a strong emotional side to this as well. A close relative committed suicide after years of exhibiting manic depression and drug use. After this suicide, she spend a great deal of time investigating whether this relative would have been saved. I strongly suspect her passion for this teaching may subconsciously relate to a desire to believe that person was saved.
So, I feel that I need to be very careful in how I approach her. Has anyone had any experience with this before? My instinct is that I need to gently and carefully ask questions that will help her recognize the problems with this theology herself. Any thoughts?
And yes, I do believe prayer needs to be a big part of this. While prayer should be foundational to all we do, I don’t believe it should generally be all we do.
Thanks in advance for your help. Grace and peace,
Paul
For those not familiar, the Free Grace movement seems to have organized as a result of Macarthurs’ “The Gospel According to Jesus,” which attacked the “easy believism” that had been becoming more prevelant within Evangelicalism during the 20th century. My impression is that there was little organization behind this theology previously; individual pastors lacking a deep understanding of theology began preaching it, and found it filled pews better than counting costs and taking up crosses. Now, there seems to be a small but noisy organization pushing it. The basic theology is as follows:
1) We are justified freely by grace through faith, not based on works. This sounds reasonable until you look deeper to see that faith isn’t much more than intellectual acceptance.
2) Since justification doesn’t require works, things like repentance, acceptance of Christ as Lord, love for God, obedience, sanctification, and perseverance are all optional.
3) In evangelism, Christians should not emphasize any of the optional items in #2 as they might cause unbelievers to count the costs of belief rather than simply believe.
4) More mature believers should spend the majority of their time trying to understand what is really being said by the many verses in the NT seem to require the items listed in #2 of all Christians. This often requires very deep study and convoluted reasoning as the plain meaning can be quite tricky to avoid.
I’m pretty clear (I think) on the basic theological problems with this. I found an excellent refutation of this theology on monergism.com. If this theology is new to anyone and they would like a good biblical understanding of its deficiencies, I would strongly encourage reading this:
Response to the "Free Grace" Movement by Phillip L Simpson
My question concerns my mother who has become very energetic in her support of this. I’m primarily concerned because she leads a large women’s bible study (50+ attendees) AND is in charge of producing outlines/questions for many similar studies across the US. I would be in the wrong if I did not make every effort to correct her given the large influence she has and number of people who are likely hearing this dangerously unscriptural teaching. She seems to have learned this from a friend and lay teacher who studied under Earl Radmacher (a ringleader of the Free Grace movement). She frequently goes to either with questions.
I know that’s a lot of background for a question. What I’d appreciate help with is how best to help her realize how wrong this teaching is. It’s tricky because any question I ask related to this will send her right back to her friend or Dr. Radmacher. If I ask her to read anything substantive, she declines as she’s too busy writing lectures/studies. She’s also becoming increasingly suspicious of bible translations as they were obviously influenced by nasty Calvinists. She’s also concerned about me listening to sermons by 5-point Calvinists like John Piper and I doubt she will carefully weight what I say if I try to argue this with her. (*yes, I know Piper isn’t unanimously adored on this board, but I don’t care. I’ve learned and grown a great deal through him. And yes, I also know he’s a 7-point Calvinist; but please don’t tell my mom!) I’m reasonably convinced there is a strong emotional side to this as well. A close relative committed suicide after years of exhibiting manic depression and drug use. After this suicide, she spend a great deal of time investigating whether this relative would have been saved. I strongly suspect her passion for this teaching may subconsciously relate to a desire to believe that person was saved.
So, I feel that I need to be very careful in how I approach her. Has anyone had any experience with this before? My instinct is that I need to gently and carefully ask questions that will help her recognize the problems with this theology herself. Any thoughts?
And yes, I do believe prayer needs to be a big part of this. While prayer should be foundational to all we do, I don’t believe it should generally be all we do.
Thanks in advance for your help. Grace and peace,
Paul