So, I've been reading some writings of those rejecting the message of the good news of God's grace. Some individuals are well-known, such as Michael Brown and Sid Roth. Others unfamiliar to me have internet blogs and that sort of thing, but they all seem to suffer from the same pair of foggy glasses.
Grace IS hyper. It is superabounding, overflowing and immeasurable. The only reason the distractors protest against God's grace and mock it by labeling it as hyper is because they are being provoked to jealousy by those who have been freed from a religious system that can only survive on the backs of slaves. Those who truly see and trust the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ will find themselves wrapped up in a joyous sense of freedom which produces further acts of love toward God and others. It does not lead to sin; it just destroys the walls we've built to keep ourselves from sinning, because sin has lost its power and our efforts are no longer needed. One can either rejoice in the fullness of that truth, or one can choose to double their effort to reinforce the walls.
To make their point, most of the time these well-meaning Christians lift scripture out of context, omitting to whom and of whom the scripture refers, and almost without exception, they place the standard of behavior back onto the Christian (a Christian-focused Christianity). Well-trained by today's institutional church leaders, they focus on themselves and call every Christian to do the same. They tend to believe our Father's love is based on one's performance. They receive Christ's work freely enough, but the flesh is required to maintain and even grow in spirituality and faith. As a contrast, Judah Smith, in a recent sermon entitled "What Just Happened" makes the strong point that most Christians have an "in me" mentality. I highly recommend you listen to his sermon if you struggle to feel God's father-love for you (http://thecity.org/message/what_just_happened).
Read any article on "hyper-grace" by Michael Brown, Mike Bickle, or the like. Rarely, if ever, do they mention biblical faith and the life of Christ in the Christian, a.k.a. the Holy Spirit. Like the necessity that hydrogen be bonded with oxygen to create water, it would seem that opponents of "hyper-grace" need faith coupled with sinless behavior to produce righteousness and holiness. Hear the word "faith" from them and it's always in the context of the believer's action toward God, not the response of the total, rest-producing trust in the person of Christ. Paul rested in Christ: Romans 15:18. (If you've wondered by the New Testament writers stressed that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and was an actual man, it was, in part, to get their readers to finally rest in a real, tangible sacrifice.)
Michael Brown has written several articles about "hyper-grace" on Charisma Magazine's website, but in his October 4, 2013 blog, he began in this way: "The biblical gospel starts with God and tells me what I can do to please Him. The contemporary gospel—which is really no gospel at all—starts with me and tells me what God can do to please me." First, I've never heard anyone that he later criticizes in his book Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message say anything close to that, and I believe have read from or listened to all of them. Second, God does want to impress us. He loves to show His riches for us, to demonstrate His love for us, and to prove He can and does provide for us with all power and sufficiency. But my main concern with Brown's quote above is the obsession found in his definition to the biblical gospel: "...what I can DO to please Him." As I have said: this is Christian-focused, and his thoughts seem to betray him as such. Let's look instead at Paul's definition:
It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
It's obvious that the focus of the gospel is GOD and HIS power and HIS righteousness. To take our eyes off of Jesus and not see that God is pleased with Him means that we have ignored Jesus as our High Priest and Life. We forget that we are in Christ and He is in us. God doesn't look at Jesus in disregard of something that is unpleasing in us. Rather, we are pleasing to Him and He continually affirms us as His son or daughter and Christ as our righteousness. The ministry of the law was the agent of a constant reminder of sin, not the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Those who are rejecting grace also tend to focus on producing faith. However, the existence of faith is impossible without grace having first been witnessed. Our definition of faith can be tainted by our own self-efforts. We must move away from focusing on the believer's performance when we hear the word "faith". God's goodness and graciousness is the central reality--the source--and faith focuses on that. Faith in Christ is Rest in God. I trust that Christ has done everything necessary to make me eligible for all the good that comes from the Father. The revelation of grace doesn't cause me to ask how much I can sin or how much I can get away with. The revelation of grace stops me in my tracks and causes me to imagine the many ways Christ's life, in union with my new life He gave me after I died and arose with Him, will produce gratitude and thankfulness for God and love for others. Against that spirit there is no law.
Finally, the writers who oppose "hyper-grace" convey the subtle idea that we'll never be good enough and that we'll always struggle with sin. They see holiness as an ever ascending hill which we must climb. However, holiness is not a "better" you, unlike what the hill-climbing, sin-seeking mentality would embrace. Instead, they heap more To-Do lists on people and take scripture passages which refer to the religious rulers and zealots of Christ's day and present them instead in a twisted fashion, saying that the people who were leading Christ's followers astray were themselves Christians. They sometimes also make accusations against those who are either rebelling from or just tired of trying to follow rules, saying that those who turn grace into a license to sin and don't obey the Law are the grace preachers. In Paul's day it was the law-keeping Judaizers who were disobeying by rejecting God's grace. Scripture clearly says that the Jews sought to have their own righteousness according to the law. The problem is that that is self-righteousness, not the gift of righteousness that God gives. For those who have embraced grace, they have seen the full benefit of Jesus and have not sinned and "fallen from grace", but rather fallen "into" grace.
Those who have found true freedom in Christ have stopped striving for holiness. The Holy Spirit inside them reveals the Father's love for them and because of God's grace, they can rest as sons and at the same time experience the leading of the Holy Spirit as He produces His fruit in and through their lives.
Grace IS hyper. It is superabounding, overflowing and immeasurable. The only reason the distractors protest against God's grace and mock it by labeling it as hyper is because they are being provoked to jealousy by those who have been freed from a religious system that can only survive on the backs of slaves. Those who truly see and trust the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ will find themselves wrapped up in a joyous sense of freedom which produces further acts of love toward God and others. It does not lead to sin; it just destroys the walls we've built to keep ourselves from sinning, because sin has lost its power and our efforts are no longer needed. One can either rejoice in the fullness of that truth, or one can choose to double their effort to reinforce the walls.
Lay your weapons down.
Grace=Peace,
Jeremy