What is hyper-grace?" – in the Bible #8

On February 1, 2014, the message was about how to determine if a church is teaching the relatively newly dubbed “Hyper-Grace”. There were at least 8 identifiers. I have already covered #1-7.

The following are signs of a hyper-grace church:

1. The preachers never speak against sin.

2. The lead pastor never takes a cultural stand for righteousness.

3. The Old Testament is almost totally ignored.

4. People who live immoral lives are allowed to teach and lead ministries.

5. The lead pastor speaks often against the institutional church.

6. The lead pastor preaches against tithing.

7. The lead pastor only preaches positive motivational messages.

8. Key members of the church are regularly living sinful lives with impunity.

Those attending a hyper-grace church will most likely find that, because of the strong emphasis on grace—with no teaching against sin or on repentance, judgment or hell—there is an atmosphere of loose living, with many involved in sexual immorality and drunkenness as well as other physical vices.

The reason for this is “the law is our schoolmaster that leads us to Christ” (Gal. 3:24) because through the (moral) law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20). If the moral law of the Ten Commandments is not preached or alluded to, then in ignorance the people will live foolish lives and will be like the blind leading to blind because “where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Prov. 28:18).

1 Corinthians 5:

·         1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles--that a man has his father's wife!

·         2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.

·         3 For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed.

·         4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

·         5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

·         6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

·         7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

·         8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

·         9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.

·         10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

·         11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner--not even to eat with such a person.

·         12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?

·         13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away from yourselves the evil person."

So, that being said, let’s look at the scripture the Hyper-Grace church uses in context.

Galatians 3:

·         19 What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.

·         20 Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one.

·         21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.

o   Following the Law by itself is not a guarantee of redemption

·         22 But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

·         23 But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed.

o   The Law was a foreshadow of Jesus Christ so that we could know Him more completely

·         24 Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

·         25 But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

o   We are no longer “under the law” but we are expected to obey  it

o   Jesus Christ has paid our penalty

o   After our atonement, we are not expected to sin any more

o   “It’s not what you have to do to be a Christian; it’s what you want to do if you are a Christian”

o   The same is true in a marriage. You can still date others if you want to do so, but if you are truly in love, you don’t want to.

·         26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

·         27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

·         28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

·         29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Romans 3:

·         27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.

·         28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

·         29 Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also,

·         30 since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

o   If we could be ‘saved’ by keeping the law, we could boast about it. That is not the case. Salvation is only through the grace of God.

·         31 Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.

Romans 6:

·         1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

·         2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

o   Sin is the violation of the Torah

·         3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

·         4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

o   That newness of life is life according to the spirit of the Torah

o   The Pharisees were living according to the literal law, including their oral traditions

·         5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,

·         6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

·         7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.

·         8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

·         9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.

·         10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

·         11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

·         12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.

o   Don’t live according to the carnal body

·         13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

·         14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

·         15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!

o   Of course not! Many miss the point here.

·         16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

·         17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

·         18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

·         19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to  more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.

·         20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

·         21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

·         22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.

·         23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

o   The wages of sin (living against the Torah) is still death!