What is hyper-grace?" – in the Bible #4

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 #1-2.

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.

One pastor was telling me that sexual immorality and drunkenness is rampant in many evangelical churches—even amongst small group leaders and other leaders in local churches! This is because there is very little accountability.

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.

o   If we are not to even associate with them, how can they possibly be accepted as leaders in the church?

·          

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

1 Timothy 3:

·         1 This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.

·         2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach;

·         3 not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous;

·         4 one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence

·         5 (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?);

·         6 not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.

o   The leader cannot be a drunkard

·         7 Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

·         8 Likewise deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money,

·         9 holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.

·         10 But let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless.

·         11 Likewise their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things.

·         12 Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

·         13 For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

·         14 These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly;

·         15 but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

·         16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.

I’m sure I can add many more passages of scripture, but these will sufficiently cover the points.