"Free Grace" Theology

5 Ways It Diminishes the Gospel

Wayne Grudem

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781433551178
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Must the gospel message include a call for people to repent of their sins? "No, " say Free Grace advocates. Is evidence of a changed life an important indication of whether a person is truly born again? "No, again, " these advocates say.

But in this book, Wayne Grudem shows how the Bible answers "Yes" to both of these questions, arguing that the Free Grace movement contradicts both historic Protestant teaching and the New Testament itself.

This important book explains the true nature of the Christian gospel and answers the question asked by so many people: "How can I know that I'm saved?"

1

Not the “Faith Alone” of the Reformation

The Free Grace movement does not teach the Reformation doctrine of “justification by faith alone.”

When people first hear Free Grace advocates say that they promote “justification by faith alone,” it sounds attractive, because even Christians with little knowledge of theology remember that Protestants all hold to justification by faith alone. What is not clear at first is that the Free Grace movement teaches a novel and distorted view of justification by faith alone, a view that was never taught by the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation. In fact, at its very core the Free Grace movement is based on a misunderstanding of the way the word alone functions in the historic Protestant affirmations of justification by faith alone.

The historic Protestant position has often been summarized in a brief sentence:

We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone.

The second half of the sentence, “the faith that justifies is never alone,” means that other things always accompany saving faith. In particular, saving faith is always followed by changes in a person’s conduct of life. In other words, saving faith is never alone in a person, for some good works will always accompany saving faith in a person’s life and will be seen after a person comes to faith.

Therefore the Reformers always took “faith alone” to mean that faith is the only thing that God responds to. But historic Protestant teaching from the Reformation onward has never taken “faith alone” to mean “faith that occurs by itself in a person, unaccompanied by other human activities” (the Free Grace view).

A. Protestant leaders throughout history have consistently disagreed with the Free Grace position.

When we examine the writings of the great Reformation teachers and confessions of faith, we find a consensus of teaching that we are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone in the life of a believer, because genuine saving faith will always be accompanied by good works that come after justification. Here are several examples:

1. John Calvin (1509–1564). (Calvin was the first and most influential theologian in the Reformed tradition.)

Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify. . . . Thus it is clear how true it is that we are justified not without works yet not through works.1

In another place Calvin writes:

I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. (Galatians 5:6; Romans 3:22.) It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light. Wherefore we do not separate the whole grace of regeneration from faith, but claim the power and faculty of justifying entirely for faith, as we ought.2

2. Formula of Concord (1576). (This is the great summary of Lutheran doctrine that expressed a consensus among differing Lutheran groups.)

III. We believe, also, teach, and confess that Faith alone is the means and instrument whereby we lay hold on Christ the Saviour, and so in Christ lay hold on that righteousness which is able to stand before the judgment of God; for that faith, for Christ’s sake, is imputed to us for righteousness (Rom. 5:5).

VIII. We believe, teach, and confess that, although antecedent contrition and subsequent new obedience do not appertain to the article of justification before God, yet we are not to imagine any such justifying faith as can exist and abide with a purpose of evil, to wit: of sinning and acting contrary to conscience. But after that man is justified by faith, then that true and living faith works by love, and good works always follow justifying faith, and are most certainly found together with it, provided only it be a true and living faith. For true faith is never alone, but hath always charity and hope in its train.3

3. Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1571). (This is the doctrinal standard of Anglican or Episcopalian churches.)

XII. Of Good Works: Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.4

4. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). (This is the doctrinal standard used by most Presbyterian and Reformed churches.)

11.2: Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.5

5. New Hampshire Baptist Confession (1833). (This statement has been widely used by various Baptist groups in the United States.)

VII. Regeneration . . . is effected . . . by the power of the Holy Spirit . . . its proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance, and fa...