Have You Heard the True Gospel?

(Please read this article and answer ONE question at the end)

"If God has already forgiven all our sins by His grace through Jesus Christ, and we are made righteous apart from our works, wouldn’t that cause people to go out and sin with impunity? Doesn’t this give people a license to sin?" - This is a very common question and objection to the pure unadulterated gospel of grace. Perhaps, after reading my articles, this question must have crossed your mind too. Did you know that Paul, in his presentation of the gospel, had to stop and interject this question, ‘Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace’ at least three times (Rom 6:1, 15 and 3:8) so as to make sure that people weren’t getting the wrong idea?

What Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones of the Westminster Chapel, London, had to say about this question is very PROFOUND. He said, “The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone ALWAYS leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that, because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel. Let me show you what I mean.

If a man preaches justification by works, no one would ever raise this question. If a man’s preaching is, ‘If you want to be Christians, and if you want to go to heaven, you must stop committing sins, you must take up good works, and if you do so regularly and constantly, and do not fail to keep on at it, you will make yourselves Christians, you will reconcile yourselves to God and you will go to heaven’. Obviously a man who preaches in that strain would never be liable to this misunderstanding. Nobody would say to such a man, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’, because the man’s whole emphasis is just this, that if you go on sinning you are certain to be damned, and only if you stop sinning can you save yourselves. So that misunderstanding could never arise.

I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you are really preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.”

So, if you will be honest with yourselves, please answer this one question - In all your years of sitting in the pews and listening to sermons, has any sermon ever provoked you to think – ‘preacher, are you saying that we can sin now since we are under grace’? If no preaching has ever raised this question in your mind, then perhaps, you have never heard the true New Testament Gospel.

Does Teaching Grace Lead To a Careless Lifestyle? - Steve McVey

I do grow weary at times of having to answer the paranoid legalists who are so afraid that teaching pure and undiluted grace may lead people to think it's okay to sin. The strange thing is that when I ask them if that's what the teaching causes them to want to do, they always say it doesn't. It's not themselves they're worried about. It's these other pitiful, weak Christians who might misunderstand and be led astray. After all, they don't have the maturity to know how to handle the truth so we'd better keep our teaching about grace in balance with a generous serving of warnings about the dangers and evils of sinning.

It’s the old give-‘em-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-a-mile syndrome. Some are afraid that if you truly embrace the grace of God, it’s going to cause you to go out and live a lifestyle of sin. Their reasoning is that if you tell people that their sins are all forgiven and that they’re under God’s grace, they won’t be motivated to live a godly lifestyle. They question what will prevent them from going out and misbehaving. They completely underestimate the presence of the indwelling Christ who is in us! They miss the point that it is the Holy Spirit who has taken up residence in us. He can be trusted! He is quite capable of leading people into righteous behavior without all our warnings to them.

God’s grace is not a license to sin. Those who say that the teaching of pure grace sounds that way reveal their weak understanding of the topic. That's what they said about Paul too. In fact, that's what they say about anybody and everybody who has the gall to preach grace without watering it down with a little legalism.

God’s grace is the divine enablement by the life of Christ in us, for us to be all that we’ve been called to be and all that we’ve been called to do. Grace won’t cause you to go out and sin. To the contrary, it will empower, enable, and motivate you to live a godly lifestyle. Titus 2: 11–12 explains, “For the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age.”

The Bible says that the grace of God teaches us; it instructs us. What is the focus of that instruction? It instructs us in denying ungodliness, and it teaches us how to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age. Apparently, Paul wasn’t afraid that grace was going to cause people’s lives to run amuck. He saw grace as the antidote to ungodly behavior.

Let’s ground our thinking in what the Bible says and not in irrational fears that somebody might abuse grace if that is what they are taught. Rest assured – the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will not become a motivator for sin. His grace will inspire, instruct and invigorate you to walk in a way that is fitting with who you are in Him! In an effort to calm the nerves of jittery legalists, I'm not going to water down the gospel by warning people about how they better avoid sinning. The gospel is good news and nothing but good news. When people get that, behavior will take care of itself.