Chris Anderson’s “Culture of Grace”
Another gospel-monger making merchandise of unsuspecting laity.
From the Church Works Media website:
“Chris Anderson has pastored since 1997. He’s the senior pastor of Killian Hill Baptist Church in Lilburn, Georgia. He has written dozens of modern hymns for the church published by ChurchWorksMedia, is the editor of the Gospel Meditations devotional series, and has recently published his first full-length book, The God Who Satisfies. He and his wife Lori have four daughters.”
Bad Marriages and the Simple Side of Tyranny
Originally published August 18, 2015
The Bible isn’t complicated; to the contrary, its simplicity often escapes us as we look for something more complicated in the text. The journey in understanding the Bible begins with the stepping stones that you understand. You are simply looking to increase your understanding by building truth with one objective fact at a time. Pieces that fit together in the jigsaw puzzle lead to the fitting of more pieces. For some, the pieces take longer to find, and the journey is longer, but what they really know is more than most Protestant scholars who are ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth. They are blind guides leading the blind.
Be sure of this: scholars make the Bible complicated because they want to control you. When it gets right down to it, “You have no need of anyone to teach you.” Teachers are gifted people who accelerate your learning; they are not seers or mediators between you and truth. If they ask you, “Did God really say…” you are to answer, “Yes, that’s exactly what He said.”
Hence, the simplicity of a very important fundamental truth found in Genesis:
4:6 – The Lord asked Cain, “Why are you angry? Why do you look so unhappy [has your face/countenance fallen; 4:5]? 7 If you do things well [correctly; appropriately], I will [will I not…?] accept you, but if you do not do them well [correctly; appropriately], sin is ready to attack you [crouching at the door]. Sin wants [desires to control; 3:16] you, but you must rule over it” (EXB).
We also know from the New Testament that sin is a master that pays death wages, while Christ came to purchase us with His blood from that master. We are now free to serve another master who only pays life wages. A slave that dies (through the baptism of the Spirit) is no longer under the authority of the sin master, and is a new creature resurrected to life and free to serve another (Rom 7:4).
But lest we are careful, the simple truths of this passage and a wiser life will escape us. Sin is described as an entity that has a desire; specifically, a desire to control others. One of the fundamental characteristics of sin is a desire to control others.
Secondly, in this verse, sin’s means of doing so are also described: sin is crouching at the door waiting for us to fail. Sin then seeks to exploit that sin for purposes of control. At least to some degree, sin seeks to use the failure to destroy a true self-assessment and make a case for needed lordship. Certainly, this is how the serpent approached Eve. He wanted to convince her that she was unable to understand God without a mediator. Has God really said…?
At this point, this truth needs more development, but here is a basic building block that we can be sure of: the sin master uses condemnation to enslave, and pays death wages for one’s work:
1 Corinthians 15:56 – Death’s power to hurt [sting] is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But we thank God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 So my dear [beloved] brothers and sisters, stand strong. Do not let anything move you. Always give yourselves fully to [excel in] the work of the Lord, because you know that your work in the Lord is never wasted [not useless/in vain] (EXB).
This is why Christ came to end the law. Sin crouches at the door waiting to seize the opportunity to condemn, and the more law, the better. The “law of sin and death” empowers sin because the power of sin and its ability to pay death wages is condemnation. When Christ died to end the law, He stripped sin of its power to enslave and pay wages.
Don’t misunderstand; being in Christ does NOT mean that we are not under a law, but it is the “law of the Spirit of life.” Why is it called that? Because the new Master pays life wages for the obedience of love, and that has never been any different:
Deuteronomy 30:15 – “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Nothing has ever been different in regard to the law. When we serve God, it is the law of love that brings life wages; when we “serve other gods” it is the law of sin and death that pays death wages accordingly…
Romans 6:16 – Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
With all of this said, consider the lion’s share of bad marriages. It never fails. Two people, at war, and each with a laundry list of the other’s faults. Check that. Better said, a condemnation list. And of course backed up with many Bible verses; the Bible is either the law of sin and death that condemns, or the law of the Spirit of life that loves.
What’s going on? Answer: sin, and its desire to control using condemnation.
Genesis 3:16 – “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
This is the same exact grammatical construction found in Genesis 4:6 concerning sin’s desire to control Cain. Sin will manifest its desire in marriages by each spouse desiring to control the other, and using failure to do so. When the failure of a spouse presents itself, the other spouse will use it to make a case for ruling over the other spouse. In essence, “Since you are stupid, I should be running the show in this marriage.”
In Reformed circles, elders make a case for being the rulers because we are all…what? Right, “totally depraved.” Same deal.
If you know this simple Bible fact, you know more than most “expert” counselors. In most bad marriages, both spouses need to repent of being tyrants. They need to stop using the Bible to condemn each other, and start using the Bible to love each other. After all, “love covers a multitude of sins.”
Go and do likewise…you are now an expert Bible counselor.
paul
Sin, Sin, Sin, Sin, Sin, Sin, Sin, Sin
Originally published on July 28, 2015
Got sin? You do if you are a Protestant, and you have a lot of it. The “T” in TULIP doesn’t stand for total depravity for no good reason, no pun intended. The only good thing is focusing on the bad thing: your nasty, wicked self.
Sin is a really big deal in Protestantism because we get ourselves into heaven by dwelling on the fact that we are “sinners.” If we can do any good work, if ALL of our works are NOT filthy rags—that’s not living by “faith alone” for our justification. Supposedly, if we think we can do anything good, that’s not living by faith alone in what Jesus has accomplished for us, but rather living in the “confidence of the flesh.”
The foundation of Protestant soteriology is the idea that “Christians” live under the possibility of condemnation and should fear accordingly. Christians remain under the condemnation of the law and remain covered by professing that they can do no good work. By continually returning to the same gospel that saved us for forgiveness of works, both good and bad, the righteousness of Jesus continues to be imputed to us. Hence, “We have no righteousness of our own in salvation or the Christian life.”
In contrast, the emphasis of our Christian lives should be LOVE. We still sin, but it is not sin unto condemnation, but rather sin against our Father as a family matter. We may receive chastisement, but we are in no danger of condemnation. Not so with the Protestant gospel: the “Christian” remains under eternal condemnation and is only covered through faith alone by returning to the same gospel that saved us. This is why Protestantism has always been weak in the area of discipleship. This is why there is an obsession with making saved people rather than disciples. And by the way, the only place we can find continued forgiveness for “sin that removes us from grace” (Calvin/Luther) is under the “authority” of the local church. Go figure.
Even in Baptist churches, pastors bemoan the fact that “10% of the congregants do 90% of the work.” Well, duh, I am surprised that even 10% are doing anything as the focus is keeping oneself saved by focusing on how inept we are.
More and more in counseling, I am telling people to stop focusing so much on sin. Clearly, especially in the Protestant contemporary biblical counseling movement, the specific instruction is to “find the sin beneath the sin” as a means of growing your salvation as if salvation grows to begin with. If our focus is sin- searching as a means of spiritual wellbeing, and good works tempt us to think we did something good (again, Luther/Calvin), what in the world will be the results? Well, look around for yourself—it’s called “the church.”
A focus on sin will not prevent sin or promote love. If there is something to be gained by finding sin, it will be far from us to fight against it. Why would we cut off our supply of blessings by making the cross smaller? It becomes a supply and demand issue.
The Bible endorses a focus on love, not sin-searching. We are to look for ways to love God and others, not ways to find the “sin beneath the sin” or some endeavor to “peel back the layers of sin.” No doubt, there is a CONTROL conspiracy involved with this supposed method of sanctification as well. Stripping people of an accurate evaluation of self is a very efficient way of controlling them. Being worthy enough to hold others accountable for their own good will not get you into heaven—only returning daily to the same gospel that saved you for a fresh set of downs to get into the salvation end zone.
And what will eventually happen to any marriage if the constant focus is your spouse’s sin? No wonder then that the present-day biblical counseling movement (mostly sponsored by Reformed churches) is overflowing with marriage counseling cases. Week in, and week out, teaching will knock down any notions that either spouse can do any work that is not “filthy rags.” And, the only real sin is not knowing that everything you do is sin; if you don’t know that, you may find yourself in so-called church discipline. We do know this: those who will not accept this premise are deemed “unteachable.”
We have not been given a spirit of fear under the law of sin and death and its condemnation. We, instead, have been given the Holy Spirit and boldness to love God and others without any fear of condemnation.
We are to be enslaved to love—not to a fear of condemnation.
paul
Paul Dohse: The Gospel of Biblicism – 2015 TANC Conference: Session 3
The following is an excerpt of the transcript from Paul Dohse’s 3rd session at the 2015 TANC Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny.
Biblicism does not reject mystery, or paradox, but always approaches the latter with extreme skepticism. Biblicists consider paradox guilty until proven innocent. God is not a God of confusion, but be sure of this: the paradox card is more times than not a license for a mystery that only the spiritual elite understand—those who have the rule over you.
If the promise and the gift are verbally offered to all people, but the offer is not legitimate for all, that makes the use of these words completely illogical. Though the issue of election will not be explored in this series, the basic wrongness of Protestants who propagate so-called “sovereign grace” must call their deterministic gospel into question. Those who have the basic gospel completely wrong cannot be trusted with the rest of the story.
However, the fact that salvation is a promise and a gift will be key to exposing the false gospel of Protestantism in simple terms. The Bible defines the gospel with these specific words for good reason – words mean things.
What is the Gospel?
1Corinthians 15:3 – For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
These are the facts of the gospel, but in Paul’s statement much more is assumed rightly because of other texts that further define what is being stated here in 1Cor 15:3-6. Obviously, no one is saved by a mere believing of the facts concerning the gospel. As James wrote, the devils believe also and do tremble in regard to their future condemnation. The facts do need to be believed, but what saves is the following of Christ in these facts. In other words, it’s not a mere believing of the facts, but also the belief of what the results of believing are, and a desire to want that for yourself.
You believe the promise, and the gift, and you want the gift for yourself. The gift is the baptism of the Spirit, and believing in the transaction that takes place. It’s believing the promise and “receiving” the gift.
Romans 6:1 – What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self[a] was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
It’s amazing that the unsaved understand this in their own way. It’s just a fact that the unsaved understand the gospel intuitively better than the vast majority of Protestants. Most unsaved people know that salvation involves the loss of who they presently are in exchange for a new life that is in the wind so to speak. This is what Christ was telling Nicodemus as recorded in John 3 and why Nicodemus came to Him under cover of darkness—Christ was a threat to the present life he knew. The fact that Christ told him that he must be born again which would result in a new, and completely unpredictable life correlates with the fact that Nicodemus came to Him under cover of darkness. Nicodemus was afraid of losing his present life, and therefore, Christ addressed the issue forthwith.
“Just believe” and “faith alone” minus the new birth is a Protestant hallmark. It boils down to a mere glorified assent to the facts of the gospel. It is not the losing of present life in order to find the new one. It is not repentance, i.e., a turning from the old life and following Christ in literal death and resurrection. Water baptism is a public confession that you understand this. Now many will protest that we are doing something to be saved other than believe; we are “following” Christ. But it is a decision, not some work of following. The Spirit does the baptizing, not us. We are saved by wanting that for our life and accepting the gift that is offered.
But likewise with any gift, once it is given, the receiver owns it. It is now up to us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12,13). Here, “salvation” refers to redemption (the saving of the body, Rom 7:24, 8:23), not the saving of the soul, and work/fear refers to the new Christian person and life, not our onetime new birth. The Christian life is a process; the new birth is a onetime event. Before we were saved, our fear regarded condemnation. Now our fear regards chastisement and sin that leads to unnecessary deaths (consequences for sin). There is no work FOR salvation, but there is a work IN the Christian life, specifically, a work of love (Gal 5:6).
On the flipside, even though there is not a work FOR salvation (justification), there is a work IN being unsaved that has a specific wage paid by a specific master. We met him in the previous session, the sin master. This is how the Bible frames this: there are two masters who pay two different wages: one pays wages for death, and the other pays wages for life. ALL people in the world are earning one or the other in varying degrees. Either group can do bad or good works (Rom 6:20), but one can only be credited for death, and the other can only be credited for life. These are two different wages paid by two different masters.
These two groups, lost and saved, are under two different laws that determine their wages. The lost who belong to the sin master are “under law” and its condemnation, the law of sin and death. Those under this law can only bear fruits of death. In contrast, those purchased by Christ (“you have been bought with a price” 1Cor 6:20, 7:23) can only bear fruits for life. They are identified as “under grace,” or under the law of the Spirit of life (Rom 6:14, 8:20).
Romans 6:15 – What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is why Christ came to end the law (Rom 10:4). The law that He ended is the law of sin and death. EVERYONE born into the world is under the law of sin and death and condemnation. This is how we know Christ died for everyone ever born into the world. He also purchased mankind from the sin master; eternal life is the promise, new birth is the gift (if received by faith) resulting in freedom from condemnation and the fruits of death. The believer now “upholds” the law he/she is free to serve: the law of the Spirit of life also known as the “law of Christ” and the “law of liberty.” Salvation is a free gift, but the Christian life is a work that can earn rewards.
Hebrews 6:10 – For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.
God would be unjust to forget you labor of love in sanctification because you are earning rewards, and there is no fear in regard to condemnation because that concerns judgement:
1John 4:18 -There is no fear in love, but perfect [mature] love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. [Because they fear condemnation].
This is what is critical about the new birth, or the baptism of the Spirit. The old man that was under the law of sin and death died with Christ, and is now free to “serve another” through being resurrected with Christ:
Watch all of Paul’s 3rd session below.
Condemnation Claims Another Casualty
I was deeply saddened to hear of the recent suicide of Keith Emerson, the keyboard mad scientist of Emerson, lake, and Palmer. My teenage years took place while ELP dominated the progressive rock scene. The depths of their talent created enchanting songs like “Lucky Man” and “From the Beginning.” Their unique brand inspired many rock icons that would follow.
In reading accounts of his suicide and comments from close friends cited in various articles, we find THE familiar theme: fear. If you have been following our recent series on depression from a biblical perspective, you know that I am beginning to suspect ALL, or at least most depression flows from condemnation. Obviously, one who commits suicide has condemned themselves. Perhaps the premier example is Judas. Of course, this doesn’t include other forms of suicide that are in the minority.
Always in every kind of depression and mental illness, and this according to mental health professionals, anxiety is present. In other words, “fear.” Biblically, this makes perfect sense. According to the Bible, the law condemns leading to fear of death and judgement. The conscience also condemns, and you can also add fear of failure and loss of life-purpose to the ugly mix. Granted, present fears of this life may override fear of death, and depending on one’s beliefs, death may be a desperate escape.
However, let me point out that God is not the primary proponent of condemnation. The primary proponents of condemnation seem to be man himself and the kingdom of darkness. Adam and Eve are the ones that chose to hide from God because of what? Right, read it for yourself: fear. God didn’t tell them to hide; in fact, He went looking for them. And what “accuser of the brethren” gets thrown out of heaven in the book of Revelation? And who throws him out? Toward the end of Revelation, who are the ones outside of the holy city? Right, the fearful.
Couple this with the Bible statement that God did not send Christ into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. God does not seek to condemn, he seeks to save that which is lost…mankind. But it doesn’t stop there: He sent His only Son because He wants to save mankind in order to make us His very family for all of eternity: He is the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man.”
The great hope that we represent is escape from condemnation and fear. Sin condemns, not God. He not only hates sin, but He hates condemnation. He sent His only Son into the world to defeat death, sin, and condemnation. Beware of any religion that makes condemnation part of God’s repertoire; God and condemnation are mutually exclusive, and death is the final enemy that He will defeat.
Condemnation is the source of death and fear. God is the source of life and peace. That’s the good news…that’s the gospel.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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