Real Grace and Hi-Jacked Grace!

The Biblical word "Grace" just might be the biggest and most profound word ever used in the Bible or anywhere in the universe for that matter.  It is big and profound in meaning and therefore the word is often misunderstood and misused.  Perhaps the word is misunderstood because grace from God is such a foreign concept to man.  Like God man can love, show mercy and even forgive but man cannot give grace at least not in the Biblical sense.  This misunderstanding of grace is as true for theologians as it is for the masses.

For instance, no one has hi-jacked grace and its true meaning and use more than Calvinism. Calvinists reduce grace into something that is not even recognizable as it relates to the original word that we read in the New Testament.  More on that coming up.

But first, what is true, authentic grace?

Grace is one of a few words that cannot be defined by a simple check in the dictionary. That is simply useless.  It can only be defined and understood by carefully looking at the Greek word used in the New Testament and by the use of the word in scriptural context.  No other definition will work with this incredible word that the Bible simply calls "grace".

The Greek sets the basis for understanding this word grace.  Grace is the Greek word "charis" and its meaning in the Greek is deep and profound.  First, the word means "as a gift or blessing brought to man by Jesus Christ".  Grace was a gift brought to man by Jesus Christ!  If one strays away from this pure Greek definition then surely the word will be corrupted.  John 1 sets the foundation of this first definition of grace with no ambiguity:

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. John 1;16-17 (NASB)

John 1 is clear that all have received grace upon grace.  Grace is realized through Jesus.  Jesus is grace!  This passage seems to be foreign to most folks who use the word grace in various kinds of discussion for many do not seem to understand or discern the word.  Grace is often used nonchalantly or even as a buzz word in Christian discussions and songs. Unfortunately this activity cheapens the word.  Jesus was grace and he brought grace!  Grace is only realized through Jesus.  This basic understanding of grace should be understood anytime one reads the Bible and sees the word grace. To understand otherwise is folly.

As awesome as this is I am not finished defining grace from its original Greek meaning. The Helps word study found on BibleHub.com explains that charis (grace) means:

"favor, disposed to, inclined, favorable towards, leaning towards to share benefit" and "freely extended to give Himself away to people" because He is "always leaning toward them".  

 The word study definition continues for charis as the word:

"answers directly to the Hebrew (OT) term Kaná ("grace, extension-toward").  Both refer to God freely extending Himself (His favor, grace), reaching (inclining) to people because He is disposed to bless (be near) them.

Isn't this powerful!  Everyone should read the definition multiple times so this understanding of grace becomes their understanding.  Grace is God inclining himself to mankind.  Grace is God leaning towards man to share benefit.  Grace is God leaning towards us and extending himself to us!  Before Jesus brought grace there was a chasm between man and God.  It was only grace that breached this chasm.  Before Jesus brought grace there was a wall of hostility between God and man but grace removed that wall.  Grace then is God leaning towards and extending himself to man and this becomes a continual supply.  It came through Jesus and it now stays with us through him!

Grace is not just amazing in that it saved a wretch like me.  No, grace is amazing because God came to save every wretch by extending his very self to us.  Grace is God extending himself to us by his coming and is made finished by Jesus extending his arms so that his hands could have nails driven into them.  How awesome is grace!

I am still not done defining grace as described in the Greek.  I told you it was a BIG word!

Finally we come to what most believers know about grace.  Grace is also God's unmerited favor. Grace is not something that mankind deserves yet God gives it by literal extension of himself.

So let's put it altogether.  Here is my definition of grace:  Grace is God so loving mankind that he fully leaned towards man and reached out to him with unmerited favor through his sending forth of Jesus Christ in to the world, who embodied grace and brought grace to man.  Grace is the supply of God that provides man with all he needs for salvation, sanctification and glorification.

So now that we know what grace is I want to explain what is not grace.  Calvinism slices and dices grace so that is not even recognizable from the grace that is found in scripture and in the Greek word as I proved above.  Some have referred to Calvinism's TULIP as the "doctrines of grace" but it is hard to understand why since Calvinistic grace removes almost all of what I have just described that it is. Calvinism limits grace so horribly that it is hardly discernible with the Biblical grace that we just defined.

Calvinism does not teach the grace as defined as above.  Calvinists teach a redefined "lesser" grace in my opinion. They teach "irresistible" grace which states that only the elect will respond to God and that the elect cannot resist coming to Christ due to this grace.  They teach that grace is only for the elect and rejoice in their invention that grace is fixed only for the elect.  The Bible never speaks of irresistible grace either by direct mention or indirect assertion for that matter.  It is simply a philosophical fabrication by Calvinists who need the doctrine of irresistible grace to keep all of Calvinism from falling to the ground like a house of cards.

Some Calvinists even slice grace into pieces.  They say that there is a "common" grace which is for everyone while there is a "saving" grace that is for the elect only which is irresistible.  This is clearly not Biblical teaching.

The Bible teaches that grace is for all men:

and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:24

But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Hebrews 2:9

God's grace is clearly given to all mankind.  Grace can be rejected and the most amazing thing is that men do reject it.  How can man reject grace?  It is hard to understand why anyone would reject this amazing grace.  Imagine yourself in a situation that you might have with someone.  Imagine you are at an event and you see someone you know who has something against you and you humble yourself and make the effort to extend yourself to reconcile with that person but the person refuses to be reconciled no matter what you say or do. God's grace reconciled all men to him but some will not be reconciled by their own rebellious choice.

By grace Jesus has come and made himself a sacrifice for all sinners. That is grace. Demeaning grace to mean that Jesus came for only a few people who receive irresistible influence is absolutely foreign to scripture and purely concocted by Calvinism agenda.

The most amazing thing about grace is not that it saved a wretch like me as the song intimates.  No, what makes grace so amazing is that God extended himself to wretched mankind in the first place and then died to save every wretch on the planet.  That is amazing grace!  Grace is not so amazing if it is only meted out to a few and kept from others.  Amazing grace is unmerited favor for all!

As to Arminian prevenient grace I have read some different teaching on it.  Some maintain that it is a special grace that works on people right before the moment of salvation.  This I do not believe for it is too limiting in many respects.  I am convinced that grace came in, through and by Jesus Christ. The grace that he brought and established is now his constant supply to believers.  There is no good scriptural argument that gives life to the idea that there is some kind of "special" grace that is at work with the believer right before someone gets saved.

However I think I agree with the second idea on prevenient grace that I encountered because it states that the Holy Spirit moves on a person's heart to believe in Christ and his work of redemption which is Biblical.  However I don't see any reason to give this understanding a special name like prevenient grace.  I prefer to refer to it as scripture does: grace.

Does God initiate salvation?  Yes, in every way possible.  He does so by grace by extending himself to man through the coming of Jesus.  He does so by grace by dying on the cross.  He does so by grace by sending the Holy Spirit to work upon the hearts of man.  Man never initiates his own salvation. Man only responds because God has given him the ability to respond to him.

Grace does not need any help!  Grace is not irresistible, common, saving or prevenient. Preceding the word "grace" with these kinds of words is quite frankly leaning on philosophy instead of scripture and is used for building doctrine that is foreign to the use of the word in scripture.  Grace is grace and does not need to be given special names which cheapen the meaning of this wonderful give God has given us.

Biblical grace is what brought Jesus to us and it is what propelled him to the cross for us. This is the grace by which we are saved.  This is the grace for which we bless and thank God.  This is our awesome supply that never stops.  Embrace this grace my friends!

Grace was so important to the Apostle Paul that he often started and ended his letters with a salutation like this:

Grace be with you all.

Darrell Brantingham

(Check out my pithy tweets on Twitter at @confrontcalvin)

Calvinism's Massive Biblical Errors

Calvinism is an amalgamation of doctrines based more on philosophy than scripture.  How Calvinism and its doctrines are created are fascinating, puzzling and even mesmerizing.  In the end though Calvinism's bad theology can be traced to their exegetical methodologies.

For those that may not know, exegesis is a term that means the "critical explanation of the text". Therefore a good exegesis is one that correctly interprets and understands the Biblical text while poor exegesis uses poor techniques and tactics to interpret scripture. A good approach for Bible study is the "Berean Approach" and this is accomplished by researching the subject matter using only authoritative resources like scripture, concordances, lexicons etc.  Calvinism does use some of this approach but unfortunately has adopted other methods to develop doctrine as well.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that Calvinists are motivated to inveigle folks to believe their doctrines.  I don't believe they are deliberately misleading people. Calvinists passionately believe their doctrines and there is no harm in that.  The problem is that poor exegesis has simply become a long standing practice to support Calvinist doctrines.

Calvinism is supported by many errors in exegesis.  Many of the errors of exegesis described below are often used in various combinations in order to support their doctrines.  Calvinism's doctrines have been developed in error by one or more of the following exegetical practices:

Out of Context
Most bad doctrines use scripture out of context to support their beliefs.  Cults that are Christian in name only always pull scripture out of context to build their doctrines. Calvinists definitely practice this technique.  One example is Romans 9 where Paul discusses Israel and the nation's rebellion towards God along with the inclusion of the Gentiles, Calvinists pull out a couple of verses in the middle of the passage to use as proof verses for Unconditional Election.  However the context of the passage is not about the personal election of the saved or unsaved.  The context of Romans 9 is about Israel's unbelief and God's subsequent invitation of the Gentiles to have relationship with him.  

Using this practice, Calvinists simply skirt over the main message and pluck a verse or two out of context that will support their thesis.  This is simply bad exegesis and must be called out as so.  This technique is used in almost every proof text that Calvinism has established as a "proof text".  Another obvious example of this technique is Ephesians 1 where the discussion is about God's election of those already saved to God's great purposes.  The entire chapter is taken out of context because Ephesians 1 is simply not about personal salvation.  John 6:37 is another egregious example of this. In this case, the verse is cherry-picked from the surrounding text and seems to mean one thing when read on its own but means quite something else when one considers the full context.

Not Discerning the Whole of Scripture
It is the practice of Calvinism to use a few unclear scriptural passages to build and support its doctrines.  Interestingly then is this practice by Calvinists who are guilty of massive exegetical error when they do not compare their doctrines against the whole context of the Bible.  For example, one of the reasons that Unconditional Election is not true is because it is in major conflict with the Bible's overall ubiquitous conclusion that God is truly loving and fully just.  Every doctrine must be tested against the whole of the Bible and Calvinism is guilty of not doing this kind of diligent exegesis on their core proof passages.

Invalid Cross-References
Almost all Christians use the practice of cross-referencing one scripture to another passage to help put together scriptural ideas and themes.  However Calvinists use invalid cross-referencing to build support for a proof text.  Calvinists often list proof verses in their material to support their doctrines Sometimes the cross-referenced scripture has no validity because it states something else altogether. In other cases it is invalid because it simply mentions the same topic but does not support the scripture first being referenced.  A good example of this was a book I read recently supporting Calvinism doctrine that quoted 1 Peter 2:24 as one of eleven "proof" passages for Limited Atonement:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed.

Excuse me, but the above passage is about atonement but there is nothing here that comes close to intimating that atonement is limited.  Why is this one of the eleven best scriptures that the Calvinist author could choose to support Limited Atonement?

Redefinition of Words
Redefining Biblical words is a technique in which Calvinists excel.  They do it with some of the most important words in the Bible including "sovereignty", "grace" and "faith" to name just a few. For example "Sovereignty" by definition means "supreme power or authority" but Calvinists interpret the word to mean a God who predetermines everything. This is absolutely a redefinition of the word. Sovereignty does not mean complete predetermination of all things.  The word simply refers to an entity who has the supreme power.  The redefinition of key Bible terms is not only bad exegesis---it is egregious exegesis and it is all too common within Calvinism.

Foundational Ambiguity
This is the exegetical remiss of accepting a doctrine even though it is not clearly stated in any one passage in scripture.  A. W. Pink, revered and notable Calvinist author and teacher, wrote in the first chapter of his book on Election "it has not pleased the Holy Spirit to give us one complete and orderly setting forth of the doctrine of Election".  Recently when I wrote an article on Pink's take, every Calvinist that contacted me agreed with Pink that there is really no clear passage in scripture. That surprised me a little but shows me that they must admit this weakness of not having even one clear passage that explains perhaps their most revered doctrine.  In fact, none of Calvinism's doctrines have clear explanations.                                                                                        

This should be a huge red flag!  Calvinists trying to combat the charge that this is bad exegesis have told me that this is true of other key doctrines in scripture like the doctrines of the "Trinity" and the "Incarnation". This is an absurd defense.  Both doctrines are accepted by most Christians and have scriptures that clearly define them.  The Trinity is truly defined by scripture that describes Christ's baptism and the Incarnation is very clear in a number of passages including John 1.  A doctrine of the importance of Unlimited Election would surely have had at least one clear passage that lays it our clearly if it were legitimate.

Errant Inferences
Calvinists often refer to a proof passage that infers something but does not specifically say what they want it to.  This is often used to support Biblical passages that Calvinists use as proof texts.  This is very true concerning Unconditional Election.  Even though, there is not one passage that states that some are chosen while others are not, Calvinists infer their conclusion by reading into the passage something that is clearly not there.  For example, Ephesians 1 is used as proof text for Calvinist Election yet the passage never even mentions that some are not chosen.  This does not bother Calvinists because they say the passage infers that some men are not chosen if some are.  This is weak scriptural interpretation and needs to be called out.  Inference is especially dangerous when coupled with other exegetical techniques mentioned in this article.

Interpretation Through Philosophy
This technique of using philosophy to interpret scripture was rampant by the early fathers of Reformed theology.  Augustine was instrumental in his use of philosophy and Calvin used this philosophy in his exegesis extensively some 1000 years later when he developed the doctrines that we know today as Calvinism.  His writings are full of humanistic philosophy and he often quotes the philosophers of men as reason to build his doctrinal conclusions.  The philosophers that influenced Augustine and his theology include Plotinus, Cicero and Aristotle. Many regard Augustine as much a philosopher as theologian and this is a valid observance.  The fact is that he mixed philosophy and scripture to develop his own theological ideas which is dangerous.                                

I was astounded when I read John Calvin's "Institutes of The Christian Religion" because he did the same.  Not only did Calvin often quote Augustine, he also mentions Plato nine times, Socrates four times and Cicero seven times.  It is clear that Calvin valued philosophy some of which he contends with and some of which he accepted as good. Either way it is a valuation of philosophy that he establishes. This valuation of philosophy led Calvin to draw upon it to form his own conclusions just as Augustine had previously.  Calvinism is formed as much by philosophy as it is by scripture and this is simply dangerous.

Errant Presuppositions
Presupposition is defined as a thing tacitly assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of argument or course of action.  It has a lot to do with supposing something to be true and then moving on with it as if it is truth even if it has not been confirmed by actual research.  This too is rampant within Calvinism.  For instance, Calvinism's Irresistible Grace doctrine is based on extreme presupposition. It presupposes that God's grace is irresistible to the elect and has no effect on those who are not the elect and it does so with no scripture that describes irresistible grace in any way, shape or form.  It is complete fabrication by supposition.

Chosen Ignorance
Chosen Ignorance is the practice of ignoring obvious scriptural passages that simply don't agree with one's predetermined doctrines. Calvinists ignore clear passages of scripture only because they oppose Calvinist doctrines.  This practice is astounding given the way Calvinists concoct doctrines with scriptural references that really don't support their thesis in the least bit.  Here are a couple of clear examples of this chosen ignorance:

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. I Timothy 2:4

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9

Calvinists choose to ignore the obvious conclusions of these scriptures and many more like them simply because these verses openly and directly challenge their doctrines.  Yet they draw at straws to harness a scripture here or there to support their own questionable doctrines.

Circular Reasoning
Circular Reasoning is the methodology of believing something to be true and then advocating this conclusion strictly through the original understanding instead of doing a fair evaluation of the belief. For instance, for many years most people living on earth thought the earth was flat and not round. They reasoned the earth was flat and anything regarding this notion was interpreted only in light of what they already had predetermined in their minds.  Evolutionists have used Circular Reasoning since Darwin established the use of it in his challenges of creation.  Because they believe God does not exist, they reason that man must have evolved.  Calvinists often use this same technique when teaching or discussing Calvinism.

For instance, Calvinists often argue that a particular doctrine is true by assuming that another doctrine of Calvinism is true.  For example, because they believe in Unconditional Election then grace must be contrived as being irresistible even though there is not even a suggestion that grace is irresistible. Through Circular Reason a scriptural passage is assumed to have Calvinistic intention when in fact it does not.                                                                                                                        

Today, Calvinism is believed by many and has broad acceptance but it should not be given a pass because its doctrines and exegesis practices are patently unbiblical.  The problem is that most just accept these doctrines without truly checking the doctrines out and some come to believe them through systematic theology classes that simply indoctrinate folks to believe without doing true exegetical process.

I am certainly no great theologian by any stretch of the imagination but after forty-two years of fastidious Bible study as a born-again believer I know invalid Bible study approaches when I see them used.  The good glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ deserves only valid exegesis.

I'll have more articles on the above errant exegetical techniques in future articles.

Darrell Brantingham

(Please check out my pithy tweets on my twitter account: @confrontcalvin)