The following is a notebook entry from summer 06…

Ps. 107:1 says, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever.”

In the Emergent movement there is a desire to elevate “God is love” to axiomatic status, to make it the measuring rod of all assertions about God’s nature, scriptural or otherwise. If one desires to speak of God’s holiness, he must not contradict the axiom. That God would wipe out cities in Canaan because He and His nation are holy is harmful (they would say) to the notion that He is fundamentally love. The Emergent thinker may discount the conquest of Canaan altogether because Scripture is not really his scripture; “God is love” is his scripture.

Questions of the nature of inspiration aside, love as an attribute of God, and even a dominant or at least significant attribute, must be dealt with and processed in theology. For all of the Bible’s focus on God’s holiness-inspired wrath, there are phrases like that above and chapters like Ps. 107. which unapologetically magnify the love of God. Even while such chapters may be peppered with hints at His holiness, they make His longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, love, etc. the main theme. In a microcosmic sense I believe passages such as this lead to a grace-centric theology.

What exactly does “grace-centric” mean? While it is certainly not sufficient to describe an entire philosophical or systematic approach, it is at least helpful in setting forth a general, practical-theological perspective. I envision it as a necessary balance for an evangelicalism that is stuck in an antinomian vs. law-keeping juxtaposition. It is a solution, a more biblically faithful and gospel oriented one, to the great “cheap grace,” “lordship salvation” debate that still rages in the evangelical world, and that even finds a full-frontal offensive launched from the pulpit of my local church on most Sundays.

A brief survey

In the old dichotomy, there are only two options, each resulting in specific practical expressions relative to the local church apparatus (leadership, baptism, membership, discipline, etc.). Those two options are either A. the cheap grace, easy gospel, antinomian, or, in the words of the proponents, non-judgmental, love and grace focused perspective; or B. the law-keeping, obedience-requiring, regenerate-baptism/membership perspective that makes its mission “distinguishing true faith from false faith.” While Emergent mentioned earlier probably represents a fringe of the A. perspective, the posterchildren would be Joel Osteen (sin-free preaching), possibly Charles Stanley (eternal security, once saved-always saved), and in a distant sense the countless evangelical mega and mondo churches that produce wayfaring celebs like Britney Spears and Pastor Joe Simpson (Jessica’s daddy-o).

The recent SBC ruling that church membership rolls need not be sliced and diced when people stop showing up or decide to behave scandalously also represents the A. perspective. Likewise, the fluffy sermons with little/no mention of sin and a lot of psychologizing instead of real preaching, along with youth groups where everyone thinks they’re automatically Christian because they go to youth group, and possibly even a theology that so magnifies the altar call and sinner’s prayer that even full-on apostates are in like flint – all of these characterize type A. churches. If we expand the category a little bit, we may include more high-churching Anglicans and Lutherans, and perhaps the more sacramental Presbyterians, whose antinomianism takes shape as a regeneration that may be unconciously transferred to infants and ascribed to adolescents who sit through confirmation classes. While less warm and fuzzy than the Baptist version, the idea is the same: grace and love from God without corresponding real change/obedience from the believer.

To fix the problem of A., many, like the Founder’s movement within the SBC, as well as our own pastor, have chosen the B. perspective (which, in their minds, stands for B.iblical). The expression is mainly Baptist/non-denom. evangelical, and it entails a significant focus on real fruit of regeneration in the believer’s life. Rather than magnifying grace in absolute antithesis to law, it rightly shows the relationship of holiness/law/sin to grace/forgiveness in the substitutionary cross. With the reaction to A. comes a special emphasis on the sin part of the gospel-equation and the ongoing relevance of a sin-focus in the believer’s life, both because it’s God’s law and we must honor it, and because both individual and church must beware of the spurious faith which carries with it the bad fruit of disobedience.

B. churches try for regenerate baptism and membership with a thorough examination process; they are very careful with professions of faith among the youth; and they exercise a measure of discipline in cases of transgression and apostasy. B. churches are fierce in their opposition to all manner of sacramentalism, especially infant baptism, and the very notion of covenantal/family blessing (i.e., covenant succession) are odious to them. I have a strange and strong affinity for this last concept, btw.

Establishing the Grace-centric perspective

For our purposes here it is not necessary to refute the A. perspective; hundreds of years of theology have shown the biblical impossibility of Christian antinomianism and empty sacramentalism. Further, it is the problem of a strong sin/authentic faith focus that a grace-centric theology seeks to address. Here’s how:

1. A grace-centric theology affirms the bilbical emphasis on holiness/law/sin. There is no need to flail about the Canaanite conquest, for God and his nation are holy. However, is there any biblical reason to suppose, outside of an opposition to cheap grace, that God’s holy wrath against sin ought to be the dominant thought in theology, the dominant message from the pulpit, or the dominant aspect of the believer’s walk? On that last point I think the answer is clearly No; if there is any realism to the believer’s knowing that he is redeemed, that is, a foundational assurance of justification, then he has foundationally, decidedly, really, and eternally been transferred from the identity of a child of wrath to a child of God.

There can be no gospel, and no grace, and, indeed, no Christianity worth squat if I cannot KNOW whether I am a child of God or of Satan, and if that knowledge is not derived from something outside of my own works, e.g., the love and grace of God which endures forever.

Further, the foundational identity is the greenhouse in which all really good works will grow.

2. A grace-centric theology affirms the need for real regeneration. This change of heart in conversion results in a life of obedience that witnesses to the authenticity of one’s faith. However, while the B. perspective lays such great stress on this aspect that one’s foundational identity is often lost in the persistent self-examination and suspicion, the new perspective views the foundational identity as all-important and treats all doubt with great hesitation and humility. Theoretically speaking, it is clearly understood that the assurance of salvation is so wrapped up in the work of Christ and one’s experiential love-relationship with God that is restored through him, that the need to look to external works for assurance of true faith is purely secondary and almost a backup “emergency” procedure when there has been a drastic misapprehension of God’s grace.

In this sense, church discipline is far more relevant to a grace-centric perspective than to a type B. one, because the paranoid screening process that seeks to keep eventual apostates out (and inevitably lets them fester within by labeling them as non-Christian seekers who seek for years on end) is replaced by a very sane disciplinary process that simply deals with transgression as it occurs in the professing believer’s life.  In other words, while type B. claims to be all about church discipline, it rarely exercises it because it spends most its time keeping false believers from ever making a profession in the first place.

There is more to all of this, but I leave it at that for now…