I was watching a couple of YouTube videos yesterday. They were about
the Hyper-grace movement. I blogged about that a few days ago. See here.
In that particular link, I talk about Michael Brown’s criticism of the
Hyper-grace movement. Dr. Brown says that it maintains that we do not
have to follow or obey Jesus, for all we have to do is accept God’s free
grace. He also stated that one of its beliefs is that we do not
continually have to confess our sins to God to receive forgiveness, for
God has already forgiven believers once they’ve accepted Christ’s
sacrifice for them on the cross.
Michael Brown said that he asks Hyper-grace people a question.
Suppose you get into an argument with your wife. Don’t you feel the
need to apologize to her? If so, should you not apologize to God for
your sins? According to Michael Brown, Hyper-grace people usually
answer that their relationship with God is different from their
relationship with people.
Is it? One preacher who is often labelled a Hyper-grace preacher
(whether Michael Brown does so or not, I do not know, but I google
“Hyper-grace preachers” and this name comes up) is Joseph Prince. I was
watching an excerpt of a sermon of his
yesterday. What I understood Prince to be saying is that believers
should approach God, not as a sinner approaches a lord (which is how the
repentant publican in Luke 18 approached God), but as a child
approaches his father. According to Prince, we’re in the relationship
with God through Christ, and we don’t have to maintain that relationship
through our performance. So we have Joseph Prince, who is called a
Hyper-grace preacher, likening the divine-believer relationship to a
human relationship.
But there are Hyper-grace people who don’t think that the
divine-believer relationship can be likened to human relationships.
Yesterday, I watched a video by American Wayne,
who called into Michael Brown’s radio program. American Wayne
identified himself as one of the Hyper-grace people Michael Brown is
criticizing. American Wayne said that he used to be addicted to
pornography, but the addiction faded when he stopped struggling and
accepted God’s grace. Michael Brown responded that he did not have much
of a disagreement with that approach, but then Michael Brown went on to
ask American Wayne his question: Would you apologize to God, as you
would apologize to your wife after saying something bad to her?
American Wayne replied that he did not consider his relationship to God
to be like human relationships. God has already forgiven him in
Christ. Why, then, would he need to keep asking God for forgiveness?
Is my relationship with God like my relationship with human beings?
Do I apologize to God, as I do to human beings? It’s something to think
about! To be honest, I pray more for strength to do right rather than
asking for forgiveness for wrong. That is, unless we’re talking about
wrong that I genuinely feel guilty about, as opposed to what Christians,
the Bible, etc., may say I should feel guilty about. Yes,
there is overlap between the two in my life, but I’m reluctant to beat
myself up for being human or less than perfect. Now, if I tell someone I
love off, I feel a need to apologize to that person, and to God. For
some reason, though, I am very, very reluctant to apologize to God when I
tell him off. If I do apologize, it is so I will be on his good side
rather than his bad side. Sometimes, I may say, “Okay, I’m sorry for
saying that—-if I am wrong about what you are like, and you are
not really as bad as I think you are.” Part of me feels that I am
justified in being mad at God.
On a related note, I have a couple of things to share. The first is a post by K.W. Leslie about the Romans torturing Jesus before Jesus was crucified. This part caught my attention, probably because it resonated with me so much:
“There are a lot of people in the world, in our culture, who are
really, really angry at God. Given the chance, they’d join the soldiers
in smacking him around if they could. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t
deserve it; they’re convinced he does deserve it. He let their loved
ones die, horribly. Or he didn’t give them the prayer-requests they
begged for. Or he didn’t come through for them, and they thought they
had a deal. Or their lives just suck in general, and they’ve convinced
themselves a good, loving God should take away all the problems in the
world; not have us solve them ourselves. So this represents that:
Humanity telling God what they really think of him. Doing to him what
they really want to do to him, instead of love him. Jesus said they
didn’t know what they were doing, Lk 23.34 ’cause they really didn’t;
those who hate God, who find him frustrating, don’t understand him. And
don’t really want to. They just want to hurt him.”
The hatred part resonated with me. I hope that, with God’s grace,
the realization that such hatred is wrong will resonate with me even
more.
Second, American Wayne did a YouTube video in
which he was responding to someone who felt a need for God, yet had a
lot of fundamentalist evangelical baggage and was disillusioned with
dogma. He was wondering how exactly he should see the Bible. American
Wayne responded in a compassionate, understanding manner.