“Free Grace” and Matt. 7:21-23 (Part 1)
January 17th, 2008
(By Matt Waymeyer)
Matt is the Senior Pastor of Community Bible Church in Vista, California.
In case you haven’t heard of it, “Free Grace” is the name given to a theological system founded by Zane Hodges and currently promoted by Bob Wilkin and The Grace Evangelical Society. According to “Free-Grace” theology (hereafter FG), genuine conversion does not necessarily result in a spiritually transformed life. In other words, FG advocates affirm that an individual can believe in Christ and yet show forth absolutely no fruit whatsoever in terms of obedience to God or love for Christ. Put another way, they believe in a regeneration which may or may not result in progressive sanctification. Most times, they say, it does not.
FG teachers would go so far as to say that if an individual were to believe in Christ for a brief moment—even as brief as 10 seconds—and then recant of that belief and live out the rest of his life as a Christ-rejecting atheist who never obeys God, that individual is a true child of God and will some day be in heaven. In other words, rather than recognizing that such an individual did not truly believe in Christ to begin with (1 John 2:19), Free-Gracers would affirm that person’s faith and conversion as genuine, for regeneration is no guarantee that one will persevere in the faith.
Among the many passages of Scripture which contradict FG on this point is Matthew 7:21-23. In this passage, Jesus says:
(21) “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. (22) Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ (23) And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”
The obvious problem that this presents for the FG position is Jesus’ assertion that only those who “do the will of my Father” will enter the kingdom. This runs contrary to the FG gospel which says that most of those who end up in heaven will not have lived a life of obedience to God during their lives on earth.
One of the primary ways that FG teachers try to solve this dilemma is by using John 6:40 to interpret “the will of My Father” in Matthew 7:21 (e.g., see Joseph Dillow, The Reign of the Servant Kings, 199; Bob Wilkin, Confident in Christ, 216). According to this approach, doing the will of the Father in John 6:40 (and therefore in Matthew 7:21) refers to believing in Christ. Therefore, Matthew 7:21 simply says that only those who do the Father’s will (which is to believe in Christ) will enter the kingdom of heaven. And with that, the tension between Matthew 7:21-23 and FG theology suddenly vanishes. Or does it?
To get right to the point, I believe that this approach to Matthew 7:21-23 suffers from at least three significant difficulties: (1) a neglect of the original context; (2) a misguided hermeneutical approach; and (3) a complete misunderstanding of John 6:40. (Today we will consider the first of these three. We will look at the other two in tomorrow’s post.)
A Neglect of the Original Context
The first problem is that this explanation of Matthew 7:21-23 ignores key details in the text itself. The most obvious one is the clear contrast that Jesus establishes between those “who [do] the will of the Father” in verse 21 and those “who practice lawlessness” in verse 23 (both present participles in the Greek). Those who do the will of the Father (i.e., live lives of obedience) will enter the kingdom (v. 21), but those who practice lawlessness (i.e., live lives of disobedience) will not enter the kingdom (v. 23). “Doing the will of the Father” most naturally refers to obeying God, and the way it is set in contrast to living a life of disobedience only confirms this interpretation.
In addition, there is an irony in Jesus’ description in which those who call Jesus “Lord” do not obey Him as Lord. In other words, they profess to be followers of Christ who live in submission to God’s authority, and yet they do not live in obedience to the will of the Father. Their lives of disobedience betray the hypocrisy of their confession. As it is often said, they profess, but they do not possess.
FG theologians respond to this interpretation with two objections. First, they insist that it amounts to a person trusting in his own obedience as the basis for his salvation. In response to this objection, Jesus is not saying that obedience to the Father is the basis of the believer’s salvation, but rather the inevitable result of it. Only those who obey the will of the Father will enter the kingdom because everyone who truly believes in Christ will demonstrate their faith in the way that they live. Genuine conversion will not fail to result in works of obedience.
This truth is taught throughout the New Testament, but one example will suffice. 1 John 2:3 says: “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” We don’t come to know Christ by obeying His commandments—rather, the evidence that we have already come to know Christ (through faith) is that we obey His commandments. In this way, obedience to God is not a prerequisite for conversion—it is an inevitable result of conversion. FG people seem to have a difficult time understanding the difference between the two (and therefore often reject the latter because they mistake it for the former).
The second objection involves the passage itself. FG teachers point out that the very individuals who are rejected by Christ in verse 23 are described in verse 22 as those who trust in their obedience as the basis for their salvation. (Verse 22: “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’”) Therefore, the objection goes, whatever Jesus means by “the will of the Father” in verse 21, it couldn’t refer to a life of obedience to God.
In response to this objection, the works that Jesus describes in Matthew 7:22 are not acts of obedience to the will of the Father. Nowhere does God command the common man to prophesy, cast out demons, and perform miracles. The individuals rejected by Christ claimed to be engaged in these activities in the name of Jesus—and they may have been—and yet, at the same time, they had not lived lives of obedience to the Father. In fact, just the opposite—they had lived lives of lawlessness. In contrast, only those who do the will of the Father will enter the kingdom.
(To Be Concluded Tomorrow)
For the life of me, I could never understand (and still can’t) how some people don’t understand faith resulting in fruit (good works). How they can continually turn this into “works salvation” is astounding.
There is a major difference in trying to obey in order to be accepted by God and get born again, and obeying once you are born again. When we are born again, the Spirit of Holiness comes to dwell within us and empower us with the strength of God to do God’s will. Prior to being born again, it is all of our strength, thus works. Christians are to submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit, which results in obeying God.
One thing missed by some is that believing, or faith in the gospel involves obedience. They cannot be held apart from each other. See Heb. 3:16-4:11. The words unbelief and disobedience are used interchangably. 3:19, “So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.” and 4:10-11, “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.”
When you believe in Jesus, you have the Spirit to walk you through the obedience part.
Tim Brown,
Ditto.
I am an old guy. I have spent my life trying to figure out the connection between God and man. I seeking to understand all the dynamics that are inherent with Christianity – the faith I was raised in – I have come to a peaceful conclusion.
John says that God is Love. How do we define Love? As a Human one learns to define Love in the way they experience Love through secular experience. If your father says that he Loves you and then beats you, it is hard to separate the two things.
Jesus lived as a definition of Love, so we might be free of the constraints of secular definitions. Paul teaches the Love of Jesus and amplifies it. God/Jesus Loves us. We are imperfect beings, but that is not an issue when it comes to God’s Love. We are loved and forgiven our sins without any action from us.
If we go though life and never know or understand that Love and Forgiveness, we remain in a state of condemnation, not by God but by our lack of knowledge.
It is like a letter that is sent but you never get because you do not check your mailbox. The letter is there. It is yours, but if you do not go to the mail box and recieve the letter you will not know what the letters says. In the case of God, the letter is good news that you will not know unless you go to the mailbox and recieve it.
God’s Love is free and already given, but one does have to act to recieve the knowledge of that Love and Forgiveness.
We can recieve God’s Love and walk away from it. It was there before we believed and and it will be there when we walk away. That part is true, but reality is perception. No matter what exists, if we do not percieve it as being in our reality, it does not exist – to us.
“Works” are not for God, they are for us. It is God’s gift to us so we may know him better and may grow in His way.
I have looked at Love as being like a cup that is full of wine and no matter how much you drink the cup never empties. Now if you take that cup and place it on a shelf and never drink of it you have only one cup of wine. If you take the cup and drink of it you have only what wine you can drink, but if you take the cup and share it with all you know the wine you have or can give is infinite.
That is God’s plan and will for us. He wants us to acknowledge that he Loves us and gave Jesus as a guide to us. Then he wants is to partake of His Love and share His Love. We know God through this process because John tells us that God is Love. If we know love and know it fully we know God.
This is what I beleive, this is what I strive to live by yeilding to God, yeilding to Love.
Dear Matt:
I have not visit here in many weeks, but glad I saw this. You wrote, “In case you haven’t heard of it, ‘Free Grace’ is the name given to a theological system founded by Zane Hodges and currently promoted by Bob Wilkin and The Grace Evangelical Society. According to ‘Free-Grace’ theology…”
I want to provide some clarification on your statement above. I have to be hasty, but here goes.
Today there is a very clear and definite divide in the Free Grace (FG) community. There are two very distinct factions that have become even more sharply divided in the last year. One FG faction is the Hodges, Wilkin, GES camp, and then there are those who reject the extremism of Hodges and Wilkin. I trust you understand that Charles Ryrie, for example, is a far cry from Hodges on a number of doctrines. Dr. Charlie Bing would be another.
The dividing line between the two camps in the FG community is primarily over two areas of doctrine.
The first is over repentance: Hodges/Wilkin teaches that repentance is not part of or a condition for salvation. Hodges says repentance as a “change of mind” is not found in Scripture. Many, many men in the FG camp reject this from Hodges.
The second issue, which is the main and very sharp dividing point, is over what has come to be known as the “Crossless” gospel.
This reductionist view of the Gospel from Hodges and Wilkin teaches that the lost man does not have to understand or believe who Jesus is or what He did to provide salvation, but can still be born again. The only condition for salvation in the Hodges (Crossless) system is believing in a promise of eternal life from a man named Jesus no matter who the lost man thinks Jesus is.
Even conscious rejection of the Lord’s deity, in a personal evangelism setting, is viewed as something to be put on the back burner and left there. They believe issues like that are to be dealt with in a discipleship setting.
Other dangerous teaching coming from Hodges and Wilkin include: 1) There is no sin barrier/problem between God and man. 2) There is no technical meaning for “the Gospel.” 3) The Lord’s titles, “the Christ” & “Son of God” do not mean or infer the Lord’s Deity.
I share these things with you and your readers to make the point that there are many men in the FG community who reject these egregious errors coming from Hodges, Wilkin and the GES. These men are Free Grace, they reject Lordship Salvation, but they are not in any way holding hands with the theology of Zane Hodges.
Now, I am not trying to advertise my blog, but if any of your readers click over they can read scores of articles where I and others sharply refute the teaching of Zane Hodges, Bob Wilkin and the GES. We do that from a Free Grace position.
Kind regards,
LM