Robbing the Gospel

There is a fair online presence of Hyper Calvinistic Baptists out there who go by the terminology of "sovereign grace." I am not talking about the C.J. Mahaney types, I am talking about another group entirely. This group of folks believes that anyone who rejects limited atonement is a reprobate. They are all supralapsarian (it's a Calvinist thing, see: Lap Who?) in their view of God's decrees. They believe that God has nothing but love for the elect and nothing but pure hate for the non-elect. They're also Baptist in their stance on Baptism.

Anyways, they're in essence promoting a sort of Gnosticism in some ways, but that is not what this blog is to be about.

This blog is how this group actually robs the Gospel of the one thing they earnestly seek to uphold: free and sovereign grace.

Here is an example from a "sovereign grace" pastor: Is the Gospel and Offer or Command?

Here you have it. This pastor, and all those in this group, insist that the Gospel is a command, yet also insist on sovereign grace alone in salvation. Truth is, the Gospel is not an offer or a command. There are two major problems with this theology.

First, they separate the Gospel from grace. They will protest this charge, but it is valid. The very definition they portray of "sovereign grace" actually denies that the Gospel itself is a means through which the Holy Spirit works, since the Spirit regenerates apart from means anyways in their theology.

Thus, grace actually comes *apart from* the Gospel itself.

Second, they actually rob the Gospel of actually being a one-sided divine promise of grace for you by turning it into a command. Making the Gospel into a command turns the Gospel into LAW.

The GOSPEL, not the LAW, is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1). And turning the Gospel into a command turns the Gospel into Law and actually destroys the one thing these "sovereign gracers" seek to uphold: free grace.

+Pax+