What Is Hyper Grace? — Shane Idleman

Grace Does Not Eliminate Christian Responsibility

The reason I want to bring this up is when I talk about some of these things about everything we just talked about for the last 20 minutes, somebody might say, well, what about grace, Shane? What about the grace of God?

And that's true. But grace doesn't relieve us of responsibility. We now live under a higher standard when grace governs our decisions. And the grace of God does not mean we can just go live however we want.

Because of the grace of God, I want to live as Christ calls me to live. They work together. And there's something out there now, you'll see if you go on a lot of different websites, I think the Christian Post had it this week and Christianity Today, Charisma website.

Hypergrace and the Neglect of Repentance

It's something called hypergrace. Hypergrace. And this term, and I think some Christians are following into this and I want to talk about from it. The term hypergrace has been used to describe a new wave of teaching that emphasizes the grace of God to the exclusion of other vital teachings, such as repentance and confession of sin.

Hypergrace teachers maintain that all sin, past, present, and future has already been forgiven, which is true, right? But so there's no need for a believer to ever confess it or repent. The conclusion of hypergrace teaching is that we are not bound by Jesus's teaching, even as we are not under the law, that believers are not responsible for their sin, and that anyone who disagrees with them is legalistic.

In short, hypergrace teachers pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality. So if it's all about grace, all about grace, don't talk about all those other things, Shane. It's all about grace.

It's hypergrace. And one of the articles was written by Dr. Brown, and he titled his article, Some Honest Questions for Joseph Prince. Now I'm not here putting down people or not, I'm just saying what the article said.

I think Joseph Prince would fall under teaching something like this. It doesn't mean they're false teachers necessarily, but they embrace something that they're not going to talk about, the difficult things.

Obedience, Spiritual Loss, and Pleasing the Lord

It's all about God's grace. So he asked these questions to Joseph Prince, and he hasn't got an answer back yet, but it fits him perfectly. He asked this question, are there spiritual benefits that come through obeying God's commands, and then spiritual losses that come from ignoring them?

Yes. Yes, but they say no. We're all on equal playing field. The New Testament writers often exhort us to live in ways that please the Lord. Does that mean that it's possible for us to displease the Lord?

Yes. They say no, because it's hypergrace. It's all about grace and forgiveness. We don't have to worry about all this other stuff. We agree that God relates to us as beloved children, but is he always pleased with us?

And since Paul urges us not to grieve the Spirit, does that mean that we can't in fact grieve the Spirit? Yes, we can. They say no, we can't. We agree that the Holy Spirit never condemns us for our sins as believers, but does he ever make us uncomfortable when we sin?

Oh, yes, he does. Personal witness on that one. To me, this is a very strong loving act of the Father, not wanting us to get comfortable doing things that could destroy our lives. Isn't that something to be embraced, and doesn't that drive us to the cross rather than away from it?

Rejecting Both Legalism and Hypergrace

But the reason, not to excuse the hypergrace camp, but the reason they do it is they want to avoid the extreme where people constantly feel guilty and beat up and condemned. There are churches that do that.

They're people you just never live, you're just guilty, guilty, and they forget about grace and forgiveness. But as with many other issues, they often go the polar opposite. And in an attempt to correct that, they should have just stopped here instead of going all the way here.

And then now we don't need to talk about obedience to God. We don't need to talk about repentance. We don't need to talk because it's already been done. It's all about grace now. Well, there's a lot of scriptures then you'll have to throw out.

The Difference Between Love and Approval

And I look, I thought of this, look at it this way. There's a man who has two sons. One son gets up in the morning, takes the trash out on his way to work, even does the dishes, can you believe that? You know, he's got a good job, doesn't make a lot of money, but he works hard.

The other son gets up around 11 o 'clock, doing Lord knows what since three in the morning, makes a mess out of the whole kitchen. His mom's upset, doesn't do anything, just a deadbeat, lazy son. Okay, both of the sons of the father, the father says, I love you both son, but what's the difference?

I'm not pleased with how you're conducting yourself. This one says, dad, can I have the keys to the car? Sure, here you go. This one says, nope, you're going to go buy a six pack. You're going to destroy, I can't, you see there's consequences.

So the hyper grace would say, nope, it's all the same. But there's a distinction there. The word of God says, listen, we've got to do some things, not quench the spirit, not grieve the spirit, not continue in sin.

Grace Leads to Obedient Living

So on the area, just be very careful because you don't want to get caught up on it's all about grace without understanding what grace really involves. To me, grace is unmerited favor. Because of the grace of God, we are saved.

He sent his only son to die on a cross. That is sheer mercy and grace. And because of that relationship now, I want to live to please my father. And how do we please the father? By obeying his word. But if you say, don't obey his word, that's legalistic, then where are you going with this?

The Whole Counsel of God's Word

I think the real reason it upsets people is, you know, that difficult truths upset people. The things that they really need to hear are the things they don't want to hear. And that's why we have to share the whole counsel of God's word.