Grace Remix (2 page)

who can destroy both soul and body in hell”) and Hebrews 10:26 (“If we deliberately keep on

sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, expect raging fire!”) no longer

frighten me, they thrill me. More on those scriptures in chapters 5 and 12.

Before I got grace, Bible study was a drudge. Now it is a delight.

Before I got grace, used to dread preaching because I never knew what to say. Now I have

much to say. In the old days I used to leave my sermon preparation until late Saturday night.

Now I leap out of bed each morning keen to write about all that God is showing me.

God has given me a new song and it is a remix. It’s the timeless truths of scripture as seen

through the lens of the new covenant. It’s the ancient and eternal gospel of grace as seen

through the eyes of the new man.

I’m no historian, but I understand that the remix movement was driven in part by DJs who

put dance beats on top of old tunes to get people onto the dance floor. You would be sitting in a

club and you would recognize a tune, but it sounded different. It was both familiar and fresh,

and it made you want to dance.

Grace preachers are like those early DJs taking the old tunes of scripture and mixing them

with the rhythms of the new creation. This is what Jesus did. He took old scriptures about

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ESCAPE TO REALITY – GREATEST HITS VOL. 4

loving thy neighbor and mixed it into a new story about a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. It

was old, it was new, and it was good. It filled people with joy. It changed the way they thought

about God and his kingdom.

And that’s why we’re here—to renew our minds and discover all God has in store for us.

Some of the material on E2R has gone on to shape chapters in my various gospel books.

However, most of the articles in this collection of greatest hits have not been published

anywhere else. As before, I have taken this opportunity to give them a bit of a polish, and after

each you will find reflections and stories about how they came to be and how they were

received.

How does this collection of greatest hits fit with the previous volumes? Like this:

Grace Disco
—good news to make you dance

Grace Classics
—good news that has stood the test of time

Grace Party—
good news to make you celebrate

Grace Remix
—good news to renew your mind

The articles in this collection of greatest hits are designed to put a new song in your heart and a

jig in your step. The scriptures in here are old, but the song is new. It is the song of a heavenly

country, whose citizen you are.

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1. What is the “Whole” Gospel?

Heaven forbid that we preach half a gospel, but what is the
whole
gospel? Your answer to that

question reveals your views on the finished work of the cross. For instance, whenever I

proclaim the good news of God’s unconditional love, I can just about guarantee that some

serious person will pull me up for not preaching the
whole
gospel.

What they say: “We’ve got to preach the
whole counsel
of God, brother.”

What they mean: “You should tell people they need to do stuff—repent, confess, turn from

sin, work, etc.—to earn the free gifts of grace.”

Earn the free gifts of grace?!
What an absurd thing to say. It’s like saying, “Children, pull out your piggy banks because Mommy and Daddy expect you to reimburse us for your Christmas

presents.” How ridiculous! How can you compensate God for his priceless gifts?

What is the “whole counsel” of God?

Paul told the Ephesians “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God”

(Acts 20:27). Some translations say, the whole will of God. The whole counsel and the whole

gospel are the same thing because God’s will is always good news. He is not willing that any

perish. He doesn’t want anyone to be lost but desires all of us to come to him to receive new life.

So what is the whole counsel of God that Paul proclaimed? He tells us three verses earlier:

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and

complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—
the task of testifying to the good news of God’s

grace
. (Acts 20:24, emphasis added)

The whole counsel of God is the gospel of his grace. Period.

“Just grace?!” says the serious man. Yes, grace and nothing but. Not grace-plus-your-

confession, nor grace-plus-your-repentance—just grace.

“I can’t accept that,” says the serious man. Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have a

problem with grace:

The Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God… (Luke 7:30a, KJV)

Isn’t that interesting—those who loved the law rejected God’s counsel. Who else did the

Pharisees and law-teachers reject? Jesus! Indeed, Jesus is the whole counsel of God. If you

would preach the counsel, the whole counsel, and nothing but the counsel of God, then preach

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ESCAPE TO REALITY – GREATEST HITS VOL. 4

Jesus and nothing else. He is both the will of God made flesh and the means by which God’s

will comes to pass. Jesus is the Good News!

How not to preach the gospel

I will give you some practical handles on how to proclaim the whole gospel some other time,

but let me finish here by showing you how
not
to preach the gospel: Add stuff to it.

If you take all the blessings of God—his love, favor, forgiveness, acceptance, healing,

provision, deliverance, etc.—and tell people they must do stuff to merit them, then you are

diluting the gospel of grace. You’re preaching a mixed gospel where grace is no longer the

whole gospel, but only a
part
of it.

Whenever we add things to the gospel of grace we dilute its strength and empty the cross of

its power.

What do these gospel additives look like? I am sure you know them. They are called prayer

and fasting, Bible study, the spiritual disciplines, tithes and offerings, Christian duty, the

virtues, works of service, ministry, self-sacrifice, helps, missions, outreach, submission, sowing,

etc. In the hands of graceless religion these good things become death-dealing burdens. If you

think you must do them before God will bless you, you have fallen from grace as hard as any

Galatian.

Imagine a thirsty man crawls out of the desert and you say to him, “Drink this, it is pure spring

water.” That’s good news for the thirsty man. He doesn’t need to do anything except receive

what you are offering. But if you ask that man to do something before you give him the drink,

then it’s no longer good news. It’s torture.

Telling a thirsty man he must pray for an hour before he can drink is not good news. Nor is

telling him that he must keep the rules and do what he’s told. This isn’t good news either. It’s

bad news. It’s the religion of this world that derailed the Galatians, the Ephesians, the

Laodiceans and many other churches since.

And telling him that the drink is free now but he must pay later is no different. In fact it’s

worse because you have given him a taste of real freedom before binding him with cords of

obligation.

The good news is that grace is always free and if we drink it daily it will change us from the

inside-out.

You want to see change in your life and the lives of others? Then follow Paul’s lead and

preach the whole undiluted gospel of grace without adding anything to it.

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GRACE REMIX

This emphasis on
what we must do before God will bless us
is poison in the water. The true

gospel is additive-free. It’s grace from start to finish.

Look to the cross—God has blessed us already! Look to the empty tomb—the work of

saving and sanctifying you is finished. Believe it! Reach out and receive by faith the gift God has

already given.

If you would preach the whole gospel then preach Christ alone. He is all you need.

A recent survey revealed that 71 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “an

individual must contribute his or her own effort for personal salvation.”1 Most Christians

would react to this by saying, “No, salvation has nothing to do with our effort, for we are saved

by grace alone,” and they would be right. Salvation is a gift from God, a blessing that is

received by faith from start to finish.

Yet many of those same Christians say things like, “God won’t forgive you unless you

repent and confess. We’re sanctified by keeping the law.”

So even as they are trusting God to freely provide them with one blessing (salvation), they

are relying on their own efforts for all the others. “You have to confess to be forgiven. You have

to obey to be sanctified. You have to fast, pray, and do a bunch of other things before God will

bless you.”

The Bible declares that every blessing comes to us through Christ alone (Ephesians 1:3), yet

many in the church don’t believe it. They think “grace will get me in the door, but it’s up to me

to finish what Christ began.” This is the Kool-Aid of DIY religion.

I hear from people on an almost daily basis who are struggling to accept that God’s grace is

sufficient for
all
our needs. They see Jesus as their Redeemer and Savior but not their

Righteousness and Holiness from God (1 Corinthians 1:30). They don’t understand that Jesus is

the complete package, the whole kit and caboodle. They’ve bought into a partial gospel—a

gospel of salvation alone—but they haven’t heard the whole gospel.

As we saw, a partial gospel puts some of the emphasis on you and what you must do before

God will bless you, but the whole gospel puts the whole emphasis on Christ alone. It’s a huge

difference.

A partial gospel will turn you into a neurotic wreck, but the whole gospel will fill you with

uncontainable joy. A partial gospel will burden you with impossible demands, but the whole

gospel will set you free from unholy expectations. A partial gospel will leave you full of

yourself, but the whole gospel, as one wise reader said to me, “is so full of Jesus that there’s no

room for anything else.”

1 Source: Ligonier Ministries (2014), “The State of Theology: Theological Awareness Benchmark Study,” October 28, p.4, website: bit.ly/19DAx97, (accessed March 20, 2015).

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When you got saved you were probably told a lot of wonderful things about your future. “God

has a wonderful plan for your life.” You may have also been told some wonderful things about

your present. “We’re living in the kingdom now!” But you probably didn’t hear too many

wonderful things about your past. “It doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or what you’ve

come out of.” If anything, you probably heard unpleasant things and warnings about your

history. “Don’t go back to Egypt!”

But God is not only the Lord of your present and future, he is also the Lord of your past.

When you were born again, he gave you a brand new life complete with a brand new past. In

him, you have a completely new history! And it begins at Calvary:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians

2:20a)

When you were placed into Christ, you were placed into his death on the cross. In short, you

died. This is one of the most important things that ever happened to you, yet many Christians

are ignorant of it.

Just once I would like to hear a believer testify about their past like this: “I was born, I did

some stuff, and then I died. I was crucified with Christ and the person I used to be no longer

lives.” That’s basically what Paul is saying in Galatians 2.

We died with Christ so that we might live with him. If you want to live the life that is

Christ’s, you need to answer three questions:

1. What did I lose at the cross?

At the cross your old self was crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6). The person you used to be

apart from God—your “old man”—is dead so there’s no point trying to reform him. If your old

man gave you a bitter and painful past, then go dance on his grave because he’s gone and he’s

not coming back.

What else did you lose? Your sin has gone (Psalm 103:12), so has any relationship you might

have had with the law (Romans 7:6). This means you can say goodbye to guilt and

condemnation for there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

Rejection is also gone and if you can wrap your mind around the awesome love revealed to

you through the cross, then you will find all fear of punishment has gone as well (1 John 4:18).

The world as you knew it is no more (Galatians 6:14). Your old sources of identity and

security have been replaced with something infinitely better. Any anxiety you may have about

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GRACE REMIX

the future will go when you realize that you are in him and he has already overcome the world

(John 16:33).

2. What did I gain after the cross?

At the cross you received peace with God and complete forgiveness (Colossians 2:13). When

you were placed in Jesus, you gained his acceptance (Ephesians 1:6, KJV), his righteousness

(Romans 1:17), his holiness (1 Corinthians 1:30), indeed, his eternal perfection (Hebrews 10:14).

That’s wonderful! But wait, there’s more.