Ebook
“Simply stated (and to use some of Pastor Whitten’s words), if you teach that we are saved by God’s grace through faith, and that now as believers we are called by God to walk worthy of our salvation and to pursue holiness of heart and life—in other words, to work out the ongoing process of sanctification—you are preaching ‘behavior modification,’ you are in the (lucrative!) ‘sin management business,’ you are propagating the same ‘spiritually murderous lie’ that Luther and Calvin did, and you need to receive the great new revelation of this great new reformation, the grace revolution. That is quite an accusation!” (source)
“If God already forgave all our sins, past, present, and future, why is Jesus talking about being forgiven on an ongoing basis? It’s clear that our present sins need present forgiveness, not for the purpose of salvation but as part of our relationship with the Father. Again, this is presupposed throughout the entire New Testament.” (source)
“And it is true that when Jesus died for us, our sins were still future since we had not even been born. So, yes, He died and paid for our future sins as well as our past and present sins. What we must realize, however, is that the transaction of forgiveness takes place at different points in time.8 In other words, Jesus died for you and me sometime around AD 30, and the moment He breathed His last breath, He had paid for the sins of every human who would ever live on the earth. But were we forgiven at that point in time? Absolutely not!” (source)
“The truth is that the modern grace message is quite mixed, combining life-changing, Jesus-exalting revelation with serious misinterpretation of Scripture, bad theology, divisive and destructive rhetoric, and even fleshly reaction. And, in all too many cases, it is being embraced by believers who are not just looking for freedom from legalism but also freedom from God’s standards.” (source)
Michael L. Brown is the founder and president of FIRE School of Ministry, a leadership training institute birthed out of the fires of revival that is called to equip authentic and devoted disciples of Jesus. With a PhD from New York University in Near Eastern languages and literatures, he is recognized as one of the leading Messianic Jewish scholars in the world today. He hosts the nationally syndicated daily talk radio show The Line of Fire and is the author of more than twenty books, including
The Real Kosher Jesus.