"[W]e misappropriate Luther if we read him as indicating that Christians, once saved, are virtually powerless to change and grow"
I’m beginning to wonder if there will ever be a fair critique of the “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” teaching of Tullian Tchividjian, Steve Brown, etc. I’m genuinely interested to know whether and precisely where that teaching goes beyond a scriptural understanding of grace. Instead, every critique I’ve seen so far, including the article linked here, significantly misrepresents the “big grace” position, destroying the credibility of the critique.
to those trying to understand TT, Martin Luther, Steve Brown …
it’s spiritually discerned. it takes an act of God to really understand it. I was a christian for over 20 yrs before I started getting it.
I guess it bothers me more when people just surface-like skim over stuff, read a few quotes, assume they know what these guys are saying, then write/talk about it authoritatively. When in reality, it’s not at all the way they are assuming.
like, i posted this youtube video of TT in the other thread about this. did anyone watch it? in it, he talks about “applying the law” to his unrepentant son. he talks about “cheap law,” which is what the “just keep trying” people are, in effect, doing to the law, he talks of God’s love for you not changing but sure you’ll have consequences for your sins. he talks about “law then grace.”
… Anyway, we could chat on and on, maybe we have already :D
Martin Luther and and mild antinomianism … oh my.
Luther was just a man, as he himself insisted on many occasions.
The appeal to special knowledge is not persuasive. What I mean is, “Well, you just don’t get it because you haven’t been immersed in it long enough” is not persuasive… mostly because it doesn’t provide an adequate set of reasons to believe A and reject B.
The NT is quite clear that Christ’s obedience to the law is credited to us (justification) but does not replace our own actual obedience (sanctification). God’s agenda is to produce obedient children, not merely justified children.
I keep going back to these verses, and they continue to go unanswered.
Ephesians 2:10, Php. 2:12-13, Heb.12:1-4, Col. 1:29, Php. 1:27, 1 Cor. 9:27, 1 Tim. 4:7-8, 1 Tim. 4:10
And many, many more.
“Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.” (WCF 11:2)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I simply don’t relate. Whoever thought Luther taught that people couldn’t grow in God?
By the way…I tend to read the bios of the authors of blogs that you all post here. Almost all are thoroughly evangelical…why is that any way? Perhaps it is just me but that is just plain weird for a website claiming to be fundamental. In this case the author is Owen Strachan, who lists as his accomplishments being a “hip hop aficionado” and having cut a rap album!
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