“Grace” is the most misused word in Christianity, in my opinion.
Anytime a Christian starts talking about grace, you can expect some error to come pretty quick.
Take the recent book I’m reading for instance. I got to a chapter on grace and read the following sentences:
“The grace of God means forgiveness has preceded repentance in our lives.”
[When they understand God’s grace] “they come to realize that repentance isn’t something they do in order to earn God’s forgiveness; it’s a heartfelt response of those who realize they have been forgiven.”
The whole section was on the Prodigal Son. He came home and didn’t even get words out of his mouth before his father forgave him. Instead the father threw a party.
There was no discipleship by the father and there was no repentance on the part of the son.
This sounds like a nice, happy theory, but the son coming home was the repentance. If the son had never come home there wouldn’t have been a party.
Yes, the father was ecstatic his son came home, but the son did come home!
The author of this book makes it sound like the son was forgiven while out doing all the weird stuff, so even if he never had come home he still would have been forgiven.
The son was eating with pigs. He came to himself. He knew he had messed up and decided to return home. That whole process was his repentance. “Repent” means to turn and go a new way. Going home was the new way.
This sort of nonsense gets passed off as biblical doctrine by way too many Christians.
In case you think I’m just railing on something I don’t like, my immediate thought was to look up verses using “repent” and “forgive.”
Guess what? There are eight of them in the New Testament (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; 17:3, 4; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 5:31; 8:22) . Every single one says repentance comes before forgiveness. Go ahead, look it up.
The most devastating one is Acts 8:22 about Simon wanting to buy spiritual power.
“Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart.”
Get a load of that verse! This verse seems to imply that even with repentance God still might not forgive him! Sincerity of heart is the main issue (8:21).
Goodness. Be careful out there. Please read the Bible. You’ll be able to tell when people are teaching bad doctrine and you will cease saying it yourself.
anti-itch meditation 