The Grace Message

I recently read The Grace Message by Andrew Farley (2022). It goes farther and makes clearer what I already knew about the core of Christianity, yet most Christians don’t quite get it and most preachers muddy it up with a bunch of rules. Jesus ALONE saves. Our behavior plays no part. Therefore, there is no point in following a set of rules. We are dead to the law.

The book is broken into fifty-two short chapters each beginning with a story of someone with a question or objection to Farley’s message. This makes it very relatable and less abstract. Many Christians are afraid of letting go of the law, less because they are afraid they will fall into sin without it, and more because they think other Christians will. They themselves desire strongly not to do evil, yet assume that preaching rules of right living is the only thing keeping other people from spiraling into evil. Farley responds with what is almost obvious in hindsight: That sinners are quite capable of sinning with or without rules, that believers are new creations with new hearts that make them want to stop sinning, and that when a believer does sin, they soon find they regret it and cannot continue in sin. The purpose of the Law of Moses was never to be followed and achieve salvation; its purpose was only to arouse and thereby expose sin. The law is not for believers, but for unbelievers, to show them their need for a savior. The law was only a shadow of things to come (Colossians 2:17, Hebrews 10:1).

Where Farley goes further is by constantly hammering the points that the work of Jesus was finished once and for all on the cross, where we died with him. We don’t have to keep asking for forgiveness (see Hebrews chapter 9). Our next sin is already forgiven. Jesus foreknew your every sin and died for you anyways, never asking for any effort on your part. We don’t have to keep “dying to self” or be disciplined or sanctified over a lifetime. It’s done. There are only two levels of righteousness: believers and unbelievers. Jesus removed our sins from us, so that we are every bit as righteous as he is. This is both imparted and imputed. The sins we commit are not part of our identities. Thus, your ambitions are not selfish. Your dreams are God-given. The Holy Spirit works through us by giving us new desires. While the Holy Spirit corrects us when we make a mistake, only Satan condemns. God does not want you out of your comfort zone; he is the one who sent the comforter! This is in part how he guides us.

So many churches preach exceptions to rule-free living. Some teach that one must follow the ten commandments, others teach that one must follow the ten commandments plus tithing, and others teach that one must follow only nine of the commandments, the sabbath no longer applying to today. The problem is that nobody follows the whole law, with its rules about inheritance, diet, clothing, lending, and festivals. It’s impossible! The Temple in Jerusalem is no longer operational to take sacrifices! Besides, the law was never given to the gentiles, tithing pertained mostly to oil, grain, and meat, and today’s “priesthood” is allowed to own property and run side hustles so tithing is less necessary.

Farley hypothesizes that the real reason Jesus spoke of cutting off body parts that cause us to sin, of mere thoughts being as bad as murder and adultery, and of breaking one part of the law being as bad as breaking the whole, was to make it overwhelmingly clear that there was no point in trying to live by our own efforts. Many churches take these teachings of Jesus as actual rules to be followed, but then water them down by saying the amputation was metaphorical and making a distinction between willful and unwilful sins. They justify themselves by reinterpreting the rules rather than simply admitting it can never be done without divine intervention.

Churches also play word games to hide what Jesus has actually done for us. They say we have to appropriate the spirit or that we have positional righteousness, but not experiential righteousness. They say that we are saved once and for all and surely going to Heaven, yet we can still lose fellowship with Jesus or find our prayers unheard. None of this is true because Jesus now lives in us and gives us his spirit.

So far, this is powerful stuff – and all true!

Later in the book, Farley tackles some verses that do seen genuinely confusing. He suggests that First John is writing to both believers and unbelievers. He suggests that the warning to “examine ourselves” is about gluttony in Corinth. He suggests that the two judgements of the dead might be the same one from the same seat. He suggests that we might not have different rewards in Heaven. Finally, he suggests that “pick up our cross daily” might not be in the original Gospel, since the earliest manuscripts of Luke lack the word “daily,” as do all manuscripts of Matthew and Mark. It is at this point that I have no way of evaluating the soundness of his ideas except to say that they go against what I was always taught.

Then he goes on to get into stupid arguments of semantics. He says the “flesh” is not the “self,” and that it is the flesh that makes us sin, not our selves, which have the righteousness of Christ and the identity of children of God. He says the first step to stop temptation is to tell yourself that “you” don’t need it, that it isn’t “your” thought, and that temptation isn’t “from” you, though it might “sound like” or “feel like” you.

This is very confusing. Whether we call the part of us from which sin originates the self or the flesh is irrelevant. Will not a rose by any other name smell as sweet? It is certainly part of us in the usual sense, so it is not incorrect to say it is the self. Furthermore, temptations absolutely are “our” thoughts if we are the ones having them! What does it even mean to say a thought we are having isn’t a thought we are having? Who is having it if not us? And how do we know about it without also thinking about it? They are our thoughts by definition. As for where temptation comes “from,” it is hard to say, but we are unaware of it until it emerges in ourselves. When another person whispers in our ear (or uses book or television), we know where the thought came “from,” but when a thought occurs to us out of the blue, doesn’t it make sense to say it came from us BY DEFINITION? It has nothing to do with “feels like” or “sounds like” and everything to do with semantics. The bottom line is it makes no difference from where temptation comes. Resisting it is the same either way.