This was written on an online forum regarding a document written by Bill Gothard on grace. He hits hard upon conditional grace, but leaves no room for the concept of unconditional grace, which is grievous to the bone and marrow of the gospel, I believe. Apparently what I wrote struck a chord with several people, so I wanted to put that up here for anyone else who might benefit.
Much of what I’m about to say has come because of reading John Owen’s extended meditation on Romans 8:13, known as The Mortification of Sin in Believers. In it, the absolutely necessary work of mortifying (i.e., putting to death) sin in our mortal bodies is expounded upon and the power to do it is explained precisely and biblically.
Becoming like Christ, that is, having good character, sacrificing for others, remaining morally pure, speaking the truth always to our neighbor, etc., is necessary for believers. I’ll not deny that, as we were created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we may walk in them (Ephesians 2:10). To tell someone he must mortify his lusts is like telling a man he must fall a redwood. It is absolutely necessary (Hebrews 12:14), yet at the same time daunting and impossible without the necessary tools (see all of Romans 7).
Thus it is the how that concerns me the most, and concerns Owen, and why I have involved myself in this thread and do not think Gothard adequately explains it with any degree of true power and strength. I was under his teachings for all of my teen years and into my early 20s, and to my great shame I stand before all of you and say that I was under bondage to the sin of self-pleasing that evidenced itself in immoralities of many kinds, laziness, and idleness that has resulted in much ruin to my life. What was emphasized to me was not the role of Christ’s righteousness and His Spirit’s mortifying work, but how I should make commitments and experience God’s favor because of it. Much could be said of that, but I won’t pursue that further for the time being.
To speak in an illustration, if you tell a man he must fall a redwood, your first duty is to show him how to do so, not merely inform him he must fall the tree. Yes, he must. But if you do not show him how, you have done him no service but only added to his griefs.
When a man hath thus for a season been deluded, and hath deceived his own soul. and finds in a long course of life that indeed his sin is not mortified, or if he hath changed one he hath gotten another, he begins at length to think that all contending is in vain, — he shall never be able to prevail; he is making a dam against water that increaseth on him. Hereupon he gives over, as one despairing of any success, and yields up himself to the power of sin and that habit of formality that he hath gotten.
John Owen, The Mortification of Sin in Believers
He shows, at length, why the Roman Catholic way does not set any man free, but only adds sorrow upon sorrow to him. As others have pointed out, Gothard’s teaching is more in line with neo-Roman theology than anything.
And herein is the Roman mortification grievously peccant [sinful; violating a rule]; they drive all sorts of persons to it, without the least consideration whether they have a principle [foundation] for it or no. Yea, they are so far from calling on men to believe, that they may be able to mortify their lusts, that they call men to mortification instead of believing. The truth is, they neither know what it is to believe nor what mortification itself intends. Faith with them is but a general assent to the doctrine taught in their church; and mortification the betaking of a man by a vow to some certain course of life, wherein he denies himself something of the use of the things of this world, not without a considerable compensation. Such men know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Their boasting of their mortification is but their glorying in their shame. Some casuists among ourselves, who, overlooking the necessity of regeneration, do avowedly give this for direction to all sorts of persons that complain of any sin or lust, that they should vow against it, at least for a season, a month or so, seem to have a scantling of light in the mystery of the gospel, much like that of Nicodemus when he came first to Christ. They bid men vow to abstain from their sin for a season. This commonly makes their lust more impetuous. Perhaps with great perplexity they keep their word; perhaps not, which increases their guilt and torment. Is their sin at all mortified hereby? Do they find a conquest over it? Is their condition changed, though they attain a relinquishment of it? Are they not still in the gall of bitterness? Is not this to put men to make brick, if not without straw, yet, which is worse, without strength? What promise hath any unregenerate man to countenance him in this work? what assistance for the performance of it? Can sin be killed without an interest in the death of Christ, or mortified without the Spirit? If such directions should prevail to change men’s lives, as seldom they do, yet they never reach to the change of their hearts or conditions. They may make men self-justiciaries or hypocrites, not Christians. It grieves me ofttimes to see poor souls, that have a zeal for God and a desire of eternal welfare, kept by such directors and directions under a hard, burdensome, outside worship and service of God, with many specious endeavours for mortification, in an utter ignorance of the righteousness of Christ, and unacquaintedness with his Spirit, all their days. Persons and things of this kind I know too many. If ever God shine into their hearts, to give them the knowledge of his glory in the face of his Son Jesus Christ, they will see the folly of their present way.
A very lengthy quote, but one that expresses better than I could the thing that at this moment drives me to weeping. I know too well the pain of Owen when he speaks of the “grief” he experiences in seeing mortification insisted upon for people without a proper understanding of Christ’s righteousness and the Spirit’s power, and even taking those things and misapplying them. Oh the sad condition of such people!
I know of many families who have thrown out their TV after attending a basic/advanced seminar, and eventually put it back in their home because they didn’t do it with any sort of reasoning other than they thought it would be more pleasing to God and they didn’t want the worldly influence in their home. But their hearts were not changed, and in due time they went back to their previous ways and further into grievous sins. How many juvenile delinquents were vaunted testimonies of God’s power, only to fall back into a life of idleness and sin? Honestly, I’d almost like to do a case study on it if I knew how.
Yeah, I committed to courtship. I made a covenant with my eyes. Yet I lusted in my heart. I broke that covenant thousands upon thousands of times. Yes, Christ’s blood was mentioned, and so was His Spirit, but they were more back-burner truths than the front-burner power of commitment. Nowhere was the power of commitment to unregenerate people more clearly illustrated to me than in Character First, which to me is the ultimate call to mortification without giving anyone the power to do it.
Maybe initially the truth was emphasized. I don’t know, I did not attend the seminars when my parents initially did in the ’70s. My first basic was in ‘91, the same year we joined ATI. I hear from early families whom I greatly respect and love that initially it started out in the right direction, but after Russia happened there was a shift in character over everything, really. That’s the teaching I grew up with. And the way we gained favor with God was by having better character. No, it was not to save us, but since we were saved, we should do things that are pleasing to God.
That’s true to an extent, just like telling someone that the redwood must be felled. But you must grant them access to the chainsaw, and tell them to hang on for dear life. The power to fall a redwood is not inherent in our commitment, but in our clinging to the chainsaw.
The chainsaw is Christ’s death (both His righteousness imputed to us and our sin paid for by Him) and the Spirit’s power through the promises purchased by the death of Christ. Clinging to the chainsaw is faith. We must call men and women to believe in and embrace this first and foremost and put the weight of our emphasis on it, yes, especially to believers! The gospel is the power to set people free from bondage. We are utterly reliant on the arbitrary grace of God to have an interest in Christ, and if He grant it, we are thus enabled to meet His conditions of blessings. Yes, grace has conditions, but it is never merited. If I meet the conditions for a blessing of grace, it is because He showed a previous grace to me that allowed me to meet that condition.
I’m not writing to be responded to necessarily, so I feel the freedom to continue. To be justified (which is a grace of God), we must meet a condition: believe. There is no justification without the willing act of faith, and all are justly condemned who do not believe. But from whence comes the act of faith in our hearts? Is it not the previous, unmerited and unconditional grace of election and calling, according to Romans 8:29-30? Is it not God who is graciously at work in us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13)?
I see no difference between meeting a condition for justification as I do for sanctification. Both have conditions, and we are held accountable if we fail or resist (and yes, both can be resisted). But at the bottom of it all is God’s unmerited and unconditional grace of granting us everything we need to assure that we will meet those conditions. This is what it means to be under grace and in God’s favor. He not only looks on us favorably with kindness, but also grants His children, by virtue of His kingly authority, all that is needed to live a godly life (2 Peter 1:3). He will permit even His children to resist Him, I believe, in order to show their complete dependence on Him.
That has to be the answer. I have often wondered to myself over the last three months, “God, why did You, when You had the power to stop me from sinning, permit me to continue?” I am held accountable for my sin and am experiencing the destructive fruits of it (and unfortunately, so are others, which grieves my heart beyond words). I do not blame Him. But what I am learning is that what He has done has been nothing but a blood-bought mercy and gracious gift, as hard as that may sound. He has gone to great lengths to show me how dependent I am on His grace, how my righteousness is as nothing, how His righteousness is everything, how the cross is the best news in the world today and not just on the day I was justified. Somehow, I believe that God is working this all together for good for me. And He is setting me free.
So any conditions I meet that has as its result the blessing and favor of God, I hereby declare is His doing, never my own. It is the grace of God in me that has come by His Spirit through His Word, in which are found His very great and precious promises. Any covenant I now make (such as marriage) and any commitment I now make (such as reading my Bible every day and memorizing Romans) is born out of a conviction that I am completely reliant on God for everything forever and ever, and the only thing that will keep me faithful to my covenants and commitments is the arbitrary, unmerited, and unconditional grace of God.
That’s what I believe was never stressed in Gothard’s teachings. The cross and its double-cure. It pardons us from His wrath, and empowers us to be like Him. The cross granted us the privilege of being Christians, but it did not secure anything. It only made a bunch of possibilities that I, ultimately of my own strength of commitment, had to make the most of. Grace was given to me as I made the right commitments, but there was never an understanding that meeting those conditions was ultimately an act of free and sovereign grace. And to relate to God on any other basis than complete dependence on His grace alone is legalism, period. Legalism does not only apply to justification, but also sanctification. Am I relating to God on the basis of my labor, or His? Am I just as dependent on His free grace today as I was yesterday? Or has my obedience of yesterday somehow earned me sanctification brownie points with God that makes Him look more favorably on me today because of my own work?
I am talking of a flavor more than I am of specific teaching. The grace document only speaks of one side of grace (the conditional aspects) but rules out the possibility of unconditional grace, which is the basis of meeting the conditions of conditional grace. And that’s what was stressed to me throughout my whole experience with the Institute and Gothard’s teaching. Commitment and conditional grace.
I’ll leave it to others to point out other places in his writings where this is seen. But to me, there’s nothing more important than understanding that we are as helpless to sanctify ourselves as we are to justify ourselves, and the solution to both is the same: faith. And that faith is a gracious, unconditional gift of grace from God. That has been my freedom. And that’s why I’m preaching it.
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