Part One

Just as a matter of interest and information, I noticed after writing part one that a lot had been written against Tullian Tchividjian’s new and false teaching on sanctification and by extension, also salvation.  Not in necessarily any order, here are some that have written good stuff exposing his false teaching and it should be considered, before anyone ever gets to all the problems that Andy Stanley has, whom I mentioned in part one.  You can find some here (part one, part two), here (really important to read this one), here, and here (and really those are just a start).

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In our time on earth, we are not brains in a vat.  God created sentient beings with awareness of their surroundings.   Immediately He gave Adam things to do.  From the beginning, God commanded Adam.  Do this.  Don’t do this.  Human beings live, which means they do things.  They can do wrong things and they can do right things.  They do not get to do wrong things and then just apply what is called grace and suddenly it’s a right thing, where they get credit for the right thing even though they didn’t even do it. That is just playing games.  However, it’s also not far off of how Tullian Tchividjian characterizes the grace of God.

I googled the word “performancism,” since I had not heard it until I considered writing on this subject, and Tchividjian came up in the headline of the second article.  His book is titled, Jesus + Nothing = Everything, which it seems the crucial word of the three is “nothing.”  When the Father said,  “This is my beloved. Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), He was well-pleased with His Son’s performance, not nothing.  His Son performed and He was pleased.  Jesus is our model.  We’re not thinking about nothing, when it comes to pleasing God.

Grace is not about not performing.  Jesus said in His longest recorded sermon in scripture (Matthew 7:21), “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”  Who will enter into the kingdom of heaven?  Read it.  “He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”  When you read about the life Jesus lived on earth in the gospel of John, He was doing everything the Father wanted Him to do.

I get how people don’t want to feel guilty about not doing the right thing.  They don’t want expectations or restrictions, even though the Holy Spirit is called “The Restrainer” in the New Testament (2 Thess 2:6) and fruit of the Spirit is “temperance,” self-control. This is also the way of millennials especially today, as a generalized trait.  When one brings up an expectation to a millennial, this is a “relationship” ruiner.  You’ve offered a “rule.”  Relationship can’t have rules except for one rule, toleration.  They want accept, accept, accept.  “I’m going to do this.”  I accept.   “I did this.”  I accept.  They have lived for years with only a “like” button, no dislike or disapproval.

The movement of Tchividjian and those who have accepted it are not just some minor, non-essential modification or tweaking of Christianity, where it retains its identity.  His teaching corrupts Christianity.  It is something different than biblical Christianity even compared to many aspects of evangelicalism, which don’t do that.

When someone might go about explaining the gospel to someone, he should bring the Old Testament into his explanation.  That’s what Jesus and the Apostles did.  The gospel is not detached from the Old Testament.  The new covenant is corollary to all the other covenants.  Blessing comes from obedience.  We fail at obedience and we receive the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ.  That justification changes how we live.  The fleshy heart that replaces the heart of stone gives us the ability to do what the Lord wants and we receive blessing.

In order to be saved, we confess Jesus to be Lord.  We give up our life for His life.  He now owns us.  We’re His slave.  This means we still have expectations on us, but we’ve been changed to do that out of love.  The goodness of God leads us to that repentance.  Paul counted His former life as loss that He might win Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ enables the fulfillment of the obligations and expectations.  His yoke is easy.  The commandments are no longer burdensome.  Even if we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father.  The grace enables to perform.  Performance is the means by which you then know that you are saved.  You don’t just say that you know Him, but you also do what the Lord says.

There is more to the attraction of scandalous grace than just dumping obligation, expectation, and disapproval.  I recognize a mysticism and subjectivity to it.  Part of the freedom is the inward leading, what I call the voice in the head.  It is untethered to the objective standards of scripture.  It is so important for its supporters to feel without judgment that feelings take on a prominent, if not preeminent role.  No one can judge anyone if there isn’t anything solid by which to judge.  Feelings are elevated, and this is obvious in the “worship.”

Worship in scripture is regulated as much as anything, but there is this “freedom” to the expression of the worship.  Whatever the outcome, it’s the Holy Spirit, and this kind of spontaneity and creativity is supposedly the meanderings of the Holy Spirit through individuals, making it more authentic.  This has never been true worship in the history of the church, and it is more fitting with the ecstasy of Babylonian mysticism in Corinth and the delirium of the Samaritans on Mt. Gerrizim.

There is so much freedom, so much liberation, that its not about God.  Biblical grace is changing grace.  Liberation is freedom from sin, which frees from the consequences, but Jesus taught that it is freedom too from the practice of sin (John 8:31-34).  Christians don’t want to sin anymore.  Christians don’t want to do what they want.  They want to do what Jesus wants.  That isn’t legalism.  That is what grace looks like.

Left-wing legalism reduces what God wants to what is acceptable and performable, like the Pharisees.  They worked in shortening everything to the things they could do.  They left out the weighty things (barus), which means more burdensome or harder.  Those aren’t hard to do if it is grace.  Grace eases everything.  It’s why believers will conform to the image of Christ.  God works in believers to do that.  That is liberation.

Someone might say, unlike the Pharisees, Tchividjian isn’t about performance.  He’s about performance, just a different one, one that looks more like me and my flesh, yet calling it Jesus.  Those most embedded in the Tchividjian movement of hypergrace are as showy as I’ve ever seen.  You’ll see more selfies than anywhere.  Image is big — that you can see — from the see-through acrylite or lucite pulpit to the right fit in the blue jeans.  It is an expression that clashes with the beauty of the Lord and His nature.  It is obvious that it needs liberation from the world, because if there is a pathological need, it is for them to get the culture to love, appreciate, and approve of them.  They are chained to that.  They just attach a designer “grace” sticker to it with the authentic background of crumbling urban infrastructure.