"The Church cannot be the salt of the Earth if it keeps sugarcoating the Gospel."
How can you "sugarcoat" the best news ever?!?!?
To "sugarcoat" means "to describe something in a way that makes it seem more pleasant or acceptable than it really is." Is the Gospel less pleasant or less acceptable?!? Maybe what this ignorant individual meant was "diluting" or "watering down"?
The very definition of 'Good News' excludes any bad news. The Hyper-grace Gospel is not diluting or watering down the Gospel. But do you know who is? Mixed-grace preachers! Why? Because they are adding human effort to the Gospel. This effort comes in a variety of shades, all of which are useless, worthless, and godless.
If you take a cup of pure medicine and add 90% sugar water, you have not made the medicine better; you have just made it less effective. When preachers take the pure, undiluted, unadulterated Gospel and add human effort to it, they make it less effective. Rather than trusting in the work of Christ Jesus alone, they are trusting in their own efforts to aid His work.
Let us get something straight: You cannot add anything to Christ Jesus' finished work, and you dare not attempt to finish your own as your righteous deeds are like a menstrual rag. Jesus said "It is finished" because IT. IS. FINISHED! There is nothing left to do. There will be no encore, no second act! We need to accept it, trust it, and rest in it. Period!
Once you understand the New Covenant, the Gospel, and grace correctly, it changes everything!
The motivation for holiness must come from a place of "perfected" security rather than a fear of punishment or a sense of law. The Law is for the unrighteous (1 Tim. 1:9); not for believers! For the believer, the Law is a ministry of condemnation and death (2 Cor. 3:7-18), which gives sin its power (1 Cor. 15:56) and stirs up sin (Rom. 7:7-25). Paul made it clear that it is "God's goodness that leads you to repentance" (Rom. 2:4), a change of mind about yourself and about God that leads to turning away from sin.
If you know that you are righteous, as the New Testament repeatedly says about the believer, because you are a new creation, you will naturally act righteous. If you are repeatedly told that you are an animal, you are going to behave like an animal. If you are repeatedly told that you are a dirty, rotten, filthy sinner with a wicked heart who can do nothing but sin, then all you will ever do is sin. Behaviour follows identity!
The "sugarcoating" accusation usually comes from those who worry about how the human heart handles absolute freedom. Guess what? Paul already dealt with this in Romans 5:20-6:2, 14-16. The transformed individual wants what God wants; they no longer want to sin. If and when they do, there is "no longer any condemnation" because all their sins have been totally and completely forgiven. There is no reason to beat yourself up about it. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, remind yourself of who you are in Christ Jesus, and continue on.
The Hyper-grace Gospel is the undiluted Gospel!