Thursday, July 02, 2026

The True Doctrine of Grace

Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught from the book of Romans a lot. Pay attention to his exposition of Romans 6:

. . . If it is true that where sin abounded grace has much more abounded, well then, 'shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound yet further?'
First of all let me make a comment, to me a very important and vital comment. The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. That is a very good test of gospel preaching. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel. Let me show you what I mean.
If a man preaches justification by works, no one would ever raise this question. If a man's preaching is, 'If you want to be Christians, and if you want to go to heaven, you must stop committing sins, you must take up good works, and if you do so regularly and constantly, and do not fail to keep on at it, you will make yourselves Christians, you will reconcile yourselves to God, and you will go to heaven.' Obviously a man who preaches in that strain would never be liable to this misunderstanding. Nobody would say to such a man, 'Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?', because the man's whole emphasis is just this, that if you go on sinning you are certain to be damned, and only if you stop sinning can you save yourselves. So that misunderstanding could never arise. . . .
. . . Nobody has ever brought this charge against the Church of Rome, but it was brought frequently against Martin Luther; indeed that was precisely what the Church of Rome said about the preaching of Martin Luther. They said, 'This man who was a priest has changed the doctrine in order to justify his own marriage and his own lust', and so on. 'This man', they said, 'is an antinomian; and that is heresy.' That is the very charge they brought against him. It was also brought against George Whitfield two hundred years ago. It is the charge that formal dead Christianity--if there is such a thing--has always brought against this startling, staggering message, that God 'justifies the ungodly'. . . .
That is my comment; and it is a very important comment for preachers. I would say to all preachers: if your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you has better make sure that you really are preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon obviously agreed because he said, "No doctrine is so calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of God. Those who have called it ‘a licentious doctrine’ did not know anything about it."

What Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Charles Spurgeon are talking about is nothing new. The religious Jews of Paul's day accused him of the very same: "But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just" (Romans 3:5-8).

Paul anticipated their objections when he said, "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20). What was his response to their objections? "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized pinto Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:1-4).

But he does not stop there; he continues further. "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness" (Romans 6:14-18).

Paul was very clear in his letter to the Galatians about our freedom. In fact, you can be certain that he preached the exact same message of grace and freedom to the Corinthians. How can we know? Because they clearly misunderstood it and misinterpreted it because they had the motto "All things are lawful for me." Twice in Paul's letter to them he brought this motto up to re-balance them from liscentiousness to liberty instructed by love (1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23).

Those who carry this objection are quick to water down grace and preach a lesser version of it, and to demonize those who preach biblical grace by derogatorily referring to their message as "hyper-grace." Yet, their profound ignorance of grace is exposed by the fact that Paul referred to Yahweh's grace as "hyper-superabounding." So, yes, biblical grace is hyper-superabounding grace. It is extreme grace. The evidence that you are teaching biblical grace is that there will be some who misunderstand it and misinterpret it in the exact same way that the Corinthians had. Anything less is cheap watered down grace.

Preach the scandalous grace of God and some will misinterpret your message as an endorsement of sin. It is inevitable. Either in grace abusers who interpret it to mean they can sin like the devil, or in grace killers who interpret it as an endorsement of continuous sin. 

It will always bring out the grace abusers and the grace killers. Grace abusers will take what I write and go crazy with it, thinking they can continue in their loose and carefree lifestyle. Grace killers will take what I write and accuse me of caring little about the holiness of Yahweh God and giving people the freedom to sin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the term "cheap grace," but what did he mean by it? "Cheap grace" justifies sin rather than the sinner. True grace justifies the sinner and not the sin. Today, many ignorant and ill-informed believers misrepresent true, biblical grace as "cheap grace," "greasy grace," or even "hyper-grace," demonstrating their lack of understanding and familiarity with grace. In Romans 5:20, Paul uses the Greek compound word huperperisseuó. Huper is where we get the word hyper. Perisseuó means to overabound, superabound or abound in excess. In other words, Paul says that Yahweh's grace hyper-superabounds. If you are accused of preaching "hyper-grace," embrace it! That is what the apostle Paul preached.