“Free Grace” and Matt. 7:21-23 (Part 1) By Matt Waymeyer

Matt is the Senior Pastor of Community Bible Church in Vista, California.

In case you haven’t heard of it, “Free Grace” is the name given to a theological system founded by Zane Hodges and currently promoted by Bob Wilkin and The Grace Evangelical Society. According to “Free-Grace” theology (hereafter FG), genuine conversion does not necessarily result in a spiritually transformed life. In other words, FG advocates affirm that an individual can believe in Christ and yet show forth absolutely no fruit whatsoever in terms of obedience to God or love for Christ. Put another way, they believe in a regeneration which may or may not result in progressive sanctification. Most times, they say, it does not.
FG teachers would go so far as to say that if an individual were to believe in Christ for a brief moment—even as brief as 10 seconds—and then recant of that belief and live out the rest of his life as a Christ-rejecting atheist who never obeys God, that individual is a true child of God and will some day be in heaven. In other words, rather than recognizing that such an individual did not truly believe in Christ to begin with (1 John 2:19), Free-Gracers would affirm that person’s faith and conversion as genuine, for regeneration is no guarantee that one will persevere in the faith.
Among the many passages of Scripture which contradict FG on this point is Matthew 7:21-23. In this passage, Jesus says:
(21) “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. (22) Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ (23) And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”
The obvious problem that this presents for the FG position is Jesus’ assertion that only those who “do the will of my Father” will enter the kingdom. This runs contrary to the FG gospel which says that most of those who end up in heaven will not have lived a life of obedience to God during their lives on earth.
One of the primary ways that FG teachers try to solve this dilemma is by using John 6:40 to interpret “the will of My Father” in Matthew 7:21 (e.g., see Joseph Dillow, The Reign of the Servant Kings, 199; Bob Wilkin, Confident in Christ, 216). According to this approach, doing the will of the Father in John 6:40 (and therefore in Matthew 7:21) refers to believing in Christ. Therefore, Matthew 7:21 simply says that only those who do the Father’s will (which is to believe in Christ) will enter the kingdom of heaven. And with that, the tension between Matthew 7:21-23 and FG theology suddenly vanishes. Or does it?
To get right to the point, I believe that this approach to Matthew 7:21-23 suffers from at least three significant difficulties: (1) a neglect of the original context; (2) a misguided hermeneutical approach; and (3) a complete misunderstanding of John 6:40. (Today we will consider the first of these three. We will look at the other two in tomorrow’s post.)
A Neglect of the Original Context
The first problem is that this explanation of Matthew 7:21-23 ignores key details in the text itself. The most obvious one is the clear contrast that Jesus establishes between those “who [do] the will of the Father” in verse 21 and those “who practice lawlessness” in verse 23 (both present participles in the Greek). Those who do the will of the Father (i.e., live lives of obedience) will enter the kingdom (v. 21), but those who practice lawlessness (i.e., live lives of disobedience) will not enter the kingdom (v. 23). “Doing the will of the Father” most naturally refers to obeying God, and the way it is set in contrast to living a life of disobedience only confirms this interpretation.
In addition, there is an irony in Jesus’ description in which those who call Jesus “Lord” do not obey Him as Lord. In other words, they profess to be followers of Christ who live in submission to God’s authority, and yet they do not live in obedience to the will of the Father. Their lives of disobedience betray the hypocrisy of their confession. As it is often said, they profess, but they do not possess.
FG theologians respond to this interpretation with two objections. First, they insist that it amounts to a person trusting in his own obedience as the basis for his salvation. In response to this objection, Jesus is not saying that obedience to the Father is the basis of the believer’s salvation, but rather the inevitable result of it. Only those who obey the will of the Father will enter the kingdom because everyone who truly believes in Christ will demonstrate their faith in the way that they live. Genuine conversion will not fail to result in works of obedience.
This truth is taught throughout the New Testament, but one example will suffice. 1 John 2:3 says: “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” We don’t come to know Christ by obeying His commandments—rather, the evidence that we have already come to know Christ (through faith) is that we obey His commandments. In this way, obedience to God is not a prerequisite for conversion—it is an inevitable result of conversion. FG people seem to have a difficult time understanding the difference between the two (and therefore often reject the latter because they mistake it for the former).
The second objection involves the passage itself. FG teachers point out that the very individuals who are rejected by Christ in verse 23 are described in verse 22 as those who trust in their obedience as the basis for their salvation. (Verse 22: “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’”) Therefore, the objection goes, whatever Jesus means by “the will of the Father” in verse 21, it couldn’t refer to a life of obedience to God.
In response to this objection, the works that Jesus describes in Matthew 7:22 are not acts of obedience to the will of the Father. Nowhere does God command the common man to prophesy, cast out demons, and perform miracles. The individuals rejected by Christ claimed to be engaged in these activities in the name of Jesus—and they may have been—and yet, at the same time, they had not lived lives of obedience to the Father. In fact, just the opposite—they had lived lives of lawlessness. In contrast, only those who do the will of the Father will enter the kingdom.
(To Be Concluded Tomorrow)