“Let Grace Be Grace”

by Dr. Michael D. Halsey

In the movie, The Alamo, John Wayne, as Davy Crockett, makes an impassioned speech in which he says, “Republic, I like the sound of the word.”

 “Grace Biblical Seminary.” I like the sound of the words, don’t you? With those words, you and I become part of a historical, national, and worldwide movement. We’ve often heard the statement, “Let God be God.” Please think with me as I propose a modification of that statement: “Let grace be grace.” That’s what this historic, national, and worldwide movement is all about, and that’s what this movement is saying: “Let grace be grace.”

The Need: 

A killer-stalks the land that refuses to let grace be grace. That killer lets us sing it: “Amazing Grace,” “Grace that is Greater Than Our Sin,” and “Grace, Love, and Fellowship.” The killer lets us say it, using the word repetitively.

We sing grace, preach grace, pray grace, while the killer kills it with qualifiers. The killer kills grace mostly through ignorance, but he kills it nonetheless. He kills the free grace gospel with well-intentioned but fallacious additions.

I was on a mundane errand when I saw a stack of brochures on the counter of a store. They looked to be theological, so I picked one up, putting it in my pocket for future reading. When I had time to read through it, it was a grace killer. When the author came to tell the reader how to be saved, he killed grace by saying, “All God asks us to do is to confess and forsake our sins (at this point the author quoted a verse that says nothing about sin or the forsaking thereof). Next came “going to church, praying daily, and studying the Bible.”

However, later on in the brochure came one more addition. The reader was not only to confess sin, forsake sin, go to church, pray, and study the Bible, but he was also to “study the Bible and do what it says.” In the brochure, not one single time, never-ever did the author use the word “believe.” Never once, never ever did he use the word “faith.” A three-page salvation tract that never mentioned the word “believe.”

Most often, the murder weapon of choice that kills grace is a small word, just three letters- “a”–“n”–“d.”  As in “believe and . . .” By this word and what follows it, grace dies many deaths as conditions are added to “believe.” “Believe and feel sorry for sin,” “Believe and walk down the aisle,” “Believe and make Jesus the Lord of your life,” and… and…, and…  With each “and” comes a fatal wound.

Don’t you think there is a need for GBS?

The Commitment of Grace Biblical Seminary to its student: 

We will help you understand the distinction between the Bible’s call to salvation and its call to follow Jesus and why each is important.

We will help you to understand how you can know that your sins are forgiven, and you have eternal life and why that’s important.

We will help you understand the difference between entering the kingdom and inheriting the kingdom and why that’s important.

The vision we put before you is this:

“To Trust Christ, To Live Christ, To Communicate Christ”

The final infinitive in that trilogy carries GBS one step farther. “To communicate Christ” is a vital part of our mission statement because we believe that those who come to GBS don’t come for their own sake alone, but to become communicators of the free grace gospel of Jesus Christ in Sunday school classes, on the mission field, in youth work, and in their careers.

To be a believer who acquires knowledge for knowledge sake is to be a walking contradiction, a Dead Sea believer into whom truth pours, but from whom nothing flows. Therefore, at GBS we’re committed to training accurate communicators of the truth. We want to help you avoid sloganeering, allegorizing, spiritualizing, and trivializing the Word of God and enable you to learn to tell the old, old story in ways that leave your hearers with their hearts burning within them like Jesus did on the highway to Emmaus. (Let’s be honest; aren’t we tired of hearing and delivering Sunday school lessons, sermons, and talks that hardly rise above what we heard in Sunday school years ago?)

We want to be the bridge that will make you successful in God’s eyes. How serious is this?  Maybe it’ll help us to understand that there are only two instances where the New Testament pronounces a curse on Christians for failure to do something. One of those is to distort the free grace gospel of Jesus Christ. In short, a failure to let grace be grace. This is serious, isn’t it?  I’d encourage you to join with us in this historic, national, and worldwide movement to let grace be grace.