Free Grace Theology -- The Frustrated Confusion Continues...

(Note: Due to my wife's grandmother's mishap, both the quality and the length of this post was not what I had intended, although I did want to continue on with my series. What follows is not an actual critique, but rather the frustration brought out by reading the extreme views of Robert N. Wilkin.)


Those from the Free Grace perspective suggest that sin can dominate a believer--with no time limit attached.
--Bob Wilkin, A Free Gracer

7 Little children, let no one deceive you! The one who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous. 8 The one who commits sin is of the Devil, for the Devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the Devil’s works. 9 Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how God’s children—and the Devil’s children—are made evident.
--1 John 3:7-10, The Infallible, Inerrant written word of God, NOT a Free Gracer


Although no reader here will know of it, this that you are reading is actually the fourth try of this article – and might be the fifth by morning posting. Writing about the confusions and dualities I see within Free Grace theology has not been an easy thing.

For instance, look at the Bob Wilkin quote above. He would affirm a new nature, but in saying that a believer can be dominated by sin without limit is to deny the very “new nature” he claims to believe in. It is making a severe docetic distinction between spirit and flesh. Why do I say that? Because Free Grace theology creates a very real dichotomy between the new nature and the life of a believer. A person may be born again, born from above, born of God, and yet that new life just may or may not have any impact on their life – for an unlimited amount of time! How can any Free Gracer be blind to that most dangerous and heretical statement made by Bob Wilkin?

Consider an example of what that is conveying:

Imagine a person living in ancient times. Not only do they consider Caesar to be a divine Lord, but are also a follower of, say, Venus, or DIONYSUS, because it isn’t the ritual sex they enjoy, just the fellowship (you know, kind of like those guys who reads Playboy for the articles). According to Bob Wilkin, Free Grace theology would teach that sin may dominate the life of the believer for an unlimited period of time, that the above person could claim conversion to Christ and yet continue to live in that wickedness for … well… for an unlimited period of time, and we are to consider them to be true believers even if that unlimited period of time is life long!

Will there be backtracking now? Yet I ask, how can such a conclusion be denied? Will it be: “The new nature is perfect, and none of those sins he would commit is an expression of that new nature.” That is the very epitome of a docetic tenant which taught a dichotomy between the spirit and the flesh. Saying that the new nature can never be dominated by sin but that the believer can is to separate a person from their nature. That would be no different from saying that a person, dead in sin, will not, by necessity, reflect that dead in sin nature. If it is true for the one, it is true for the other.

Consider the above imaginary example. It has basis in real life:

8 For the Lord’s message rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith[4] in God has gone out, so we don’t need to say anything. 9 For they themselves report about us what kind of reception we had from you: how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
1 Thess. 1:8-10

According to Free Grace theology, the bottom line, in terms of the believer being dominated by sin, is that you can be converted without really having conversion. And that is tragic. Praise God that the believers described in this 1 Thess. passage did not know anything of such nonsense.