For the grace of God has appeared ...instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age... (Titus 2:11,12)
(Tim) The prattle about grace that permeates the sermons, fellowship-hall conversations, and books within the mainstream reformed church today tastes like cotton candy and leaves your hands sticky. In our non-Christian hedonistic day when even the poor are fat, it should be clear that the need of the hour is not more talk of grace. In our pomo, effeminate day, it should be clear our need is not more talk of being graceful.
Nevertheless, within mainstream reformed churches, it's claimed that every last problem is a nail needing the hammer of grace.
Which leaves me scratching my head when I read the Bible. Are these people reading it? The Bible, I mean? Can we seriously think the need of our day is more grace talk, but still not a word about sin, holiness, repentance, and mortification?
And certainly not one word about false conversions. For some time I've been thinking that anyone who holds firmly to what is commonly called "eternal security" must, at the same time, hold firmly to the danger of...
self-delusion and wolves in the church's midst. There ought never to be a proclamation of "eternal security" without a proclamation of the danger of false conversion, also.
The preaching of grace and eternal security destroys souls without preaching and teaching that places an equal emphasis on the prevalence in the church of false professors of faith in Jesus Christ and the hopeless future that awaits them.
When a man hath confirmed his imagination to such an apprehension of grace and mercy as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Neither is there a greater evidence of a false and rotten heart in the world than to drive such a trade. To use the blood of Christ, which is given to cleanse us, 1John 1:7, Titus 2:14; the exaltation of Christ, which is to give us repentance, Acts 5:31; the doctrine of grace, which teaches us to deny all ungodliness, Titus 2:11,12, to countenance sin, is a rebellion that in the issue will break the bones.
At this door have gone out from us most of the professors that have apostatized in the days wherein we live. For a while they were most of them under convictions; these kept them unto duties, and brought them to profession; so they "escaped the pollutions that are in the world, through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2Peter 2:20: but having got an acquaintance with the doctrine of the gospel, and being weary of duty, for which they had no principle, they began to countenance themselves in manifold neglects from the doctrine of grace. Now, when once this evil had laid hold of them, they speedily tumbled into perdition. -John Owen (emphasis in the original)
