Coincidentally, we happen to have a lady from Bethel Redding’s School of Supernatural Ministry who has been able to start a School of the Supernatural down here in Arizona. Each week, she brings somebody in connected to Bethel’s SSM and they spend the week teaching in seven different cities in Arizona. This week brings Phil Drysdale, who now lives in Scotland, but who spent three years at Bethel’s SSM and two years volunteering for their apostolic network Global Legacy.
His primary message “is of the grace of God, of His goodness, our perfection in Him and all that means”, and he has a website filled with articles on grace. Here are some of his articles:
What’s The Role Of The Law In The New Covenant?
Romans 7: Did Paul struggle with a sinful nature?
So You’re Saying It’s Impossible To Sin?
Extreme grace: A license to sin?
God will not convict believers of sin!
Grace Doesn’t Ignore Sin… Grace Destroys Sin!
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On the other side of this issue, I found an hour long video message of Dr. Michael Brown where he brings up scriptural reasons to think quite differently on this topic: Hyper-Grace The Great Deception of the 21st Century
He also just wrote another related article in Charisma News: What’s the Difference Between Holiness and Legalism?
Which was adapted from his 2000 book: Go and Sin No More: A Call to Holiness
From what he says in his video, it appears he is spending a lot of time reading the books and websites of the various “hyper” grace teachers, and sounds like he will be coming out with a book on the subject.
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To me, Dr. Brown’s scriptural analysis is a lot more convincing. But then Phil Drysdale believes the church is need of a new reformation. Here’s how he puts it:
The church is in desperate need for another reformation. For too long we have straddled the fence of the New and Old Covenant. A bit of grace here, a bit of law there. But the truth is that a little leaven ruins the whole bread. We don’t mix grace and law. Grace + Law = Law. The only way to drink grace is undiluted.
Let’s make it a priority to keep the law in its rightful context, as a tool to lead people to the end of themselves.
We must stop teaching the law as if it were a list of rules for us to follow, they are not a list of helpful moral guidelines which we are supposed to focus on trying to keep. It absolutely devastates me that the first thing children learn when they go to church is the ten commandments! Did we not read 2 Corinthians 3:14-15?
“But their minds were hardened. For to this day when they read the Old Covenant that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts”
What are we doing to our children? To ourselves?
The truth is we have been set free from the law, and our lives in grace will look better than those of any person trying to keep the law. Because we are not cleaned from the outside, we are cleaned from the inside. We have become a new creation.
The core problem here seems to be that any talk of “the law” or bringing “balance” to the grace message cannot be tolerated. Doing that apparently ruins grace. Here’s how Phil says it:
There was one thing that Paul said again and again that would alienate you from grace and God. (Gal 5:4, Gal 2:20-22, Rom 5, Eph 2) What was it? It was to bring balance to grace, to bring back in the law to make a grace and law mixture. Grace + Law = Law. There is no mixture, any mixture becomes pure law.
I hope I am not being unfair to Phil here, but it seems his view is that the only sin for a believer is (in the end) not believing the extreme grace message. Here’s Phil again:
We have spent so many years growing up in a morality club that dictates what is right and what is wrong that we have trained ourselves to focus on what is wrong so we can whittle it out.
The truth is that what is wrong is a moot point now for the believer. People are so scared that grace will ignore sin and allow it to grow in believers lives. But the truth is that grace has destroyed sin… there is no sin to grow in a believers life!
The only sin that grows in a believer’s life is that which comes as fruit of believing a lie. Ultimately in believing that they are not righteous in Christ.
So why do Christians sin?
So for many Christians, including myself when I first came into this revelation of the gospel I had a gnawing question in my mind night and day – If I’m righteous by nature and my sin nature is dead then “why am I not perfect? Why do I still sin?”
The answer surprisingly is incredibly simple. We still struggle with our old sinful nature because we believe we should. In fact, the reason there is any sin whatsoever in our lives in any area is because we have a framework of belief that empowers it.
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Now I liked Dr. Brown’s attitude on this. He said when he reads the books on “hyper” grace, that He asks God to help him to see anything he is missing or any thing he needs to learn. I like that. Just because we may believe there is error on either side of this issue, doesn’t mean we are completely right ourselves. The message of grace has long been a very important message to the church. But of course, we need to hear all of what God is saying to us.
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Coincidentally, Rick Joyner just happened to issue a study (A Disciple’s Life is Not His Own) yesterday that says, in part:
The Apostle Paul warned that many would be deceived in the last days because they would only want to have their ears tickled, meaning they could not endure hearing anything difficult or challenging. […]
When we become a disciple of the Lord, we go from being in control of our own lives to coming under the Lord’s authority. We are not dealing with a man but the Lord of the universe. Every human problem is the result of man thinking he could disobey God and run the world without Him. The answer to every human problem is to return to Him and seek to obey Him in all things. […]
The life of a true disciple is the most difficult life we can live in some ways, but also the most liberating, fulfilling, and exciting. The greatest freedom we will ever know is being Christ’s slave. It is not easy, but it is worth it in every way in this life, and then we have the ultimate benefit of eternal life.
Real Clear Truth 
Hi Dean,
I liked your article, very good and well thought out. You have a gift for writing and developing your point.
Thank you so much for taking the time to actually read what I’ve said and make a decision on me based upon that – you’ve no idea how rare that is 🙂
I would like for your readers to have a couple bits of information if you would permit me to share here.
I won’t get into an argument because that’s pretty pointless, you’ve linked to my website (which is very rare of those who don’t like my teaching) and even quoted me very fairly with some context. So my argument is made and anyone wanting to know more can go to my website 🙂
The first thing I would like to say is that this is NOT a “Bethel” teaching, for every person that might believe and teach what I do at Bethel there is at least one (or maybe more) who don’t. So just to say it might be a bit unfair on lumping all “Bethel SSM Graduates” in there. In fact Bethel are very close to both Dr Brown and Rick Joyner, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing them both speak there.
The second is an article that you might find very interesting, and maybe even helpful in addressing specifically the concerns that Dr Brown has with this “Hyper-grace movement”. It was written by a friend and while very concise is pretty comprehensive in dealing with his arguments as they were put forth in Charisma magazine. It’s unlikely to change your mind but that really isn’t my goal, it will however hopefully help you see where these “hyper-grace” guys are coming from.
Love you bro – I hope that despite our not seeing eye-to-eye you can come along to the school in Tucson on Thursday. I would so have loved to have met up for a coffee or something but I’m only in Tucson for about 5hrs for dinner with the pastors and the meeting.
Thanks Phil for dropping by. I do like your attitude and the honesty I noted on your website when you didn’t have an answer for a given scripture. One of the things Dr. Brown mentioned was that as he would read a “hyper” grace book, he would keep asking himself, what will they say about a whole list of scriptures which seem to say something counter to the “hyper” grace message. But he said he would get to the end of the book and the scriptures were never brought up.
Anyway, I’ll change the title of my post to “Hyper Grace and a Bethel SSM Graduate” to be more fair to Bethel, and I’ll certainly look into the link you provided. I’m still trying to get my head around a number of the concepts you bring up, as I just don’t think that way (I much more see things through a kingdom perspective having been influenced greatly on that by George Eldon Ladd).
Pingback: FAITH: Conviction of Sin – John 16 | Real Clear Truth
Part 2 …
7 – Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. (Don’t be deceived!) The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
8 – The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
9 – No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
10 – This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child
Having the mind-set that I am righteous … or perhaps, without any fault … right now, no matter how I live, is deception. The Apostle John says so in 1 John 3 and Paul says so in 1 Corinthians 6:9.
Yet this is what the hyper-grace preachers preach, and this does encourage a sloppy christian life-style where the christian has no conviction of any sinful, lustful, or hateful, or unforgiving (etc) traits. There seems to be no motivation, or conviction, to even be rid of such traits. I’ve seen it first-hand. And then when a brother or sister tries, even in the most loving, gentle way possible, to bring a Scripture to warn such a christian that continuing in sin is a slippery slope that can lead to their spiritual and eternal destruction, the warning is laughed at, or shouted down, as being legalism. Again, I have seen this first-hand.
All who love God should take God’s warnings to heart and aim to live a life “in a manner worthy of the Lord … bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:10) and obey Hebrews 12, which states:
1 – … let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles …
14 – Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. …
25 – See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?
Are these Words of the epistle of Hebrews legalistic and condemning Words? No! Rather they are written to teach us, correct us, and bring us to Life.
Kindly,
Lee
Is Christ Soon To Return? Are you ready?
Part 1 …
The problem that I see / hear with the ‘hyper-grace’ teachers and followers is that they seem to confuse the term “law” with the holy requirements/life-style requirement which are set forth in almost every New Testament epistle. I saw epistle, since such people often state that Christ’s Words in the Gospels were “pre-cross” instructions and therefore still Old Covenant and bondage-producing-legalistic instructions. Such has been said to me by both teachers and followers.
Paul’s epistles do wonderfully start with the message of GRACE and the wonderful work that God thru Christ has accomplished in each newly Born Again believer. However, Paul never stops there at the “grace only” message. He continues in every writing to tell his readers HOW TO LIVE. Why does he do such in every epistle? Because it is important to God. (Scripture will back this statement, at the end of this comment…Heb 12:14)
Paul writes:
There must not be even a HINT of sexual immorality. And no foolish or rude/coarse joking (Eph 5:3,4).
WE must rid OURSELVES of rage, malice, slander, and filthy language (Col 3:8).
And what about the Apostle John’s strong warnings when he writes 1 John 3: … con’t in Part 2
Hi Lee, thanks for dropping by. Grace is a truly wonderful gift from our loving Father that we in no way deserve. He gives us grace even though we are clearly guilty, just so we can be with Him. And yet He is a holy God who commands us to sin no more. Basically, our sin puts us in a prison of death, and God in His mercy extends to us a pardon, to free us from our prison, to free us from death. So clearly, God does not free us to live in sin, just as much as He doesn’t “free” us to live in a prison!
For me, this all comes down to the concept of two kingdoms. Which kingdom do we choose — at any moment — to live in? Do we choose to rule our own lives and live in the kingdom of this world (sin and death), or do we choose to be ruled by our loving King and live in the kingdom of heaven (righteousness and life)?
We have to realize we are making that choice all the time. And every day we need to lay down our lives and choose the way of our Father — the way of love. We choose whether we will walk in life and love or sin and death. His grace opens the doors of our prisons — but we have to choose to walk out, follow Him, and live our lives in His love.