QFD | The God Culture Cannot Tame : Biblical Grace

The God Culture Cannot Tame : Biblical Grace

The culture has a strong instinct to domesticate the sovereign God of creation. It wants God to be manageable, predictable, emotionally safe, and easy to explain. This instinct does not only live outside the church. It lives inside Churches of Christ when theological systems crafted centuries ago are allowed to reshape what Scripture plainly teaches.

This is happening now. In real congregations. With real people.

When baptism is reduced from the moment sins are washed away to merely an outward sign of an inward grace already received, Scripture is not being softened. It is being rewritten.

"Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name."—Acts 22:16 (ESV)

"Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins."—Acts 2:38 (ESV)

"Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you."—1 Peter 3:21 (ESV)

Command: Be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

Example: Every conversion in Acts includes immediate baptism (Acts 8:35-38; 16:30-33; 22:16).

Necessary Inference: If baptism were merely symbolic, Scripture would never connect it directly to forgiveness, salvation, or washing away sins.

When these texts are reinterpreted through a system that says faith alone saves, the issue is not clarity. Scripture is clear. The issue is whether human tradition will be allowed to overrule divine command.

When warnings against falling away are dismissed as not applying to "true believers," grace is not being magnified. It is being redefined into something God never intended.

"For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment."—Hebrews 10:26-27 (ESV)

"For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first."—2 Peter 2:20-21 (ESV)

"You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace."—Galatians 5:4 (ESV)

Command: Hold fast. Do not fall away.

Example: Galatians shows believers who fell from grace. Hebrews warns Christians specifically against apostasy.

Necessary Inference: Warnings against falling away are meaningless if believers cannot actually fall away.

The claim that those truly saved can never be lost does not make God's grace stronger. It makes Scripture's warnings empty. And when Scripture warns with urgency, we do not have permission to explain those warnings away.

This is where the deeper problem shows itself. Grace is being redefined from power into permission.

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?"—Romans 6:1-2 (ESV)

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives."—Titus 2:11-12 (ESV)

Grace does not affirm people as they are. It transforms them into what they are not. It confronts before it comforts. It demands repentance before it grants forgiveness. It calls for obedience because it provides the power to obey.

Command: Grace trains us to renounce sin and live godly lives.

Example: Paul rebukes the idea that grace permits continued sin (Romans 6).

Necessary Inference: Grace that does not transform is not the grace Scripture describes.

When grace is taught as unconditional acceptance without the call to repentance, baptism, and obedience, it ceases to be grace. It becomes theological permission to remain unchanged.

And there is this claim now being taught: that God's grace cannot be resisted. That those chosen will inevitably be saved. That human response is irrelevant because divine election overrides it.

Scripture tells a different story.

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you."—Acts 7:51 (ESV)

"But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him."—Luke 7:30 (ESV)

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"—Matthew 23:37 (ESV)

Command: Respond to the gospel. Believe and be baptized (Mark 16:16).

Example: Scripture repeatedly shows people resisting God's will—Pharisees, lawyers, Jerusalem itself.

Necessary Inference: If grace were irresistible, commands to respond would be meaningless, and examples of resistance would be impossible.

God does not force salvation on anyone. He offers it. He commands response. He provides examples of both acceptance and rejection. And He holds people accountable for how they respond.

The God being reshaped in these moments is not a clearer picture of grace. It is a distortion designed to fit a theological system constructed in the Reformation, not drawn from the pattern of Scripture itself.

Scripture never presents God as manageable. He is holy, beyond comparison, and beyond human control.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."—Isaiah 55:8-9 (ESV)

"Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."—Psalm 115:3 (ESV)

God's love is not human love turned up louder. It is different in kind.

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable."—Isaiah 40:28 (ESV)

And still, this is where things become astonishing. The same God who cannot be contained entered His own creation.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."—John 1:1, 14 (ESV)

"Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant… He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."—Philippians 2:6-8 (ESV)

The incarnation did not make God smaller. It showed how great His love truly is. The infinite stepped into the finite. The holy walked into a broken world. Not to affirm people as they were, but to redeem them at great cost.

"You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."—Matthew 1:21 (ESV)

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."—Romans 5:8 (ESV)

When theological systems are allowed to override clear commands, ignore biblical examples, and bypass necessary inferences from Scripture, the cross loses its weight. The resurrection loses its authority. And the church loses its footing.

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ."—Galatians 1:6-7 (ESV)

Paul did not soften this. He did not make space for theological creativity when it contradicted apostolic teaching.

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed."—Galatians 1:8 (ESV)

The God these systems attempt to reshape is the very God who cannot be controlled, yet willingly went to the cross. Not because He was safe. But because His love is greater than we can fully understand.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."—Hebrews 10:31 (ESV)

This is not a God to remake for theological convenience. This is not a God to soften for cultural relevance. This is a God to fear, trust, obey, and worship.

Anything less is not grace. It is distortion.

And Scripture is clear about how seriously God takes attempts to remake Him—or His gospel—in our own image.

Final Word:

The issue is not whether Calvinism is ancient or respected. The issue is whether it passes the test of Command, Example, and Necessary Inference when held against Scripture.

Where it contradicts plain commands, it must be rejected. Where it ignores biblical examples, it must be rejected. Where it requires inferences that Scripture does not support, it must be rejected.

Not because tradition matters more than truth. But because Scripture matters more than any system constructed by human hands.

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."—2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)

Let God be true, and every human system be tested by His Word.