Last week I responded to a popular Facebook post titled, “Does the Thief on the Cross Fit into Your Theology?” That post, in part, seems to promote a form of unconditional, lawless grace. That makes it just another twist on the false-grace gospel that essentially amounts to a license to sin. The true gospel is a temporary offer to (1) believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, (2) turn from sin, (3) be graciously forgiven, (4) be indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then (5) have the opportunity to follow the narrow path that leads to life that Jesus outlined in His Sermon on the Mount and all the apostles reiterated in their letters.

In this teaching, I thought it might be good to consider a few of Jesus’ encounters with other people who, just like the thief on the cross, wanted to enter Paradise. Each encounter clearly reveals Jesus’ conditional grace in salvation.It is good, of course, to make sure the actual story of the thief on the cross fits into our theology. But should the thief on the cross, an impaled, dying man, with a few hours left to live, serve as the sole example of how God’s grace works in salvation? Certainly not.

In past years, and recently, I’ve seen a Facebook post that is being repeatedly shared, titled, “How Does the Thief on the Cross Fit into Your Theology?” The text communicates several messages. One of them seems to be that, because a man who had a few hours to live was never baptized, volunteered to help others, took the Lord’s Supper, went on a mission trip and so on, but was promised Paradise by Jesus, that proves God doesn’t expect anything from those of us who have decades of life remaining to serve Him. It’s a little different twist on the very popular “false-grace message.” How false-grace preachers love to isolate and twist passages of Scripture!

Because the incident of Jesus forgiving the repentant thief on the cross isn’t the only story in the Bible, I’d like to ask a very legitimate question: How Does Noah’s flood fit into your theology?

When people are out to get you, they will resort to any lie they can concoct to make you look bad to others. It can be amusing if you don’t allow it to be depressing.

I did my best to resist being depressed when I read some slander about myself a couple of years ago, written on a chat forum by a ministry leader whom I at one time thought was a friend. After telling the 100 members of his chat forum that I am a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he went on to say: “David…does not have much respect for the local church. Actually, he has no respect for the local church.” He then added, “David is arrogant, proud and boastful.” No one within his chat group (of which he was the administrator) challenged him. They trust him.

I confronted him via email. I thought he would be embarrassed to know I had discovered how two-faced he had been to me. Sadly, however, I was wrong. He never replied.

Imagine, for just a moment, a very evil man—a psychopath who ambushes unsuspecting people and murders them. He averages about one murder per week. Then he dies. Does God welcome him into heaven?

No one would answer “yes” to that question. Everyone believes that there are some sort of standards for gaining entrance in heaven, and someone who regularly commits murder doesn’t meet the standard. With them, the New Testament agrees: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15, emphasis added).

Now, let us imagine that, just before the man dies, he believes in Jesus and asks God to forgive him. All Christians would say that, because salvation is by grace through faith, God would welcome that man into heaven—as a sinner saved by grace. Jesus died for his sins, making such amazing grace possible.

I recently watched a YouTube “Bible teacher” (whose ministry is named “The Grace Message”) claim that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was “the Law of Moses on steroids.” He explained that Jesus’ goal in His famous sermon was not to persuade His audience to obey any of the commandments He enumerated, but rather to persuade them that they were hopeless sinners who could not possibly live up to God’s standards of holiness. The Mosaic Law, allegedly designed by God for that same purpose, had failed. So Jesus allegedly raised the standards even higher in His Sermon on the Mount. It was “the Mosaic Law on steroids.” Hopefully His audience would realize that the standards He was enumerating were absolutely impossible to attain. And that would then help them see their need to be “saved by grace,” which in that YouTube Bible teacher’s mind eliminated any requirement to actually obey the commandments Jesus enumerated in His Sermon on the Mount.

“Heretical” is not too strong of a word to describe that kind of teaching. Beyond the fact that there is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount, or anywhere else in the New Testament, that affirms such a bizarre idea, and beyond the fact that it makes Jesus a deceiver who misled His most devoted followers, the New Testament epistles flatly contradict it. For example, recall just one of the commandments Jesus gave during His Sermon on the Mount:

Who doesn’t desire good relationships with everyone? We all wish for that. The reality is, however, that relationships sometimes sour. When they do, nobody enjoys it. Blame is always assigned to the other person, and the fighting often grows more intense until we retreat into our respective corners of the boxing ring, waiting for an apology. Often, neither side budges, resulting in a permanent rift. And we live with a permanently broken relationship.

There are plenty of examples of broken relationships in the Bible. Foremost is the broken relationship between God and rebel sinners. God “waits for an apology” that often never comes. His patient waiting, of course, is an expression of Him loving His enemies. And while He waits, He even lovingly tries to motivate them to repent of their rebellion through both positive and negative incentives. Tragically, most remain rebels. When they die, God’s mercy ends and His judgment begins.

I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:2-3).

Paul viewed his service to the Corinthian believers as a betrothal. That is, he saw himself as the instrument whom God used to betroth the Corinthian believers to “one husband…Christ.” Christ, however, was not a husband to whom the Corinthian believers were actually married. Rather, he was a husband to whom they were betrothed. That’s an important distinction.

Paul’s stated goal was to ultimately present the Corinthian believers to Christ “as a pure virgin.” That was his hope. It was a hope for the future, not an established reality, and that fact becomes even clearer in the second sentence of the passage we are considering.

Perhaps you are like me…weary of pastors and teachers explaining what “is really meant” by various Bible passages. Why is it so difficult to just be honest? Why can’t Scripture actually mean what it says, particularly when it is obvious that we are not reading a parable or allegory that doesn’t have some deeper meaning? Here’s a plain passage of Scripture that I have often heard interpreted dishonestly:

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13).

As always, Paul chose words and ordered them in a sentence to communicate truth. And he meant what he said. The problem is, what he said doesn’t agree with the theology of so many pastors and teachers, so they twist Paul’s words to fit their underlying false premise. When they read Philippians 2:12-13, they inwardly say to themselves, “That can’t mean what it says because it doesn’t fit with what I believe. So I must find a way to make it fit my theology.” And their attempts to make Paul fit their theology expose them as dishonest.

I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate (Rom. 7:14-15).

Romans 7:14-15 is often used as scriptural proof that genuine Christians act no different than non-Christians. The only difference is that Christians hate their sin, whereas unbelievers love their sin. If Paul, arguably the greatest Christian who ever lived, was “sold into bondage to sin” and “practiced” what he hated, who are we to claim that genuine Christians demonstrate their faith by holy and obedient lifestyles?

The trouble with that interpretation of Romans 7:14-15—as with all Scriptural misinterpretation—is that it ignores context. It begs the question, “Why then did Paul repeatedly affirm—just seconds earlier in his writing —that all believers have “died to sin” (6:2), are no longer “slaves of sin” (6:6, 17, 20), are “freed from sin” (6:7, 18, 22), are “slaves of righteousness” (6:18), and are “enslaved to God” (6:22)?

For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment (KJV: “filthy rags”);
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on Your name,
Who arouses himself to take hold of You;
For You have hidden Your face from us
And have delivered us into the power of our iniquities (Is. 64:6-7, NASB).

I always feel sorry for professing Christians who identify with Isaiah’s words above, confessing that all their “righteousness is like filthy rags.” Their confession reveals that, either they have not yet been born again, or they have grossly backslid.