Enough for Me

"Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations." - Romans 14:1

    I need to say something up front. I understand that this article is going to generate a lot of heat for me. I know that. I've known it for a while now. This is something I've been thinking about for years, wrestling with it, praying about it, and if I'm being honest, avoiding it. Because I knew the moment I put these words down and hit publish, a certain group of people in the sovereign grace world would come for me. And truth be told, some of them have already been coming for me for a long time. So be it. But I've finally worked up the nerve to say what I believe, clearly and without apology, and let the Lord sort out the rest.

   I used to be the guy who drew a hard line on Arminians. If you were a freewiller, you were an unbeliever. Period. End of discussion. It didn't matter how sweetly you spoke of Christ, it didn't matter if you wept over your sin, it didn't matter if you gave every evidence of love for the Lord and His people. If your theology was wrong on the sovereignty of God in salvation, I had you pegged. You were lost. And I was sure of it.

   And I wasn't quiet about it either. I was one of those guys on the forums and in the chat rooms who could dismantle an Arminian's position in about five minutes flat. I knew the arguments cold. I could quote the Scriptures, lay out the logical implications, and drive the point home until there was nothing left to say. And when my opponent had no answer, I felt good about it. I thought I was defending the Gospel. I thought I was contending for the faith. But what I was really doing, at least in part, was feeding the pride monster. I was so right, that I was wrong. And I didn't even see it.

   Those of you who have been around Pristine Grace long enough know this about me. I've written about it before. In "Cynical Nitpickery" I confessed the ugliness of what that cynicism did to me and to others. In "Has Jesus Been Lost in Your TULIP?" I asked the question that was haunting me, whether some of us had become so consumed with being doctrinally correct that we'd lost sight of the Person our doctrine is supposed to point to. And in "What I Now Think about Being Labeled as a Compromiser" I laid out the cost of walking away from that combative posture, the friends I lost, the slander, the accusations. I've been called a compromiser more times than I can count. I've been called an arch-heretic of the first order. I've been called an unbeliever by people who claim to believe in sovereign grace.

   And the show must go on.

   Because here I am again, about to say something that will make all of that look like a warm-up. I'm not just saying we should be nicer to Arminians. I'm not just saying we should tone it down and be more patient. I'm saying something much bigger than that, and I need you to hear me out before you react.

   I no longer believe that all Arminians are unbelievers. And I'll go further. I now embrace anyone who comes to me confessing Christ and resting in Him alone for salvation, and I call them brother. Regardless of what theological label they wear.

   I know what some of you are thinking. I can already hear it. "Brandan has gone off the deep end. He's compromised the Gospel. He's speaking peace to heretics." And I understand why you'd think that, because I would have said the same thing ten years ago. But I'm asking you to walk with me through this. Read the whole thing. Because this isn't a departure from sovereign grace theology. This is sovereign grace theology taken to its logical conclusion. And if that bothers you, it should. It bothered me too.

The Logic That Got Me Here

   So let me lay out the argument. Because it's not a stupid argument. It has a certain logical neatness to it, and I believed it for years, and I know many of you still believe it. I want to be honest about why it's compelling before I explain why I've moved away from it.

   The argument goes like this. Salvation is conditioned solely on the sacrifice and imputed righteousness of Christ. That's the Gospel. Christ did it all. His blood, His obedience, His righteousness imputed to His people. Not your faith, not your decision, not your willingness. Christ alone. And any system of theology that conditions salvation on something other than Christ's finished work is a false gospel. Arminianism conditions salvation on the human will. The freewiller says, "God did His part, now you must do yours." Or, "God has made salvation possible, but you have to accept it." And if that's what they believe, then they've denied the sufficiency of Christ's work. They've added a human condition to what God accomplished on the cross. And if they've denied the Gospel, they're unbelievers. Simple.

   And the Scriptures seem to back it up. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ" (Galatians 1:6-7). And again, "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Galatians 5:4). If you're conditioning salvation on your own work, on your own will, on your own decision, you have fallen from grace. You are preaching another gospel. Paul was clear about this.

   And I preached that for years. I believed it with all my heart. I was not playing games. I genuinely thought that anyone who held to a freewill position was denying the very heart of what Christ accomplished, and therefore could not possibly be a regenerate child of God. It wasn't personal. It was theological. Or so I told myself.

   But here's where I need to be honest. The logic was clean. Too clean. And clean logic has a way of making you feel righteous when what you really are is cold. I could win the argument every single time, but I wasn't pointing anyone to Christ. I was winning arguments. And there's a massive difference between those two things. The Pharisees won every argument too. They had the Scriptures memorized. They had the law down cold. And they couldn't see the Messiah standing right in front of them.

   And that thought stayed with me for a long time before I was ready to do anything about it.

The Crack in the Wall

   I wrote an article years ago called "Your Knowledge Won't Save You." And when I wrote it, I was writing it about other people. I was writing about the guys on Facebook who could articulate the five points of Calvinism with pinpoint precision but treated everyone around them like dirt. The guys who could quote John Gill and Augustus Toplady all day long but couldn't sit across from a hurting person and just listen. The guys who turned sovereign grace into a club to beat people with instead of a comfort to rest in. I opened that article with John 5:39, where Jesus tells the Pharisees, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." They thought their knowledge of the Scriptures was eternal life. And today there are people in the sovereign grace world who think that just because they can articulate the Gospel and argue for correct doctrine, they have eternal life. But eternal life isn't dependent upon what you know. It's dependent upon Christ.

   I believed every word of that when I wrote it. But it took a while for the full weight of it to land on me. Because if what I wrote is true, and I still believe it is, then you have to follow it to its logical conclusion. And the logical conclusion is this: if correct doctrine doesn't save you, then incorrect doctrine doesn't necessarily damn you.

   Let me say that again because it's the hinge of everything I'm about to argue. If correct doctrine does not save, then incorrect doctrine does not necessarily damn. Christ saves. Christ alone. Not your theology about Christ. Christ Himself.

   And that realization didn't come all at once. It came slowly, over years. It came through watching the sovereign grace world eat itself alive online. It came through being on the receiving end of it myself, having men I considered friends preach against me from pulpits without ever picking up the phone. It came through the slow, painful process of realizing that some of the sharpest theological minds I knew, men who could run circles around any Arminian in a debate, were producing rotten fruit. And some of the people I had dismissed as freewillers, people whose theology I would have torn apart in a heartbeat, were producing the fruit of the Spirit in ways that put me to shame.

   I wrote about that fruit problem in "Without Love Our Doctrine Doesn't Count." The Apostle Paul wasn't playing around when he wrote, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1-2). Nothing. All your knowledge, all your correct theology, all your ability to defend the faith, and without love it amounts to nothing. Paul said it. Not me.

   And the more I sat with that, the more I realized I had to reckon with something I had been avoiding. If the fruit of the Spirit is the evidence of the Spirit's work, and I was seeing that fruit in people whose theology I disagreed with, what did that mean? Was I really prepared to look at someone who was resting in Christ, who loved the Lord, who showed kindness and humility and gentleness, and tell them they were an unbeliever because they couldn't articulate the doctrine of unconditional election? Was I really going to be that person?

   I wasn't. Not anymore.

Sovereign Grace Taken to Its Logical End

   Now I need to make something very clear. What I'm about to say is not a departure from sovereign grace theology. It is sovereign grace theology. It's the same thing I've always believed, just followed all the way to where it leads. And where it leads is a place that makes a lot of sovereign grace people very uncomfortable. But I didn't invent the logic. I just stopped fighting it.

   If salvation is entirely the work of Christ, from beginning to end, with no contribution from man whatsoever, then what saves a person is not their understanding of how salvation works. What saves a person is Christ. His blood. His righteousness. His substitutionary death. His resurrection. The work was finished before any of us drew our first breath. "It is finished" (John 19:30). And if it is finished, then it is finished. Not mostly finished. Not finished pending your correct doctrinal formulation. Finished.

   Now, I have always believed that. Every sovereign grace believer I know would say amen to that. But here is where we have to be honest about what it implies. If Christ's work is what saves, and not our understanding of Christ's work, then a person can be saved by Christ while still being confused about how Christ saves. That's not a contradiction. That's sovereignty. God does not need your theological precision to accomplish His purposes in a soul.

   Think about the thief on the cross. "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:42-43). What did that man know about the doctrines of grace? What did he know about unconditional election, or limited atonement, or irresistible grace? He knew nothing about those things. He had no systematic theology. He had no confession of faith. He had no doctrinal exam to pass. He had Christ. And Christ said, "Today you will be with me in paradise." That was enough. Christ was enough.

   And what about the Philippian jailer? "And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16:30-31). Paul and Silas did not say, "Believe that God from eternity past has unconditionally chosen certain ones unto salvation, that Christ died for the elect only, and that faith is God's sovereign gift imparted by the Holy Spirit when He regenerates the elect individual." They did not say that. They said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That's what they said. And the man was saved.

   Now was all of that Calvinistic doctrine true? Absolutely. Every word of it. I believe it all. But Paul did not make it a condition of saving faith. And neither does Scripture anywhere else. There is a difference between the doctrines that describe how God saves and what a person must believe to be saved. The doctrines of sovereign grace describe the mechanics of salvation with beautiful precision. They are true. They are precious. They magnify the glory of God. But they are not the object of saving faith. Christ is.

   And Paul drives this home in Romans 14. "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand" (Romans 14:4). That verse is not talking about food laws, brethren. It's a principle. The man you are judging does not belong to you. He belongs to God. And God is able to make him stand. Not you. Not your doctrinal exam. God. And if God is able to make him stand, then maybe we should stop trying so hard to knock him down.

   And John wrote, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death" (1 John 3:14). Notice what John says the evidence of passing from death to life is. It's not doctrinal precision. It's not your ability to articulate the five points. It's love. Love for the brethren. And if love is the evidence of life, then a lack of love is the evidence of death. I'd encourage every man who has ever written off a fellow confessor of Christ as an unbeliever over a doctrinal disagreement to sit with that verse for a while and let it do its work.

   Even Ron Hanko, writing from the Protestant Reformed tradition, acknowledged in his article "Can Arminians Be Saved?" that a person who truly and consistently believes they are saved by their own willing and running cannot be saved, but then he went on to say, "Nevertheless, many people inconsistently confess both grace and works. They ascribe their salvation wholly to God's grace, and yet speak of having chosen Christ, of having free will. . . Usually this is the fault of the teaching they have received." And he's right. Many people who call themselves Arminians don't actually believe what consistent Arminianism teaches. They use freewiller shibboleths because that's the language they were raised with, not because they've thought through the implications. I've watched this happen over and over again. Someone will say "I chose Christ" and then in the very next breath thank God for saving them as if the whole thing was His doing. And in their hearts, it was. They just don't have the vocabulary yet.

   Hanko also wrote in "How Should We Judge Arminians" that our calling is to "make the most charitable judgment possible," and he pointed to 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15, where the Word tells us to think even of those who have been excommunicated from the church as brethren. "Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." If Paul says we should treat the excommunicated as brethren, how much more should we extend that grace to someone who confesses Christ but uses the wrong theological language?

   And I think about what Frank Tate wrote in "Doctrine vs. Saving Faith." He put it so simply and so beautifully. "Doctrine knows that all men are sinful. Saving faith believes that I am the sinner, the chief of sinners. Doctrine knows that Christ died for sinners. Saving faith believes that the only way the sin of a sinner like me could be forgiven is if Christ died for me." Do you see what Frank is saying there? Doctrine is about propositions. Saving faith is about personal trust. A person can have genuine, personal, saving trust in Christ while still being confused about the propositions that describe how that trust came to be. The trust is what matters. The trust is the evidence of the Spirit's work. Not the theological vocabulary.

   Don Fortner said it plainly in "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan": "You don't get to Christ by doctrine. You get to doctrine by Christ. Saving knowledge is not what you know, but who." And Tommy Robbins wrote in "Saving Faith" that "anyone can embrace doctrinal truth, but it is only those whom God has effectually called to faith in Christ in regeneration that can and will embrace Christ himself." There is a massive difference between embracing doctrine about Christ and embracing Christ. And I have met people in my life who could articulate every point of TULIP with precision and had no love for Christ at all. And I have met people who couldn't tell you what the word "predestination" means but who were resting in Christ with a simplicity and sweetness that made me jealous.

   Spurgeon saw this too. I published his piece "Are You Truly an Arminian?" on this site, and I wrote an editor's note on it because I thought his point was so important. Spurgeon's argument was that the Arminian is usually woefully inconsistent. He may call himself a freewiller, but when he gets on his knees to pray, he prays like a Calvinist. He doesn't thank God for his own free will. He thanks God for saving him. And Spurgeon was much more generous to the Arminian than many in our camp would be comfortable with. He called Arminian theology heresy, and I agree with him on that. But he did not write off every Arminian as unregenerate. He was hard on the doctrine and patient with the people. And for that, he still gathers criticism from the heresy hunters to this day.

   Now I want to be clear. None of these men would necessarily endorse everything I'm saying in this article. I'm not claiming them as allies or putting words in their mouths. But the things they wrote and preached point in a direction that I believe is honest and biblical. And I'm simply following that direction to where I believe it leads.

   And where it leads is this. If salvation is Christ's work, not mine, then the question I need to ask someone is not "Do you understand the five points?" The question is, "Who are you resting in?" And if they say, "Christ alone, His righteousness alone," then I have no business turning them away. Because that is the confession of a person who is trusting in the right Savior, even if their theology about how that Savior saves is incomplete or confused. Christ saves through the cracks in bad theology just as easily as He saves through the front door of good theology. He is sovereign over all of it.

What I See Now

   So where does this leave me practically? What does this actually look like in my life?

   It looks like this. When someone comes to me and confesses Christ, I don't pull out a checklist. I don't run them through a doctrinal exam. I don't sit there trying to figure out if they can properly articulate the five points before I'll call them brother. I ask them one question, and it's the only question that matters. What are you resting in? What is your hope? And if they say, "Christ alone. His righteousness. Not mine," then that's enough for me. I call them brother. I embrace them. And I leave the rest to the Lord.

   I can't be confident about anyone's salvation other than my own. And some days I'm barely confident about that. I've written about my own doubts and I'm not ashamed to admit them. I vacillate between assurance and uncertainty like every honest believer I've ever met. The difference is I'll say it out loud, which most sovereign grace guys won't. But if I can't even be certain about my own standing before God on my worst days, what business do I have pronouncing verdicts on other people's souls? I wrote in "We are not the Gatekeepers to Heaven" that I am not the gatekeeper to heaven, and neither are you. And we shouldn't boil the Gospel down into multiple doctrines demanding a thorough affirmation of every primary doctrine that we consider essential for salvation. It's God's prerogative to oversee access to heaven. It's ours to love people.

   And I think about the Apostle Paul's words to the Corinthians. "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11). I don't know what's in another man's heart. I don't know the work that the Spirit is doing in someone's life that I can't see. I don't know where they are in their walk, what the Lord is teaching them, or what He hasn't revealed to them yet. I know what I've been shown. And I know that I didn't deserve to be shown any of it. Every bit of light I walk in was put there for me by God, not by my own intellect or my own study. "For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?" (1 Corinthians 4:7).

   That verse right there should humble every sovereign grace believer into silence when it comes to pronouncing judgment on another man's soul. What do you have that wasn't given? What truth do you hold that you arrived at by your own strength? None of it. All of it is a gift. And if it's all a gift, then the man who hasn't received the same gift as you isn't your enemy. He's just someone the Lord hasn't taught yet. Or someone the Lord is teaching differently. Or someone the Lord is teaching slowly. And who are you to rush God's work?

   I wrote in "Are Free-willers Brethren?" that the fact of the matter is, every person is different, and every person is brought to the Lord differently. Some of God's sheep are able to articulate very clearly the Gospel and all of its logical implications. And others are not so much able. And I wrote that years ago. But now I'll go further than I went then. I used to say, "I would not accept someone as a brother who comes to me saying they believe their decision is the difference maker in salvation." And I still believe that a consistent, hardened freewiller who insists that God cannot save without human permission is preaching a different gospel. That hasn't changed. But I've learned that most of the people we slap the Arminian label on are not that person. Many of them are confused, not rebellious. Many of them are using language they picked up in a false religious environment without ever thinking through what it implies. And when you sit down with them and actually talk to them, when you ask them what their hope is and where their trust lies, many will tell you, "Christ." They'll tell you it's all of Him and none of them. And they mean it. They just don't have the words we have.

   I wrote about this in "Shibboleths" too. People pick up phrases. "I accepted Christ." "God gave me a free will." "I chose to believe." And these phrases sound awful to trained sovereign grace ears. They sound like a denial of everything we hold dear. But sometimes a phrase is just a phrase, repeated without thought, inherited from bad teaching, and it doesn't reflect what's actually in the person's heart. I've met people who said, "I chose Christ," and when I pressed them on it, they said, "Well, I mean, God opened my eyes and I saw my need for Him and I believed." That's not freewillism. That's a person describing their experience of regeneration in the only language they've ever been taught. And it's our job to be patient with them, not to write them off.

   I wrote about this very thing in "Be a Careful Judge." In Joshua 22, the tribes of Israel nearly went to war with the children of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh over an altar they built in Gilead. The rest of Israel saw it and assumed it was idolatry. They were furious. They were ready to fight their own brethren over it. And in their minds, they were righteously so. They had seen the consequences of idolatry. They knew what was at stake. But when they finally stopped and actually asked their brethren what the altar was for, they found out it wasn't idolatrous at all. It was a memorial. A remembrance. A witness between them and their children that they too belonged to the Lord. They had misjudged the heart of their brethren. And they nearly went to battle over something that could have been cleared up by simply talking.

   And I have to ask myself, and I'd ask you the same thing. How many times have we done this in the sovereign grace world? How many times have we heard someone use the wrong phrase, seen them hold to the wrong position on some secondary matter, and immediately marched into battle without ever sitting down to ask them what they actually believe? How many times have we judged by appearances instead of by the heart? I know I have. And it grieves me.

   So if I'm going to err, and I will err because I'm a man and I don't have perfect knowledge, then let it be love. Let it be on the side of embracing someone who confesses Christ rather than shutting the door on them because their vocabulary doesn't match mine. A loveless guard at the gospel gate is the greater wound. That's what I believe now. And I believe it because sovereign grace demands it.

What This Doesn't Mean

   Now I know what's coming, so let me head it off. Because some of you are reading this and your blood is boiling and you're already composing your response before you've even finished the article. So let me be very clear about what I am not saying.

   I am not saying doctrine doesn't matter. It does. It matters deeply. The doctrines of sovereign grace are the truth. God is sovereign over salvation. Christ died for the elect. Faith is a gift, not a work. Regeneration precedes belief. The atonement is particular and effectual. I believe all of that. I have always believed it. I still preach it. I still publish it on this website. I'm not going soft on any of it. If you think this article is me abandoning sovereign grace theology, you haven't been reading carefully.

   I am not saying all theological positions are equally valid. They are not. Arminianism as a system is wrong. It diminishes the sovereignty of God, it weakens the atonement, and it puts man in a place that belongs only to Christ. I have written against it for over twenty years and I will continue to do so. The doctrines of grace are not optional. They are not secondary. They are the truth of how God saves His people, and they should be proclaimed boldly and without apology.

   I am not saying we should stop preaching the truth or water it down to avoid offending anyone. God forbid. The truth is the truth, and it doesn't need my help to make it more palatable. I wrote in "The Truth is the Truth" that the Gospel doesn't need a marketing campaign. It needs to be preached. And I stand by that.

   And I am certainly not endorsing the more blasphemous forms of Arminianism. There is a strain of freewillism that says God cannot save without human permission. That God has done His part and now you must do yours. That God is wringing His hands in heaven, wishing He could save more people but their free will won't let Him. That is blasphemy. That is an assault on the character of God. And I would not call a person who truly and consistently believes that a brother, because that person has dethroned God and enthroned man. Ron Hanko was right when he wrote in "Can Arminians Be Saved?" that "a person who truly and consistently believes that he is saved by his own willing and running, contrary to Romans 9:16, cannot be saved; he has denied the very heart of the gospel." I agree with that.

   But here is my point. Not every person who calls themselves an Arminian is that person. Not every freewiller has thought through the logical implications of what they claim to believe. Not every person who says "I chose Christ" actually means "my will is the deciding factor in salvation." There is a spectrum. And what I am saying is that the test of a person's spiritual condition is not whether they can pass a doctrinal exam. The test is whether they trust Christ. Whether they rest in His finished work. Whether they look to His righteousness and not their own. Whether they exhibit the fruit of the Spirit that Paul described in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."

   That is the test. The same test you would apply to a Calvinist. The same test you would apply to anyone. Because let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. I have met sovereign grace believers who could articulate every doctrine with precision and whose lives were marked by cruelty, arrogance, slander, and division. I wrote about them in "The Insidious Rise of High Grace Predestinarian Neo-Gnosticism." I called it what it is. Warmed over arminianism. Because when you condition salvation upon the attainment of correct knowledge, you have done the very same thing the freewiller has done. You've just swapped out one human condition for another. Instead of "you must choose Christ," it becomes "you must understand Christ correctly." And both of those are conditions that man must fulfill, which means both of those are denials of sovereign grace. As I wrote in "Being Right Won't Save You!," if you think you are saved by having a proper understanding of the five points of Calvinism, you have missed the Gospel by adding to it.

   So I will not be lectured about compromising the Gospel by people who have turned the Gospel into a knowledge test. I've been there. I've done it. I've repented of it. And I would encourage anyone who is still doing it to examine themselves and ask whether they are worshipping Christ or worshipping their own understanding of Christ. Because those are two very different things.

   The question is not, "Does this person have their theological ducks in a row?" The question, as I wrote in "Is Judging the Proper Test?," is this: "The true test of one's faithfulness to the Gospel is not in his judgment of other people, including Arminians to be unregenerate or unsaved. . . But it's in his or her faithfulness to the Gospel in proclaiming the doctrines of sovereign grace and relying upon and resting in Christ for all of his or her salvation." That's the test. Not what you think about other people. What you think about Christ.

Grace Is Bigger Than Our Tribe

   I know what this is going to cost me. I've been down this road before. Every time I've moved in this direction, I've lost friends. Every time I've softened, every time I've extended grace where others thought I should have drawn a line, the accusations have come. Compromiser. Tolerant. Heretic. I wrote about it in "What I Now Think about Being Labeled as a Compromiser," and everything I said there is still true. I don't do anything for the praise of men, and I certainly won't change how or what I write to please my critics.

   And I'll be honest. Part of the reason it took me so long to write this article is because I know exactly what's coming. I know the emails that will come. I know the social media posts that will be made about me. I expect phone calls will be made to the churches I attend. I expect sermons will be preached from pulpits about how dangerous I am, about how far I've fallen, about how Brandan Kraft has finally revealed himself to be a compromiser of the worst kind. It's been done before. Men I once considered close friends have stood behind pulpits and preached against me and my articles without ever picking up the phone to talk to me first. I expect it will happen again. And I know that some people will take this article, strip it of its nuance, and use it to prove that I've "finally shown my true colors." Some of them will pass it around by email, commenting about me with disdain. I've seen it all before. And it used to bother me a great deal. But I've been at this long enough now to know that the barking noise of my critics will fade away in time, just like it always does. Eventually, all we will have is the joy and peace of our Kinsman Redeemer. Everything else is just noise.

   But I want to say something to the person reading this who has been quietly thinking the same things I've been thinking. The person who has been sitting in a sovereign grace church, or scrolling through Facebook, watching the heresy hunters tear people apart, and something in your spirit has been telling you that this isn't right. That there has to be more to the Christian life than drawing lines and pronouncing verdicts and making sure everyone in the room has their doctrine exactly right before you'll call them a brother. If that's you, I want you to know that you're not crazy. And you're not compromising. You're growing. And the Lord does that to His people. He takes the sharp edges off over time. He did it to me, and I fought Him on it for years.

   I was a young, puffed up, fire-breathing sovereign grace warrior once. I could win every argument. I could expose every error. And I was miserable. Because there is no joy in being the doctrine police. There is no peace in spending your life making sure everyone else is wrong. I wrote in "Why I'm on a Leash" that the Lord has me on a leash, and I thank God for it. Because without that leash, my flesh would have me naming names and tearing people apart to this day. But the Lord has taught me something better. He's taught me that the best way to expose darkness is not to attack it, but to preach Christ. And He's taught me that love is not a compromise of the truth. Love is the fruit of the truth. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). Not by your ability to win arguments. Not by your doctrinal precision. By your love.

   As I wrote in "Tolerance and Patience," I'd rather be labeled as a tolerant than an intolerant. For it was the Lord who was tolerant of the likes of me! "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" (Romans 2:4). God was patient with me when my theology was a mess. God was patient with me when I was a freewiller who didn't know any better. God was patient with me when I was a puffed up Calvinist who thought his knowledge made him righteous. And God is patient with me now, as I continue to grow and learn and shed the things that don't belong. If God can be that patient with me, who am I to be impatient with someone else?

   I wrote a song about all of this. It's called "Enough for Me." And the chorus says it better than this whole article does: "If you're resting in Christ alone, not in something you've done or shown, then brother, that's enough for me." That's where I've landed. And I'm at peace with it.

   And that's what it comes down to. If sovereign grace means anything, it means that Christ is bigger than our camps, our labels, and our tribal fences. He saves whom He saves. He doesn't ask for our permission and He doesn't need our approval. He doesn't consult our doctrinal statements before He regenerates a soul. He does it because He is sovereign and because He loved His people before the foundation of the world. And if He saved me through the cracks in my own bad theology before I ever heard the name Calvin, before I ever understood the first thing about unconditional election or limited atonement, then who am I to say He can't do the same for someone else?

   Grace is bigger than our tribe. And love is the thing that stays.

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8).

To Him Be the Glory Forever and Ever!!!

Grace and Peace,
Brandan