Have you ever tasted something that looked exactly like the real thing, but it wasn't? Maybe you were a kid and somebody handed you a cup of what looked like juice and you took a big gulp. And it was just water with a little bit of sugar stirred in. It looked right. It even tasted sweet for a second. But there was nothing to it. No substance. No nourishment. Just sweetness with no depth.

Now, what if I told you that's what a lot of people are doing with the gospel? And I don't just mean the folks on the other side of the theological aisle. I mean people in your very own circle, in our own circles, people who know the doctrines of grace, who can talk about election and predestination and particular redemption all day long. What if some of them are still just handing out sugar water?

That's what I want to talk about today. So welcome to the Pristine Grace Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Kraft, and I'm thankful you're tuning in with me today. This is a podcast where I discuss the gospel, Christian living, theology, various Bible subjects, and whatever seems to suit my fancy at the time. If you're new here, I'd encourage you to subscribe and check out my website at pristinegrace.org. A little bit about myself. Well, I'm a Christian writer and speaker. I'm a software developer, and I've been maintaining pristinegrace.org for quite a while now, since the late 90s. And so almost 30 years, not quite, but almost. And in that time, I've seen a lot. I've watched trends come and go. I've watched people discover the doctrines of grace for the first time with tears streaming down their faces. And I've watched other people wield those same doctrines like a club.

And what I want to talk about today sits right in the middle of all that because it's something I've wrestled with personally and I think it matters deeply. Today we're going to talk about formulas. Specifically, the way people on all sides of the theological spectrum take the gospel of Jesus Christ and reduce it to a recipe, a set of steps, a system you have to follow just right or it doesn't count. And I want to suggest to you that when we do that, no matter how good our theology is on paper, we end up with nothing but sugar water. Now, I apologize to all my listeners who've been waiting for an episode for a few weeks now. I've been busy rewriting all the software that runs pristinegrace.org, so I haven't spent a lot of time preparing for a new podcast.

But let's not dwell on that now and go ahead and get started. So let me start here. Most of us who've spent any time in evangelical Christianity are familiar with what I'd call the free will formula. You know what I'm talking about. It goes something like this. God loves you. He has a wonderful plan for your life, but you're a sinner. You need to accept Jesus into your heart. Pray this prayer, mean it, and you're in.

Boom. That's the formula. Okay? And look, I'm not going to question anyone's sincerity right now. I know there are people who heard something like that and God has genuinely saved them. God can use crooked sticks to draw straight lines, but the formula itself, the idea that salvation is a transaction you initiate by saying the right words or making the right decision, well, that's a recipe, that's sugar water. It tastes sweet for a moment and it sounds nice, but it puts the weight of salvation on you, puts it on you, on your decision, on your prayer. on your sincerity. And that's a weight no human being can bear.

Isaiah chapter 55 verse 1 says, Now think about that for a moment. God is calling people to come and drink. But notice who he's calling. He's calling the thirsty. He's calling the ones who have no money. He's calling the ones who have nothing to bring.

He's not saying, come and perform. Come and prove yourself. Come and follow these steps. He's not saying that. He's saying, come empty, come broke, come with nothing. And I will give you everything. That's the opposite of a formula. A formula says, do this, then that, then the other thing, and you'll get the result. But God says, you can't do anything. Come anyway.

And, you know, I remember years ago before I really understood Sovereign Grace, I was sitting in a church service and the pastor gave an altar call. I've seen many of those. And he said, if you want to be saved, just come forward, pray this prayer and mean it in your heart. And I went forward. I was 12 years old, I think, maybe. Yeah, I think I was 12. And I prayed the prayer. And for a little while I felt something, a warmth, a sense of relief, but it didn't last because eventually the question crept in. Did I mean it enough?

My wife and I, we were talking about this the other day and she told me she felt the same way. She was introduced to the same style of Christianity that I was when she was a kid. And she told me she had in her mind that she had to do it the way all the other people were doing it in her church in order to be saved. And she was haunted by that.

She too was left with the question, did she do it right? She was just like me with my thoughts. Was I sincere enough? Did I really, truly believe or was I just going through the motions? And that question, it haunted me because the whole system was built on my sincerity, on my decision, on my heart.

And I knew my heart well enough to know it couldn't be trusted. Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 tells us, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And there I was, being told to trust in a decision made by a heart that God himself calls deceitful and desperately wicked. That's sugar water, okay? It looks refreshing, but it leaves you thirstier than before. And yet, here's what grieves me.

Some of us who understand that, who preach sovereign grace, who know that salvation is entirely of the Lord, have gone and built their own formula. We've just dressed it up in better theology. And let me explain what I mean. And I've seen it happen, and I'll be honest, in the zeal and ignorance of my youth, I've been part of it myself. Someone comes along who's been in a free will church their whole life.

Maybe they were they're Arminian or charismatic maybe they were something else entirely and they start hearing about Siren Grace and then they start reading about election in particular redemption and their eyes light up and they're hungry and they're being drawn something is happening in their heart and And what do some of us do? Well, instead of rejoicing, instead of pointing them to Christ, we hand them a checklist. Have you repented of your Arminianism? Have you renounced your former beliefs properly? Do you understand the five points? Can you tell me about limited atonement? Have you rejected every trace of your old theology?

And if they stumble, if they can't check every box just right, well, we're not sure about them. We hold them at arm's length, okay? And we need to see more evidence. We need to make sure they've really got it. Do you see what's happened? We've replaced one formula with another.

The free will folks, they'll say, accept Jesus and pray this prayer. And some Sovereign Grace folks say, repent of your free willism and prove you've understood the doctrines correctly. To me, in my mind, there's no difference between the two. Both of them reduce salvation to human performance. Both of them put the emphasis on what you do rather than on what Christ has done. And both of them are sugar water. Both of them are sugar water. Philippians chapter 3 verse 9 says, And be found in him, be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

Paul is saying something stunning here. He's saying that his standing before God has nothing to do with his own righteousness, nothing to do with how well he performed, nothing to do whether he checked all the right boxes. His righteousness, the righteousness that matters, the righteousness that saves, it's the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. It's not his, it's Christ's. It was given to him. And that word given is everything, because if it's given, then it can't be earned. And if it's given, then it can't be the result of following a formula, any formula, whether that formula is pray the sinner's prayer or properly repent of your former theology.

Now, let me pause here and say something important. I'm not against repentance, okay? Please hear me on this. Repentance is real. Repentance is part of the Christian life. When God opens someone's eyes, they do turn from what is false. They do grieve over their sin, and they do move toward truth. But that's the work of the Holy Spirit, and it's a beautiful thing. But here's the difference.

Repentance is a fruit of grace. It's not a prerequisite for grace. It's something God produces in his people, not something they produce in order to become his people. And when we turn repentance into a gateway then we say, you must repent in this particular way, of these particular errors, using these particular words, before we'll accept you as a brother or sister.

And we've turned the fruit of the spirit into a work of the flesh. We've made it about human performance again, and that's sugar water. That's a recipe. Romans chapter four, verse five puts it so plainly, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Did you catch that?

God justifies the ungodly. Not the ones who've gotten their theology perfectly sorted out. Not the ones who've properly renounced every error. The ungodly. God takes people who are a mess, people who don't have it together, people who couldn't pass a theology exam to save their lives, and he declares them righteous.

Not because of what they've done, but because of what Christ has done for them. And he does it through faith. And even that faith, as we know, it's a gift. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, they say, Everything about salvation is a gift. The grace is a gift. The faith is a gift. The righteousness is a gift. The repentance is a gift.

And we contribute nothing except the sin that made it all necessary. And that really should stop us all in our tracks. Because if we really believe that, if we really believe that salvation is entirely of the Lord, from start to finish, then what are we doing when we create hoops for people to jump through? Think about it. If God is the one who gives faith, and God is the one who grants repentance, and God is the one who opens blind eyes and unstops deaf ears, then who are we to stand between God and the people he's drawing to himself?

It reminds me of what happened with the Pharisees. In Matthew 23, verse 13, Jesus says, But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. That's a terrifying verse. Jesus is saying that some people who consider themselves guardians of the truth are actually blocking others from entering the kingdom.

Not because they don't know their Bibles. Oh, they know their Bibles better than anyone. But because they turn knowledge into a gate and appointed themselves the gatekeepers. And I fear that sometimes in our circles we do the same thing. Not intentionally, not maliciously, but functionally. We turn the doctrines of grace into a gate and we stand there checking credentials.

So when someone comes to us and they're fumbling through their understanding and they can't quite articulate the five points yet, and they still have some theological cobwebs from their old church, what business do we have standing over them with a clipboard? What business do we have saying, well, I'm not sure you've repented enough. Well, let me tell you something.

I didn't arrive at sovereign grace overnight. It was messy. It was confusing. And there were days I wasn't sure what I believed. And there were conversations where I contradicted myself three times in five minutes. And you know what? God was patient with me through all of it. He didn't wait for me to get my theology straight before he saved me. He saved me. And then slowly, patiently, over time, he straightened out my theology. And he's still doing it. He's still doing it. My theology is not perfect, I can tell you that. He's still doing it.

And I think that's how it works for most people, for most of God's people. It's not a light switch. It's a sunrise, like I mentioned in my last podcast. It starts dim and you can barely see, and then gradually the light increases. And you see more, and then you see more clearly. But here's the thing, even at high noon, you don't see everything. You still only know in part.

Galatians chapter 2, verse 20 says, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. That's Paul.

And in my mind, he's probably the greatest theologian who ever lived. And what does he point to? Well, not his doctrinal precision, I can tell you that. Not his ability to articulate the finer points of theology. No, he points to, he points to Christ. He says, Christ loved me. He says, Christ gave himself for me and Christ lives in me. And that's it. That's the whole thing. Everything else is commentary.

And I want to be careful now how I say this because I know it could be misunderstood. I'm not saying doctrine doesn't matter. Doctrine matters enormously. I've given over the majority of my life to promoting and teaching sound doctrine, okay? I love truth.

I believe the doctrines of sovereign grace are the truest expression of what the Bible teaches about salvation, and I'm not backing away from any of that. Now, when I come to the end of my life, is anyone going to care how many theological debates I won? Is it going to matter that I could define every ism or every ology? Or is it going to matter that I knew him, that I rested in him, or even better yet, that he knew me? Doctrine. I love doctrine, but it's just a tool, you know.

It's a lens. It's a road that's supposed to take you somewhere. And where it's supposed to take you is to Christ. If your doctrine leads you to Christ, if it helps you see his beauty, if it makes you fall more deeply in love with the one who saved you, then it's doing its job.

But if your doctrine leads you to pride, If it makes you look down on other believers, if it turns you into a gatekeeper who decides who's in and who's out based on how well they articulate limited atonement, well, then your doctrine, quite frankly, has become an idol. And an idol made of good theology is still an idol.

Charles Spurgeon, who knew a thing or two about Sovereign Grace, once said something that I think captures this perfectly. He said that to know Christ is better than to know about Christ. And I think that's where the rubber meets the road. You can know all the doctrines. You can have your soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation, your theology airtight. You can win every debate. But if you don't know him, If your theology hasn't led you to a deeper, more humble, more grateful relationship with the living Christ, then what have you really got? You've got sugar water.

John chapter 6 verse 37 says, All that the Father giveth shall come to me, and him that cometh to me will I in no wise cast out. Now that verse is often used, and rightly so, to teach sovereign election. All that the Father gives to Christ will come. That's settled. That's sovereign. That's grace. But don't miss the second half.

Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. Jesus doesn't say, Him that comes to me with perfect theology, I will not cast out. He doesn't say, him that comes to me having properly renounced every doctrinal error, I will not cast out. He says, him that cometh to me, period. Coming to Christ is the thing, and the coming itself is a gift from the Father. But the point is that Christ receives those who come. He doesn't put them through an entrance exam first. And, you know, I think about the prophet Zechariah. We talked about this in the last podcast episode and the vision he had of Joshua, the high priest.

Zechariah chapter 3, verses 3 and 4 say, Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment. Joshua didn't clean himself up before he came. He stood there in his filthy rags.

And God didn't say, Go clean up and come back. God said, take those rags off him and put clean clothes on him. And that's the gospel. That's grace. God doesn't wait for you to sort yourself out. He takes you as you are, filthy garments and all, and He clothes you in the righteousness of Christ. 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21.

I hit this nearly every podcast. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. And that's the great exchange. You've heard me say it over and over now. Christ took our sin. We received his righteousness. And he wore our filthy garments on the cross so that we could wear his spotless robes before the Father. In that exchange, it doesn't depend on how well we understand it. It doesn't depend on how well we can accurately explain it. It depends entirely on Christ and what He accomplished.

So here's my concern, and I say this with love, because I'm talking to my own people right now. I'm talking to those of us in sovereign grace circles. We rightly reject the free will formula. We rightly say that just accept Jesus reduces the gospel to a human decision. And we rightly point out that salvation is not a transaction initiated by the sinner. Amen? I'm with you on all of that.

But then some of us turn around and create our own entrance requirements. We say things like, well, have they really repented? Have they renounced their former theology? Can they explain the doctrines of grace? Have they been properly examined? And without even realizing it, we've built a new formula. And we've just replaced, say the sinner's prayer with pass the theology test. And at the end of the day, both are forms of sugar water. Both put the emphasis on human performance rather than on Christ finished work.

Romans chapter 8 verse 1 says, There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. No condemnation, not less condemnation, not condemnation deferred until you prove yourself. no condemnation. For those who are in Christ Jesus, and being in Christ is not something you achieve by passing a doctrinal exam, it's something God accomplishes by a sovereign grace.

And I want to speak now to anyone listening who has felt the weight of this, because maybe you came out of a free will background, maybe you're just beginning to understand the doctrines of grace, and maybe someone in a sovereign grace church or Reformed or online sovereign grace community has made you feel like you're not quite there yet. Like you haven't repented enough. Like you, like your understanding isn't sharp enough. Like you need to prove yourself before you really belong. And if that's you, I want you to hear me.

Your hope, your hope is not in how well you understand theology. Your hope is in Christ, and your standing before God does not depend on whether you can explain doctrine. Your standing before God depends entirely on the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to your count by the sovereign grace of God. And if God has given you faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed, even faith that's confused and fumbling and full of questions, that faith, that is a gift from Him. And the one who gave it will finish it. He doesn't start something and then walk away. He doesn't give you faith and then abandon you to figure it out on your own.

John chapter 10 verses 27-29 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father which gave them Me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. And if you're one of God's sheep, you are secure. Not because you've mastered the doctrines of grace, not because you've passed anyone's theological test, because Christ holds you. And no one, not even a well-meaning but misguided brother with a theological clipboard, can pluck you out of his hand.

Now, let me shift gears here for just a little bit and talk about why this matters practically, because this isn't just an abstract theological discussion. This affects how we treat people. It affects the culture of our churches. It affects whether people feel welcomed or excluded. It affects whether our communities look like hospitals for sinners or country clubs for the doctrinally elite. And I've seen it firsthand.

I've seen someone come to a group of professing sovereign grace believers, genuinely drawn by God, genuinely hungry for the truth, and they get peppered with questions. Not pastoral questions born out of love and care, but interrogation questions designed to test whether they've arrived at the right conclusions. And when they can't answer to everyone's satisfaction, they get sidelined. They're told to study more, come back when you've got to figure it out.

And that breaks my heart. That breaks my heart because that's not how Jesus treated people. Think about the woman at the well. she was a mess theologically okay she didn't understand worship she didn't understand the messiah she was living in sin and what did jesus do he didn't hand her a doctrinal exam he offered her living water and he met her where she was and he drew her to himself and then think about the thief on the cross Here's a man who had probably zero theological training. I don't think he could have explained election if his life depended on it. And I've seen some zealous Sovereign Grace teachers out there say, oh, he could pass the five points of Calvinism test. No, he couldn't.

But anyway, Jesus said to him, today shalt thou be with me in paradise. There's no formula, no checklist, just grace. Or think about the apostle Peter. Here's a man who walked with Jesus for several years. He saw the miracles. He heard the teaching and he confessed Jesus as the Christ. And when then, when the pressure came, he denied him three times, three times. If Peter had to pass a loyalty test at night, he would have failed spectacularly. And yet, what did Jesus do after the resurrection? He sought Peter out.

He restored him and he said, feed my sheep. He didn't say, well, Peter, you really need to examine whether your repentance from that denial is thorough enough. He said, do you love me? Feed my sheep. And that's how the good shepherd operates. He doesn't demand perfection from his flock. He tends them. He leads them. He feeds them. And he carries the weak ones on his shoulders. And that should shape how we treat one another, don't you think? Don't you think? And I also think about the father in the parable of the prodigal son.

When that boy came home, he had a little speech prepared. He was going to ask to be made one of the hired servants. He was going to prove he sufficiently repented. But the father didn't even let him finish. The father ran to him. He embraced him and put a robe on his back and a ring on his finger.

That's grace. Not a formula. Not, show me you're sorry enough. Just open arms and a robe of righteousness. And I think sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves, are we offering people living water or sugar water? Are we pointing them to Christ or to a system? Because there's a big difference. Christ saves. Systems don't. Christ transforms. Formulas don't. Christ meets people in their mess and he makes them new. And checklists, well, they just make people anxious.

Let me be clear about something also. I'm not saying we shouldn't teach. We should. I'm not saying we shouldn't contend for sound doctrine. We should. I'm not saying that just anything goes and it shouldn't matter what you believe. It matters. Truth matters. The doctrines of grace are precious and they're worth defending. But there's a difference between teaching truth and making truth a barrier. There's a difference between lovingly guiding someone into a deeper understanding and standing at the gate deciding who gets in. One is pastoral, the other is pharisaical.

And I've been guilty of the second one. I'll own that. And there have been times in my life when I was more interested in whether someone had the right answers than whether they knew the right savior. And I'm ashamed of that because the right savior is the whole point. You know, there's a quote I've always appreciated. It goes something like this.

The goal of theology is doxology. The point of knowing truth is worshiping God. And if your theology doesn't make you more humble, more grateful, more compassionate, more patient and more kind, then something has gone wrong. It's like having a map that's perfectly accurate but never actually going anywhere. The map is supposed to help you reach the destination. And that destination, well, that destination is Christ. And when we turn the map into the destination, when we make doctrinal precision the goal rather than the means, we end up with sugar water. It looks like the real thing. It tastes sweet for a moment, but there's no nourishment in it. There's no life in it. There's no Christ in it.

And you know, I had a conversation once with a man who had come out of a deeply free will background. He'd spent decades in a church that taught you can lose your salvation. And when he finally heard about the perseverance of the saints, when he finally heard that doctrine and understood that Christ holds his people and never lets them go, He told me about how relieved he was, how he was brought to tears and how he wept over all those years of uncertainty. And he told me it was like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders that he'd been carrying for 40 years, something like that. It's been a while since I talked to the guy.

But then he started hanging out on a Sovereign Grace group online. And some of the men there questioned whether his conversion was real because he hadn't gone through the right process. They wanted him to formally renounce his former beliefs. They wanted him to demonstrate that he understood the doctrines with sufficient clarity.

And this man, this precious man, who had just been set free from the bondage of works religion, was now being put under a new kind of bondage, a sovereign grace bondage, a doctrinal bondage. And while he was able to avoid it, I've seen others destroyed by this type of bondage. And I think about Psalm 130 verses 3 and 4.

If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? but there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. If God doesn't mark our iniquities, if God doesn't keep a running tally of all our failures and errors and theological mistakes, then who are we to keep one for each other? If the God of the universe looks at his people through the lens of Christ's blood and sees them righteous and forgiven, then what right do we have to look at them through the lens of a theological exam and find them wanting? There is forgiveness with God, not a checklist, not a formula, not an entrance exam. Forgiveness, full, free, sovereign, unconditional forgiveness purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ for all those the Father gave him.

And I want to close with this thought. If you're someone who loves the doctrines of grace, and I hope you do, hold them humbly. Hold them gratefully. Hold them as gifts from a sovereign God who opened your eyes, not as achievements you earned through superior thinking. Remember that there was a time when you didn't understand these things. Remember that God was patient with you. Remember that he drew you gently over time through confusion and doubt and questions into the light of his truth.

And then extend that same patience to others. When someone is fumbling through their theology, don't hand them a test. Hand them Christ. When someone can't articulate the five points of Calvinism, don't hold them at arm's length. Hold them close enough and point them to the one who holds them in his hand.

Because at the end of the day, there is no secret formula. There is no magic set of words. There is no checklist that once completed unlocks salvation. It's all just sugar water. Every formula, every system, every set of steps, whether it comes from a free will pulpit or a sovereign grace study group, it's all sugar water compared to the living water of Jesus Christ. And my only hope is Christ. His blood shed for His people. His blood shed for me. His righteousness credited to my account. His sovereign grace that chose me before the foundation of the world, and His faithful hand that holds me and will never let me go.

And that's not a formula, that's a person, and He's enough. Think about it. That's about all I have for you today. I hope it's brought you some comfort and maybe some honest self-reflection. I don't know. I know it has for me even in the preparing of this message. And if you're someone who has felt the weight of other people's expectations, whether from free will circles or sovereign grace circles, I want you to know that your hope is not in meeting anyone's standards. your hope is in Christ alone. and if you don't like the answers the AI assistant gives well you can click the little button and you can even page me you know give me and we can even chat through the internet so yeah we've there's if you want to talk to me i'm available but uh anyway i'd love to hear from you i'd be honored to hear from you and i'd be happy to pray with you or pray for you so that's all i've got for today and i hope you have a great week grace and peace to you