The Free Grace Alliance

By Dr. Roger Fankhauser Some people have heard the sad words, "we're disowning you" or "we're writing you out of the will". Some think something comparable can happen to the believer; God can "disown us" under certain circumstances. Have you ever thought carefully about what must happen for us to lose our salvation? I started making a list in my mind. To lose my salvation for any reason, including for "losing faith", would require God to: Unjustify us Unadopt us Unredeem us Unreconcile us Unregenerate us Unforgive us Unsanctify us (positional sanctification) Remove eternal life from us Uncircumcise our circumcised heart Disinherit us (remove our birth inheritance) Unbaptize us (Spirit baptism, 1 Cor. 12:13) Unseal us (take away the Holy Spirit) Make both Father and Son release their hold of us (John 10:28-29) Make the New Creature old again Transfer us out of the Kingdom of light and place us back in the kingdom o...

One example of  how the Free Grace Alliance works: "The mission of the Free Grace Alliance is to connect, encourage, equip and lead the body of Christ to advance the grace message throughout the world" Tero Fredrikkson of the Greater Grace Church in Finland (a free grace church) discovers Gracelife Ministries (a free grace ministry) on the internet and uses some of their materials. The church calls Gracelife Ministries and invites Charlie Bing ( a free grace teacher, writer, and missionary) to Finland. Charlie travels to Finland to teach. He invites Tero to attend the Free Grace Alliance conference in 2012. Tero attends the conference and meets many others who hold the Free Grace position. He returns to Finland with many new friends and a lot of Free Grace material! Some, including John Corria (a free grace pastor) and Richard Grubbs, agree to travel to Finland to assist the work there by teaching. Tero returns to the United States for the 2013 conference. He s...

I have come to the conclusion I am not "truly" saved. I hope that rattles you. Let me explain why I have come to this conclusion: Traffic. Yep, traffic. You see, I consistently get irritated when other drivers fail to use their turn signals. I get a snarky attitude, and I often make some obnoxious comment about said driver (which does not please my wife, by the way). I am stuck in habitual sin. Sure, I confess.... but then it pops up again. And again. And again. Probably has for decades. Even after deciding to write this post, fully aware of my tendency, I still responded poorly to traffic. While driving through a little town outside Seattle, it took us 30 minutes to go two blocks through two lights. My attitude was stinky, my comments were not kind. My wife was, rightfully, not pleased with me. And then again today, I gave a snide "gee, thanks" to someone who failed to use their blinker. So here's my problem. As one well-known writer puts it,...

I think all of us of FGA realize the impact theology can have at the pastoral level. Consider the advice from Dr. John Piper, noted pastor, prolific author, and reformed theologian. “When I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in, I tried to understand his situation, and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.” As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?” So I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of bib...

By Dr. Roger Fankhauser Why proclaim grace? “I must not be saved if I can’t beat this sin.” The person then walked away from their faith. Someone else said, “I've lived way too many years of my life in bondage, conforming to religious rules instead of only looking to Christ... Some days I feel as if my heart will burst knowing how much God loves me. Some time ago, I started meeting with a group that, unfortunately, was a shame based group that doesn't practice or walk in grace. I feel like I've been saved all over again finding freedom in Christ as he is showing me truth in his word. ” The subtle – or not-so-subtle – problem with any kind of performance based “Christianity” is that it is counterproductive. Instead of producing joy or producing “abundant” life, it produces guilt or unreasonable introspection. Instead of producing power for living, it knocks us down. Instead of producing hope, it produces despair. It doesn’t produce freedom, it produces bondage...

Greetings,   The arrival of June means that it is officially Summer. For some of us that means summer school has started, for others it is vacation time or time with family. Hopefully it includes a change of pace for ministry and a chance to work on some special projects.   FGA has been busy this spring. We have had three very successful Regional Conferences. In March we had one in Phoenix. In April we held a conference in Salem, Oregon. In May we had our first Regional Conference in Tampa, Florida and we're looking forward to one more Regional Conference this month in Charlotte, North Carolina with Dr. Norm Geisler and Dr. Charlie Bing speaking. If you are close to the area I encourage you to attend. I invite you to look at some of the write ups and the photos of these conferences that we have posted on our website. I also want to encourage you to save the date for the National FGA Conference in Irving, Texas October 14-16. Our theme this year is Grace f...

Dear FGA, As those who hold to Free Grace Theology we are often accused of defining faith as simply mere mental assent. This is often interpreted as meaning we simply believe a set of facts in our head and do not really believe in the person or work of Jesus. I recently found myself being accused of this and reminded my accuser what the FGA actually believes. The FGA covenant actually says what we believe and who we believe in, is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Grace of God in justification is an unconditional free gift. The sole means of receiving the free gift of eternal life is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ , the Son of God, whose substitutionary death on the cross fully satisfied the requirement for our justification. Faith is a personal response , apart from our works, whereby we are persuaded that the finished work of Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, has delivered us from condemnation and guaranteed our...

                                                                                                                       Dear FGA, The celebration of Easter Sunday has come and gone but the importance and impact is forever. As Faulkner put it; “And so in the end we live not in the darkened shadow of Good Friday but on ground that has been illuminated by the dawn of Easter Sunday.” This is the life g...

Greetings to the FGA Family, This is an exciting season for the FGA. Let me share with you some of the strategic ministry undertakings.   First , we have a full slate of regional conferences. On March 2nd we had a regional conference in Phoenix in conjunction with my ministry, Grace Line. We had over 300 people attend. There were five plenary speakers (two from the FGA executive council) and two others that are FGA members. We also held ten workshops led by the FGA council and many of our members. Topics included: Evangelism in the Workplace , The Relationship of Regeneration and Faith in the New Testament , The Role of Puritan Theology in Colonial America and its Modern Day Impact , A Theology of Spiritual Formation, Why Grace is Difficult for the African American Christian as well as a basics class on Free Grace Theology and many others. I had an opportunity to speak to the pastors and parachurch leaders about the purpose and plans of the FGA and invited them to join...

By Roger Fankhauser, DMin I just recently read from a non-free-grace person that the Free Grace position only requires someone to believe in certain propositions about Jesus to receive eternal life. The writer is almost – but not quite – right. However, “not quite right” changes the argument from a valid criticism to a straw man argument. If the writer were correct, then the object of our faith would be limited to statements about Jesus or historical events about Jesus. The object of our faith is Jesus. Jesus said it (“whosoever believes in me”, John 3:16); Paul said it (“that we might be justified by faith in Christ”, Gal. 2:16). Almost all evangelicals say this. (I would say “all”, but as soon as I do, someone would point out an exception!) Free-Grace evangelicals; Reformed evangelicals consistently define the object of saving faith as Jesus. We might disagree about what one must know about this Jesus or about the impact that faith in Jesus “must” have on life, but, at ...

  Greetings to those, whose heart has been captured by the glorious grace of God, It is so gratifying to receive letters and emails from Christians around the world thankful and pleased that the Free Grace Alliance boldly proclaims the glorious grace of God. It might be hard for many of us in the states to conceive of a world where you do not have access to sermons, books, or literature that articulate the clear grace of God and the simplicity of receiving the gift of eternal life. I have received emails and letters from a woman in England, a church planter in Africa , a missionary in Pakistan and a pastor in Finland, all grateful for the FGA standing strong and clear and providing resources concerning the grace of God. If you keep up on the FGA “Facebook” page you will also hear from many people about the importance of Grace Theology as they seek to investigate the nuances of a theology of Grace. Webster defines grace as, " unmerited divine assistance given man for his...

W henever you begin a new year it is helpful to remind yourself what you did last year and then make plans for the upcoming year. This is true both on a personal and institutional level. FGA had a very good 2012. Let me reflect on some of the exciting milestones. First, the FGA national conference in Dallas was a complete success. We had a wonderful array of ministry guests from out of the country, some spectacular speakers, an extremely good time of fellowship together, and we broke even. Second, as an organization we assessed and reworked the FGA bylaws and made the alliance much more functional in terms of our leadership and organizational vision. Third, in 2012 we saw a number of books from a Free Grace perspective come on the market. Let me mention a few of them.  Dr. Jody Dillow’s Final Destiny, Marty Cauley’s The Outer Darkness, the third edition of Dr. Gordon Olson’s work, Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism, John Correia’s Refreshing Grace, Mark Spencer’s A Momen...