hypergrace

What is the Modern Grace Message?

April 13, 2022 by Paul Ellis

A man once asked me a question: “I want to show my friends that the gospel of grace is not the latest fad. Can you direct me to some early church teachings on grace?”

I replied, “How about the New Testament? Much of what I know about grace comes straight from the life of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles.”

Those opposed to the gospel of grace often dismiss it as the modern grace message. They say it is a passing fad.

It is anything but.

A modern grace message?

What is the modern grace message? It is the ancient and eternal gospel of grace (Rev. 14:6). The only thing modern about it is we are rediscovering what was lost. After wandering in the wilderness of works, we are returning to our New Testament roots.

The hypergrace gospel is no new revelation but an old revelation that has been buried under manmade traditions, religious rituals, and unholy packaging.

Hypergrace preachers aren’t preaching a new and modern grace message, but an old and timeless one.

Is hypergrace Biblical? You better believe it.

In The Hyper-Grace Gospel, I quote from more than 40 hypergrace preachers all preaching essentially the same gospel. It’s the same message from different messengers, which is a sign to make you wonder.

How is it that Evangelicals and Charismatics, Catholic priests and Anglican vicars, rock stars and soldiers, theologians and poets, are all preaching the same message of grace? The reason is we have unearthed the same Treasure.

How is it that pilgrims, all starting from different locations and traveling different paths, have ended up at the same place? We all followed the same star that led us to Jesus. Our baggage may be different, and some of us have more than others, but we have all arrived at the same Destination.

It doesn’t matter where you start. What matters is where you finish.

If you’re digging through religious rubble, keep digging. And if you’re walking through a wilderness of works, keep walking. Don’t stop until you find that Treasure and arrive at that Destination called Jesus.

He is your final port of call. Jesus is your resting place.

Exposing the dangers of hypergrace

The hypergrace gospel is no new message; it is a 2,000-year-old revelation. If you have met Jesus then you have heard the hypergrace gospel.

So what is the danger? What is the error or problem?

The problem is you may have heard some other stuff as well – additional material that was never part of the original message.

If you’re a believer, you don’t need to hear the hypergrace gospel as much as you need to un-hear all the extra stuff that obscures the good news of God’s superabundant grace.

Don’t confuse the dirt with the gold.

The grace of God is like nothing on earth. Anything we add to the grace of God only detracts from its sublime perfections.

Extracted and adapted from The Hyper-Grace Gospel.

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What is the Gospel of Grace?

February 16, 2022 by Paul Ellis

There are few things in life more important than life itself. You might give your life for a child or a loved one. Maybe you would give your life for your country. The Apostle Paul gave his life for the gospel of grace.

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. (Act 20:24)

Paul dedicated his life to the gospel of grace. He said that preaching the grace gospel was more important than life itself, and that anyone who preached a different gospel should be cursed.

Anyone, no matter who they are, that brings you a different gospel than the grace gospel… let him be condemned and cursed! (Galatians 1:9, TPT)

What is this gospel of grace that Paul valued so highly? How do we recognize it?

And how would we know if someone was preaching a different gospel?

What is the gospel of grace?

The gospel of grace is the only gospel for it is the grace of God that makes the good news the good news. It is the grace of God that saves us, sanctifies us, and keeps us secure to the end.

What is grace? Grace is the love of God that comes to us through his Son and empowers us to be who God made us to be.

And what is the gospel of grace? The One who sits on a throne of grace wants to share his life with you. This life is found in his Son who is full of grace and truth.

What does the grace of God look like? It looks like Jesus. Grace isn’t a mere message or sermon. Grace is a Person living his life through you.

What was Paul’s gospel?

The gospel that Paul preached was a classic 3-point message: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again as the prophets foretold (see 1 Cor. 15:1–6). You are probably familiar with this message, but do you really understand what it means?

As we behold the cross and the empty tomb, the full implications of God’s super-abundant grace become clear. Because of grace I can say:

And that’s just the beginning of this great grace gospel!

The radical claims of grace

Paul spent his life unpacking the implications of grace. He said things like: God is no longer holding our sins against us (2 Cor. 5:19); we are saved and kept by grace (Eph. 2:5, 1 Cor. 1:8); and God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

These claims were radical 2000 years ago, and they are still radical today. They are so contrary to our natural understanding that many dismiss them as untrue.

“The grace of God can’t be this good.”

Yet Paul described the grace of God as extreme, over the top, and hyper. He and the other New Testament writers said God’s love and grace are greater than we can dream or imagine. They dared to ask bold questions like these gems from Romans 8:

If God justifies me, who can condemn me?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If God has given us his Son, what won’t he give us?

God’s grace is greater than we can fathom. We will spend the rest of eternity exploring the limitless reaches of his grace to us.

So how can we get this grace message wrong?

What is NOT the gospel of grace

Paul warned us not to listen to those who preach something other than the gospel of grace. Since the grace of God comes to us by faith alone, there are two ways preachers can mess this up:

They preach things that distract us from grace (eg: conditional forgiveness, law-keeping, progressive sanctification, judgmental prophecies, conspiracies, myths, etc.)
They preach things that diminish faith (eg: sin-management, worldly philosophy, politics, dead works, performance-based acceptance, etc.)

How can you tell the difference between a grace message and a graceless one?

A grace-based message will leave you praising God and thanking Jesus. In contrast, a graceless message will have you making promises you can’t keep and then condemn you for not keeping them.

Someone who has not been fully apprehended by the grace of God will always be tempted towards dead works. So be wary of those who preach a mixed gospel. If you desire to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, tune in to the hypergrace preachers.

But the biggest mistake we can make with the gospel of grace is we think it is for other people. “Grace is for sinners, not good churchgoers like me.”

Big mistake. We all need the grace of God every single day.

It’s grace from start to finish.

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Who invented the word hypergrace?

February 26, 2020 by Paul Ellis

Who was the first person to coin the word hypergrace? It wasn’t the Apostle Paul. Sure, he described God’s grace as hyper-super-abounding, but he was writing in Greek. Who was the first to say it in English?

Hypergrace. Who said it first?

It wasn’t me. Not even close. So who was it? Seriously, I would like to know.

As I mentioned in a recent article, I’m pushing to get hypergrace into the dictionary. Why? Because hypergrace is a unique word that describes “the extreme favor of God that extends over, beyond, and above what you can conceive or imagine.”

It’s a beautiful word and there’s no other word like it.

To get a word into a dictionary you have to think about the origins of the word. So lately I have been asking, where did hypergrace come from?

I’ve done some research and as far as I can tell, the word first appeared as a Twitter hashtag in mid-2009. Which makes hypergrace about the same age as Escape to Reality.

Coincidence?

Before hypergrace, people used to talk about radical grace. That is a common phrase, but it’s not extreme enough for some people. hence the emergence of super-grace, ultra-grace, and finally hypergrace.

Interestingly, the first people to use this word did so in a pejorative way. Hypergrace, they said, was bad grace. Greasy grace. It was something to mock and belittle.

But a small number of people, myself included, recognized that hypergrace is an absolutely spot on translation of what Paul speaks about in Romans 5 when he talks about the huper grace of God. The Greek word huper literally means hyper. And Paul was just one of several New Testament writers who used extreme language when describing God’s great grace.

Hypergrace milestones

As part of my dictionary research, I tracked down the first mentions of the word hypergrace in different media. This is what I have found so far:

first hypergrace blog post (Nov 12, 2009)
first hypergrace podcast (May 15, 2012)
first hypergrace magazine article (Feb 28, 2013)
first hypergrace video (Sep 17, 2013)
first hypergrace book (Jan 7, 2014)
first song (no idea)
first major motion picture starring Denzel Washington (still in pre-pre-production)

These are not certified Guinness Records, just placeholders. If you know of blog posts or podcasts that predate those in my list above, let me know and I will revise my list. And if you can prove that someone used the word hypergrace prior to 2009 in any form, let me know that too. It would be good to give credit where credit’s due.

Did you invent the word hypergrace? Got proof you said it before 2009? Let me know.

The hostile history of hypergrace

The word seems to have first appeared in 2009, but the hypergrace wagon did not really get rolling until 2013. That was the year CharismaNews decided to publish a series of articles attacking hypergrace. That was also the year I wrote my first article defending hypergrace.

The following year no less than five hypergrace books were published. The first was Michael Brown’s book Hypergrace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message; the second was D.R. Silva’s book Hypergrace: The Dangerous Doctrine of a Happy God, and the third was my book The Hyper-Grace Gospel.

In his book, Michael Brown named and shamed a number of hypergrace preachers, including me. In my response, I pointed out that most of the criticisms made by Brown et al. were based on a dozen or so oft-repeated myths.

Sidebar: People sometimes ask me why I don’t engage in more debates with hypergrace critics. When invited to “discuss” hypergrace on radio shows and podcasts, I usually say no. I have learned the hard way that when certain people say they are reaching out, they’re doing it to make themselves look good. They’re not actually interested in dialogue. When you point out that you never said all the awful things they say you said, they don’t apologize or change their tune. In this age of fake news, the facts don’t matter. The main thing is to keep feeding the monster of social media. Slandering grace preachers may be a great way to generate social media buzz, but it’s appalling behavior, embarrassing to Jesus, and I don’t want to feed the trolls.

I try to avoid hypergrace debates, but I LOVE talking about the hypergrace of King Jesus. If we can get the word into the dictionary I will celebrate!

Hypergrace: Let us continue to write about it, talk about it, and sing about it. Let us paint it, rap it, draw it, and celebrate it any way we can. Let us use whatever means we can to let people know about the extreme love and favor of our heavenly Father.

In the meantime, let’s dig a little and see if we can’t find the person who said it first. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Let’s get hypergrace into the dictionary

December 4, 2019 by Paul Ellis

The English language has about 200,000 words, yet one word is missing from the dictionary. That word is hypergrace.

Why don’t we change that? Why don’t we put hypergrace into the dictionary?

Hypergrace is an important word. It’s a unique word. It’s a word many of us love and many more of us have used. Consider these numbers:

books about hypergrace: 40 (Amazon)
videos on hypergrace: nearly 10,000 (Google)
articles on hypergrace: gazillions (Google)

A word that has gained so much traction ought to be officially recognized. Right?

Ten years ago, no one was talking about hypergrace. Now it has become a shibboleth for the Christian community. If you’ve heard about it, chances are you have an opinion about it.

Grace like snow

If the Eskimos have 20 words for snow, we ought to have at least one word to describe the extreme and radical grace of God. We need a word to capture what the Apostle Paul had in mind when writing about the abundance of God’s grace (literally super-grace) in Romans 5:17 or his abounding grace (literally hyper-super-grace) in Romans 5:20.

Abounding?! Is that the best we can do? God’s grace is so much more than that. At least it was when Paul wrote about it.

The grace of a limitless God is extreme, super-abounding, and over the top. His hypergrace exceeds your wildest dreams.

So why isn’t this word in the dictionary? Are we trying to minimize the grace of God? Are we embarrassed by the riches of his grace? Do we not want people to know how much God loves them and how amazing his grace really is?

Back in July I submitted “hypergrace” to the Oxford English Dictionary. So far I’ve heard nothing back. (I shared the story with patrons.) But this is the OED we’re talking about. They take years to make decisions.

Not so the Urban Dictionary. I submitted hypergrace on Monday and got an acceptance from the editors within 10 minutes. Check it out here, and give it some upvotes!

I have also submitted hypergrace to several other dictionaries where it is pending review. More on that below.

How to get a word into the dictionary

To submit a new word to a dictionary, you have to provide a simple definition of that word. You also have to show how the word can be used in a sentence. This is what I came up with:

Word: hypergrace

Definition (short): God’s super-abounding favor

Definition (long): The extreme favor of God that extends over, beyond, and above what you can conceive or imagine (source: The Hyper-Grace Gospel, p.12)

Use it in a sentence:

The cross of Jesus demonstrates the hypergrace of God.
The hypergrace gospel is the revelation of Jesus.
The hypergrace gospel says all the blessings of God come to us freely as gifts.

What do you think of my definition of hypergrace? Can you come up with a sharper one? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

What next?

I have submitted hypergrace to six dictionaries. If you believe hypergrace should be in the dictionary, head on over to the following dictionaries and search for it. Words that get searched for get recognized.

If you can think of a dictionary I missed, feel free to submit the word yourself, then let me know about it below. I’ll add your dictionary to the list above.

The hypergrace of God was no secret to the Greek speakers of the New Testament, and it shouldn’t be a secret today. Let’s inject some good news into our language. Let’s encourage the guardians of our lexicons to embrace a big beautiful word that means so much to so many.

Spread the word.

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715. Grace Is Never Dangerous

August 11, 2019 by Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke

The bad news police who are established in a legalistic mindset will caution believers in Christ that too much teaching about God’s grace will lead to an unhealthy and perilous plight. Their tangled view of the testaments wrongly assumes grace needs to be balanced with law.

We’ve been supplied with an abundance of grace for a reason and it has no connection to law or a rules-based religion.

Get the book

714. Sin Increased Under Law – Grace Abounded More Through Jesus

August 4, 2019 by Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke

Hollow religion says a written code of commandments is needed in order to reduce sin and increase morality. There is just one problem with this approach … it’s the precise opposite of what Scripture reveals to us.

The law came for a purpose - to increase the trespass … not to reduce it. It’s only by grace and the gift of righteousness found in Jesus Christ that will allow for us to reign in life.

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Myth 9: The Hyper-Grace Gospel Encourages Sin

March 15, 2017 by Paul Ellis

Preach the scandalous grace of God and some will misinterpret your message as an endorsement of sin. It’s practically inevitable. But those who dismiss grace as a license to sin merely show their ignorance of it. As John Calvin may have said, “How can the medicine that’s supposed to kill the disease (grace) feed the disease (sin)?” “Hyper-grace preachers are soft on sin. They don’t condemn the sin that’s right in front of them.” The same accusation could be leveled at Jesus. An adulterous woman was brought to him for judgment and he didn’t even mention her sin. Not once. Instead he said “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). Jesus wasn’t making a threat. He was saying, “Receive my gift of no condemnation and be set free from sin.” “Hyper-grace preachers are closet sinners who distort the message of grace to accommodate their ungodly lifestyles.” Grace preachers are sometimes compared to the licentious men of Jude 1:4. Because we stand with Jesus instead of the rock-throwers we are thought to be soft on sin and sinners. But this is a slanderous accusation made by the ignorant and graceless. For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to [...]

Who are the Hypergrace Preachers?

September 21, 2016 by Paul Ellis

Hypergrace, according to some, is a dangerous and unbiblical teaching that is leading people down a licentious path to hell. Apparently the “rock-star preachers” promoting this hypergrace heresy will be “held accountable for the spiritual death of millions.” By proclaiming God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, hypergrace preachers have taken grace too far, say the critics. […]

Is Hypergrace Biblical?

September 12, 2016 by Paul Ellis

Hypergrace, according to a mainstream Christian news magazine, is a dangerous and unbiblical teaching. By proclaiming the unconditional love of God and forgiveness for all, hypergrace preachers have taken grace too far. We have made grace unbalanced and radical. Hypergrace, apparently, is unbiblical. It’s a modern invention based on a few scriptures taken out of […]