Is "Grace" HISTORICAL? (Fallen + Free 2025 • LIVE)
The Misfit Preachers dive deep into the wild waters of grace in this episode, chatting about how it’s not just a modern fad but a historical miracle that’s been around since forever. Talian, Jean, and Byron bring their A-game, sharing stories and insights about how we often get tangled up in moralism and forget the simple fact that grace is a gift—like receiving a surprise pizza on a Friday night! They point out that the further back we go in church history, the clearer it gets: God's grace is unconditional. Our trio passionately argues that the essence of Christianity has always been about this radical grace, and it’s time we reclaim that message. They even throw in some historical tidbits about Martin Luther and Augustine, making it feel like a fun history lesson at a coffee shop, where everyone leaves feeling uplifted and maybe a little bit smarter. So grab your headphones, kick back, and get ready for a conversation that’s lively, insightful, and sprinkled with puns that’ll leave you chuckling as you ponder the wonders of grace.
Takeaways:
- Grace is a historic doctrine that offers assurance to believers, not based on their actions.
- The Reformation was all about rediscovering grace, which radically changed how we view God.
- Everything you hear in Christian teachings points either inward or outward—choose wisely!
- If you rely on yourself for assurance, you might need a therapist after all!
- Historical debates in Christianity often centered around grace versus human effort—guess which won?
- Grace is like fine wine: it’s best enjoyed straight up, no mixers or distractions allowed!
Chapters:
Transcript
You're listening to the misfit preachers Talian Chavigian, Jean Larue, and Byron Yan from ProdigalPodcast.com we're plagiarizing Jesus one podcast at a time.
Speaker A:Now here are the misfits.
Speaker B:Last slide.
Speaker B:Okay, well, it's not the only a lot more out there, but these are the three.
Speaker C:The three.
Speaker B:We think grace is not historical.
Speaker B:And when we say historical, we mean within the church.
Speaker B:Because if.
Speaker B:If you've taken up this mantle, the way that we have and you have the.
Speaker B:The criticism and the pushback you get often is that this is novel and it's outside the bounds of what we would call historic Christianity.
Speaker B:Like, it doesn't exist there.
Speaker B:That if you go back into historic Christianity, you find moralism there.
Speaker B:And the truth is the exact opposite.
Speaker B:The farther back in time you go in the history of the church, the more you find the singularity of the message of God's sovereign grace, unconditional grace towards sinners.
Speaker B:It's just a fact.
Speaker C:So, I mean, all the church controversies that can't.
Speaker C:I mean, so many of them centered around this question of is it me doing or is it God having done 100%?
Speaker B:So if I could.
Speaker B:I'm going to say some names that you can Google later.
Speaker B:I'm going to mention some documents that you can Google later as well.
Speaker B:But it just thrilled my soul to do it.
Speaker C:Because you're the smart one, right?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker C:I know you hate when I say.
Speaker B:All right, so let me just riff for a second, if I can riff for a second.
Speaker B:So we're all here because of pesky little monk called Martin Luther.
Speaker B:He rediscovered the unconditional love and grace of God.
Speaker B:I just read it again this morning in my devotionals, just kidding, where he said, I found out this righteousness that I thought was required of me was given to me.
Speaker B:And then it transformed his understanding of the Bible.
Speaker B:And then he set the world on fire, came to America.
Speaker B:There are 50,000 denominations, and now we're here at the sanctuary.
Speaker B:I mean, that's basically what happened.
Speaker B:But what that moment in time recovered.
Speaker B:The Reformation, as it called, where the church broke away from moralism.
Speaker B:And this is true, the net result, the net recovery, the thing that was brought back more than any other thing in that process is one word, assurance.
Speaker B:What was recovered in the Reformation by Martin Luther and all the subsequent people who saw the reality of it was that the believer, the Christian, could be absolutely assured, regardless of what they did or did not do, what was inside of them that was corrupt.
Speaker B:However, their corruption manifested itself on the outside in their lives.
Speaker B:No matter what, they had assurance in God that God was good with them and that that assurance lied outside of them, it lies outside of you.
Speaker B:Listen, if you go looking for assurance inside yourself, your therapist is going to make a lot of money.
Speaker B:It's impossible.
Speaker B:It's impossible.
Speaker B:Now, let me to get more down on the ground on this question of whether it's historical.
Speaker B:When you listen to sermons, you read books, you hear Christian music, you talk to your friends, you do whatever, in the evangelical world, that messaging can only end in one of two places.
Speaker B:And this is just a gravitational law of the message of Christianity.
Speaker B:Either those messages that you hear, those books that you read, lead you to assurance and something that is outside of yourself, or they rob you of your assurance by pointing to something inside of yourself.
Speaker B:And it is an irrefutable law.
Speaker B:Everything you're reading, everything you're hearing, every sermon, is either pointing to something outside of you or inside of you.
Speaker B:If it's inside of you, you're going to struggle with assurance.
Speaker B:If it's outside of you, it is yours, freely given to you by God.
Speaker B:And when we talk about it being historical, what we mean is, in the very beginning of the Christian faith, when the faith foundation of Christian theology, and quite frankly the Western worldview, was developing, a gentleman by the name of Augustine was having a debate with a guy named Pelagius.
Speaker B:And do you know what that debate was about?
Speaker B:Whether it is all of grace or whether man participates.
Speaker B:If you move forward in history, you run into Luther.
Speaker B:Luther was having a debate, a debate with a guy named Erasmus.
Speaker B:Be careful how you pronounce that.
Speaker B:Do you know what the debate was over?
Speaker B:Is it all of grace or does man participate?
Speaker B:That John Calvin, Arminius, just one after the other, here's the truth.
Speaker B:As it concerns what we're preaching, what you're hearing, what you're imbibing.
Speaker B:We are on the right side of history as it concerns this doctrine and this truth.
Speaker B:This is not new.
Speaker B:I mean, sometimes when you're teaching this and you're discovering it and you seem excited about it and you're telling people about it, it is very much like rushing into a sandwich shop and declaring that you discovered and invented sliced bread.
Speaker B:I mean, this thing has been around forever.
Speaker B:And the fact that the majority of Christians in our world, I was once one of them, that it sounds strange and foreign to us, just demonstrates how out of touch we are.
Speaker B:In this reality.
Speaker C:Very well.
Speaker B:Just out of touch.
Speaker C:Very well.
Speaker A:Said that when, when I hear, when I hear.
Speaker C:That was so passionate.
Speaker A:I know when I hear people and I've, I've heard this, you guys have too.
Speaker A:They'll refer to the things that I say, oh, we love your message and I know what they mean.
Speaker A:But I'm always quick to say it is not my message.
Speaker A:There is nothing new about what we're saying.
Speaker A:It only seems new because it's so old and has been lost for so long.
Speaker A:That's why it seems new.
Speaker A:It goes against what we grew up hearing in Sunday school.
Speaker A:That doesn't mean it's wrong.
Speaker A:It may actually prove that it's right.
Speaker A:Robert Capen, who is in outside of the Bible, has written the best sentences and paragraphs on grace.
Speaker A:Any book by Robert Capen, he's dead now, but any book by Robert Kapen is worth reading.
Speaker A:And he was provocative, he was profound.
Speaker A:But he, he wrote this in his book Between Noon and Three.
Speaker A:If, if you're, if you're looking for a place to start reading Robert Capen, read Between Noon and Three, it will shatter any religious paradigm you have and it will do so, so conclusively and so thoroughly that you will not be the same.
Speaker A:So he says this in between Noon and Three.
Speaker A:The Reformation.
Speaker A: alism, a whole cellar full of: Speaker A:The word of the Gospel, after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps, suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started.
Speaker A:Grace has to be drunk straight, no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale.
Speaker A:Neither goodness nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed enter into the case.
Speaker A:And he was.
Speaker A:Capen was not only a scholar but a historian.
Speaker A:And he goes to great lengths to prove that this is the most historical doctrine that you can find in all of the various times in history that you mentioned.
Speaker A:Long before the Reformation, they, they rediscovered it during the Reformation and it set the world on fire.
Speaker B:And I, I think, I think the reason again and Joan, sorry to interrupt, that it's so important for you to hear this, is that you know, you're.
Speaker A:Right, you're not Alone.
Speaker B:You're not alone.
Speaker B:You stand in a long line of egos that have been crushed by grace.
Speaker C:Well, the one, I mean, the one historical figure.
Speaker C:I mean, I think I could take this quote and rewrite it into modern English and attribute it to you and people would say heretic.
Speaker C:See, it just proves it.
Speaker C:He who makes the worship of God consist in faith and repentance by no means loosens the reins of discipline, but compels men and women to the course they are most afraid to take.
Speaker C:John Calvin.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:What do you say?
Speaker C:I mean, yeah, he's saying if you, if you boil it down to faith and repentance, you have thrown off everything.
Speaker C:You've thrown on the hardest thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Which is to be done with yourself.
Speaker B:I can't tell you how strangely I'm attracted to you am, that you quoted John Calvin by heart.
Speaker B:It's just like freaking me out.
Speaker B:This is my love language.
Speaker B:I've got, I've got it, I've got a quote.
Speaker A:But I take Luther over Calvin any day though.
Speaker B:It's a mind blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people.
Speaker B:But the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma.
Speaker B:You see, at the center of all religion is the idea of karma.
Speaker B:You know, what you put out comes back to you.
Speaker B:An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics, in physical laws, every action is met by an equal or opposite reaction.
Speaker B:It's clear to me that karma is at the very heart of the universe.
Speaker B:I am absolutely sure of it.
Speaker B:Yet along comes this idea called grace.
Speaker B:To upend all that stuff.
Speaker B:Grace defies reason, logic, love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news because I've done a lot of stupid stuff and that's between God and me.
Speaker B:But I'd be in big trouble if karma was going to finally be my judge.
Speaker B:I'd be in deep shit.
Speaker B:It doesn't excuse my mistakes.
Speaker B:But grace loves me despite my mistakes.
Speaker B:And I am clinging to Jesus who took my sins on the cross because I know who I am in him.
Speaker B:And I know I don't have to depend upon my own religiosity anymore.
Speaker B:Bono, Bono, Bono, the great theologian Bono.
Speaker B:For the older people here, he's the lead singer of YouTube.
Speaker B:For the younger people here, he was the lead singer of YouTube.
Speaker B:So good, great time.
Speaker C:So good, great time.
Speaker C:Please do send.
Speaker C:Send your questions, we'll pick them up on social media.
Speaker C:Thanks for sitting in with us.
Speaker C:This was definitely a welcome, welcome surprise to have the faces and the warmth.
Speaker B:Big Mike, one more time.
Speaker C:There we go.
Speaker A:You've been listening to the misfit preachers.
Speaker A:Like subscribe and share more grace centered resources@prodigal podcasts.com that's Prodigal P R O D I G A L podcasts with an s dot com.
