2. The Evangelical Counter-argument Reveals their Core Error Evangelicals will try and counter this by rightly pointing out that in Ephesians 2.9 Paul does say “For it is by grace you are saved through faith, this is not of yourselves but is the gift of God.” They interpret this in the following way:

a) Grace means ‘God’s free and unmerited favour towards humankind’. Therefore through Christ’s death on the cross the price for sin was paid, divine justice was met and forgiveness of sin was now possible. The result was entry into the ‘Age of Grace’ or the ‘new covenant/agreement’ between God and man.

(In differentiating the time since the Cross as the ‘Age of Grace’, evangelicals forget that grace has always been an essential element in relationship. If every human relationship demands the grace which accepts individuals ‘warts and all’, how much more profound has always been the grace expressed by God in his relationship with humans. It is grace which, throughout the whole of human history, has formed the bridge between Divinity and often very imperfect individuals.)

b) They conclude that this means that all the ways that God accepted people into relationship with himself in the period of time before the Cross are now finished with and no longer apply, therefore………

c) They say that from the time of the Cross forward there is only one way of entering into Divine relationship that is acceptable to God. A person must knowingly ‘turn towards’ Christ, seek his forgiveness for their sins, then give themself to Christ in life-long service. This alone brings a person into salvation.

d) If they are to be consistent with their official teaching, evangelicals must therefore deny any chance of true Divine relationship in this life or the next to even the most exceptionally consistently loving, compassionate people. This, despite the fact that (as has been noted elsewhere) in the synoptic gospels Jesus Christ did not teach such an understanding. The fruit of their lives is the same fruit that Jesus said could only grow in the lives of those ‘good trees’ who were the real followers of God the Father and himself!

Let me recap on a much misunderstood part of Jesus teaching as to just what it is that determines whether a person is living in true relationship with himself and with God.

3. “By their fruits you will know them.”
In Matthew 7.16-20 Jesus said that “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.” Here Christ’s logic is verging on brutal. What he is saying is, if you find a person, any person, whose life produces ‘good fruit’ then they must, of necessity, be one of those he calls a ‘good tree’. As such they are counted by Jesus to be walking on, what he calls in 7.13. ‘the narrow way’!