Mick asks a super question:

I keep hearing various “free grace” proponents on Facebook and Twitter call GES’s position a “crossless gospel.” Can you explain what the “crossless gospel” means? I recognize these groups use that term as a pejorative but when I research their position on salvation, it borders on lordship or morality-works.

Back in 2000, Zane Hodges gave two messages on how to lead a person to Christ. These messages included a deserted island illustration of someone believing in Jesus Christ for everlasting life, yet not knowing about His deity, death, or resurrection. Starting in 2008, some Flexible Free Grace people started charging him and GES with preaching a crossless gospel. What they meant is that we would not mention the cross when we evangelized.

These people did not follow what Hodges was saying. He said that he considered it essential to preach the cross to get people to believe in Jesus for everlasting life. His point is that the bullseye is Jesus’ promise of everlasting life to the believer, not His death, burial, and resurrection. The latter should lead people to believe the former.

This “crossless gospel” charge proved confusing for the very reason that Mick mentions. Lordship Salvation preachers say that in order to be saved, one must take up his cross and follow Christ (Matt 16:24). They say that the faith-alone–apart–from–works view, which they call easy believism, is a crossless gospel in the sense that you don’t need to take up your cross and follow Christ. See “A Crossless Gospel Makes Spineless Christians” at TheGospelCoalition.Org by Cameron Cole and this article at GotQuestions.org.

Cole writes, “When we connect God’s love to Christ’s cross, we build for kids a paradigm of love that involves sacrifice. A cross-rich gospel helps them tightly associate love and cost; the two naturally go hand in hand. And they understand that loving God and others will also involve cost.”

Flexible Free Grace people who charged Hodges and GES with proclaiming a crossless gospel missed his point about the bullseye, and they inadvertently contradicted the message of John 3:16 or John 6:47.

Thanks, Mick, for pointing out the confusion in this charge.

We at GES are charged with preaching a crossless Gospel by Lordship Salvation people and by some Flexible Free Grace people. They mean two different things. But both miss the bullseye.

Keep grace in focus.