May 8, 2025 • 12 mins
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:
- 00:01 - Introduction to the Misfit Preachers
- 02:38 - The Assurance of Grace in Historical Christianity
- 04:40 - The Historical Debate on Grace and Participation
- 07:49 - The Impact of Grace Through History
- 11:10 - The Concept of Grace vs Karma
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
You're listening to the misfitpreachers Talian Chavigian, Jean
Larue, and Byron Yan fromProdigalPodcast.com we're plagiarizing
Jesus one podcast at a time.
Now here are the misfits.
Last slide.
Okay, well, it's not the onlya lot more out there, but these are
(00:23):
the three.
The three.
We think grace is not historical.
And when we say historical, wemean within the church.
Because if.
If you've taken up thismantle, the way that we have and
you have the.
The criticism and the pushbackyou get often is that this is novel
(00:47):
and it's outside the bounds ofwhat we would call historic Christianity.
Like, it doesn't exist there.
That if you go back intohistoric Christianity, you find moralism
there.
And the truth is the exact opposite.
The farther back in time yougo in the history of the church,
(01:11):
the more you find thesingularity of the message of God's
sovereign grace, unconditionalgrace towards sinners.
It's just a fact.
So, I mean, all the churchcontroversies that can't.
I mean, so many of themcentered around this question of
is it me doing or is it Godhaving done 100%?
(01:31):
So if I could.
I'm going to say some namesthat you can Google later.
I'm going to mention somedocuments that you can Google later
as well.
But it just thrilled my soulto do it.
Because you're the smart one, right?
I don't know.
What the hell is that supposedto mean?
I know.
I know you hate when I say.
All right, so let me just rifffor a second, if I can riff for a
(01:53):
second.
So we're all here because ofpesky little monk called Martin Luther.
He rediscovered theunconditional love and grace of God.
I just read it again thismorning in my devotionals, just kidding,
where he said, I found outthis righteousness that I thought
(02:14):
was required of me was givento me.
And then it transformed hisunderstanding of the Bible.
And then he set the world onfire, came to America.
There are 50,000denominations, and now we're here
at the sanctuary.
I mean, that's basically what happened.
But what that moment in time recovered.
The Reformation, as it called,where the church broke away from
(02:35):
moralism.
And this is true, the netresult, the net recovery, the thing
that was brought back morethan any other thing in that process
is one word, assurance.
What was recovered in theReformation by Martin Luther and
all the subsequent people whosaw the reality of it was that the
(02:59):
believer, the Christian, couldbe absolutely assured, regardless
of what they did or did notdo, what was inside of them that
was corrupt.
However, their corruptionmanifested itself on the outside
in their lives.
No matter what, they hadassurance in God that God was good
(03:22):
with them and that thatassurance lied outside of them, it
lies outside of you.
Listen, if you go looking forassurance inside yourself, your therapist
is going to make a lot of money.
It's impossible.
(03:42):
It's impossible.
Now, let me to get more downon the ground on this question of
whether it's historical.
When you listen to sermons,you read books, you hear Christian
music, you talk to yourfriends, you do whatever, in the
evangelical world, thatmessaging can only end in one of
two places.
(04:03):
And this is just agravitational law of the message
of Christianity.
Either those messages that youhear, those books that you read,
lead you to assurance andsomething that is outside of yourself,
or they rob you of yourassurance by pointing to something
inside of yourself.
And it is an irrefutable law.
(04:23):
Everything you're reading,everything you're hearing, every
sermon, is either pointing tosomething outside of you or inside
of you.
If it's inside of you, you'regoing to struggle with assurance.
If it's outside of you, it isyours, freely given to you by God.
And when we talk about itbeing historical, what we mean is,
(04:44):
in the very beginning of theChristian faith, when the faith foundation
of Christian theology, andquite frankly the Western worldview,
was developing, a gentleman bythe name of Augustine was having
a debate with a guy named Pelagius.
And do you know what thatdebate was about?
Whether it is all of grace orwhether man participates.
(05:07):
If you move forward inhistory, you run into Luther.
Luther was having a debate, adebate with a guy named Erasmus.
Be careful how you pronounce that.
Do you know what the debatewas over?
Is it all of grace or does man participate?
That John Calvin, Arminius,just one after the other, here's
(05:32):
the truth.
As it concerns what we'repreaching, what you're hearing, what
you're imbibing.
We are on the right side ofhistory as it concerns this doctrine
and this truth.
This is not new.
I mean, sometimes when you'reteaching this and you're discovering
it and you seem excited aboutit and you're telling people about
(05:55):
it, it is very much likerushing into a sandwich shop and
declaring that you discoveredand invented sliced bread.
I mean, this thing has beenaround forever.
And the fact that the majorityof Christians in our world, I was
once one of them, that itsounds strange and foreign to us,
just demonstrates how out oftouch we are.
(06:17):
In this reality.
Very well.
Just out of touch.
Very well.
Said that when, when I hear,when I hear.
That was so passionate.
I know when I hear people andI've, I've heard this, you guys have
too.
They'll refer to the thingsthat I say, oh, we love your message
and I know what they mean.
(06:39):
But I'm always quick to say itis not my message.
There is nothing new aboutwhat we're saying.
It only seems new because it'sso old and has been lost for so long.
That's why it seems new.
It goes against what we grewup hearing in Sunday school.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.
(06:59):
It may actually prove thatit's right.
Robert Capen, who is inoutside of the Bible, has written
the best sentences andparagraphs on grace.
Any book by Robert Capen, he'sdead now, but any book by Robert
Kapen is worth reading.
And he was provocative, he was profound.
(07:21):
But he, he wrote this in hisbook Between Noon and Three.
If, if you're, if you'relooking for a place to start reading
Robert Capen, read BetweenNoon and Three, it will shatter any
religious paradigm you haveand it will do so, so conclusively
(07:42):
and so thoroughly that youwill not be the same.
So he says this in betweenNoon and Three.
The Reformation.
The time in history that Byronjust referred to the Reformation
was a time when men wentblind, staggering drunk because they
had discovered in the dustybasement of late medievalism, a whole
(08:05):
cellar full of 1500 year old,200 proof Grace bottle after bottle
of pure distillate ofscripture, one sip of which would
convince anyone that God savesus single handedly.
The word of the Gospel, afterall those centuries of trying to
(08:28):
lift yourself into heaven byworrying about the perfection of
your bootstraps, suddenlyturned out to be a flat announcement
that the saved were homebefore they started.
Grace has to be drunkstraight, no water, no ice, and certainly
(08:48):
no ginger ale.
Neither goodness nor badness,not the flowers that bloom in the
spring of super spiritualitycould be allowed enter into the case.
And he was.
Capen was not only a scholarbut a historian.
And he goes to great lengthsto prove that this is the most historical
(09:09):
doctrine that you can find inall of the various times in history
that you mentioned.
Long before the Reformation,they, they rediscovered it during
the Reformation and it set theworld on fire.
And I, I think, I think thereason again and Joan, sorry to interrupt,
that it's so important for youto hear this, is that you know, you're.
Right, you're not Alone.
(09:30):
You're not alone.
You stand in a long line ofegos that have been crushed by grace.
Well, the one, I mean, the onehistorical figure.
I mean, I think I could takethis quote and rewrite it into modern
English and attribute it toyou and people would say heretic.
See, it just proves it.
He who makes the worship ofGod consist in faith and repentance
(09:54):
by no means loosens the reinsof discipline, but compels men and
women to the course they aremost afraid to take.
John Calvin.
Yeah.
What do you say?
I mean, yeah, he's saying ifyou, if you boil it down to faith
and repentance, you havethrown off everything.
(10:16):
You've thrown on the hardest thing.
Yeah.
Which is to be done with yourself.
I can't tell you how strangelyI'm attracted to you am, that you
quoted John Calvin by heart.
It's just like freaking me out.
This is my love language.
I've got, I've got it, I'vegot a quote.
But I take Luther over Calvinany day though.
It's a mind blowing conceptthat the God who created the universe
(10:39):
might be looking for company,a real relationship with people.
But the thing that keeps me onmy knees is the difference between
grace and karma.
You see, at the center of allreligion is the idea of karma.
You know, what you put outcomes back to you.
An eye for an eye, a tooth fora tooth, or in physics, in physical
(10:59):
laws, every action is met byan equal or opposite reaction.
It's clear to me that karma isat the very heart of the universe.
I am absolutely sure of it.
Yet along comes this ideacalled grace.
To upend all that stuff.
Grace defies reason, logic,love interrupts, if you like, the
(11:22):
consequences of your actions,which in my case is very good news
because I've done a lot ofstupid stuff and that's between God
and me.
But I'd be in big trouble ifkarma was going to finally be my
judge.
I'd be in deep shit.
It doesn't excuse my mistakes.
(11:42):
But grace loves me despite my mistakes.
And I am clinging to Jesus whotook my sins on the cross because
I know who I am in him.
And I know I don't have todepend upon my own religiosity anymore.
Bono, Bono, Bono, the greattheologian Bono.
(12:05):
For the older people here,he's the lead singer of YouTube.
For the younger people here,he was the lead singer of YouTube.
So good, great time.
So good, great time.
Please do send.
Send your questions, we'llpick them up on social media.
Thanks for sitting in with us.
This was definitely a welcome,welcome surprise to have the faces
(12:27):
and the warmth.
Big Mike, one more time.
There we go.
You've been listening to themisfit preachers.
Like subscribe and share moregrace centered resources@prodigal
podcasts.com that's Prodigal PR O D I G A L podcasts with an s
(12:51):
dot com.
You're listening to the misfitpreachers Talian Chavigian, Jean
Larue, and Byron Yan fromProdigalPodcast.com we're plagiarizing
Jesus one podcast at a time.
Now here are the misfits.
Last slide.
Okay, well, it's not the onlya lot more out there, but these are
(00:23):
the three.
The three.
We think grace is not historical.
And when we say historical, wemean within the church.
Because if.
If you've taken up thismantle, the way that we have and
you have the.
The criticism and the pushbackyou get often is that this is novel
(00:47):
and it's outside the bounds ofwhat we would call historic Christianity.
Like, it doesn't exist there.
That if you go back intohistoric Christianity, you find moralism
there.
And the truth is the exact opposite.
The farther back in time yougo in the history of the church,
(01:11):
the more you find thesingularity of the message of God's
sovereign grace, unconditionalgrace towards sinners.
It's just a fact.
So, I mean, all the churchcontroversies that can't.
I mean, so many of themcentered around this question of
is it me doing or is it Godhaving done 100%?
(01:31):
So if I could.
I'm going to say some namesthat you can Google later.
I'm going to mention somedocuments that you can Google later
as well.
But it just thrilled my soulto do it.
Because you're the smart one, right?
I don't know.
What the hell is that supposedto mean?
I know.
I know you hate when I say.
All right, so let me just rifffor a second, if I can riff for a
(01:53):
second.
So we're all here because ofpesky little monk called Martin Luther.
He rediscovered theunconditional love and grace of God.
I just read it again thismorning in my devotionals, just kidding,
where he said, I found outthis righteousness that I thought
(02:14):
was required of me was givento me.
And then it transformed hisunderstanding of the Bible.
And then he set the world onfire, came to America.
There are 50,000denominations, and now we're here
at the sanctuary.
I mean, that's basically what happened.
But what that moment in time recovered.
The Reformation, as it called,where the church broke away from
(02:35):
moralism.
And this is true, the netresult, the net recovery, the thing
that was brought back morethan any other thing in that process
is one word, assurance.
What was recovered in theReformation by Martin Luther and
all the subsequent people whosaw the reality of it was that the
(02:59):
believer, the Christian, couldbe absolutely assured, regardless
of what they did or did notdo, what was inside of them that
was corrupt.
However, their corruptionmanifested itself on the outside
in their lives.
No matter what, they hadassurance in God that God was good
(03:22):
with them and that thatassurance lied outside of them, it
lies outside of you.
Listen, if you go looking forassurance inside yourself, your therapist
is going to make a lot of money.
It's impossible.
(03:42):
It's impossible.
Now, let me to get more downon the ground on this question of
whether it's historical.
When you listen to sermons,you read books, you hear Christian
music, you talk to yourfriends, you do whatever, in the
evangelical world, thatmessaging can only end in one of
two places.
(04:03):
And this is just agravitational law of the message
of Christianity.
Either those messages that youhear, those books that you read,
lead you to assurance andsomething that is outside of yourself,
or they rob you of yourassurance by pointing to something
inside of yourself.
And it is an irrefutable law.
(04:23):
Everything you're reading,everything you're hearing, every
sermon, is either pointing tosomething outside of you or inside
of you.
If it's inside of you, you'regoing to struggle with assurance.
If it's outside of you, it isyours, freely given to you by God.
And when we talk about itbeing historical, what we mean is,
(04:44):
in the very beginning of theChristian faith, when the faith foundation
of Christian theology, andquite frankly the Western worldview,
was developing, a gentleman bythe name of Augustine was having
a debate with a guy named Pelagius.
And do you know what thatdebate was about?
Whether it is all of grace orwhether man participates.
(05:07):
If you move forward inhistory, you run into Luther.
Luther was having a debate, adebate with a guy named Erasmus.
Be careful how you pronounce that.
Do you know what the debatewas over?
Is it all of grace or does man participate?
That John Calvin, Arminius,just one after the other, here's
(05:32):
the truth.
As it concerns what we'repreaching, what you're hearing, what
you're imbibing.
We are on the right side ofhistory as it concerns this doctrine
and this truth.
This is not new.
I mean, sometimes when you'reteaching this and you're discovering
it and you seem excited aboutit and you're telling people about
(05:55):
it, it is very much likerushing into a sandwich shop and
declaring that you discoveredand invented sliced bread.
I mean, this thing has beenaround forever.
And the fact that the majorityof Christians in our world, I was
once one of them, that itsounds strange and foreign to us,
just demonstrates how out oftouch we are.
(06:17):
In this reality.
Very well.
Just out of touch.
Very well.
Said that when, when I hear,when I hear.
That was so passionate.
I know when I hear people andI've, I've heard this, you guys have
too.
They'll refer to the thingsthat I say, oh, we love your message
and I know what they mean.
(06:39):
But I'm always quick to say itis not my message.
There is nothing new aboutwhat we're saying.
It only seems new because it'sso old and has been lost for so long.
That's why it seems new.
It goes against what we grewup hearing in Sunday school.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.
(06:59):
It may actually prove thatit's right.
Robert Capen, who is inoutside of the Bible, has written
the best sentences andparagraphs on grace.
Any book by Robert Capen, he'sdead now, but any book by Robert
Kapen is worth reading.
And he was provocative, he was profound.
(07:21):
But he, he wrote this in hisbook Between Noon and Three.
If, if you're, if you'relooking for a place to start reading
Robert Capen, read BetweenNoon and Three, it will shatter any
religious paradigm you haveand it will do so, so conclusively
(07:42):
and so thoroughly that youwill not be the same.
So he says this in betweenNoon and Three.
The Reformation.
The time in history that Byronjust referred to the Reformation
was a time when men wentblind, staggering drunk because they
had discovered in the dustybasement of late medievalism, a whole
(08:05):
cellar full of 1500 year old,200 proof Grace bottle after bottle
of pure distillate ofscripture, one sip of which would
convince anyone that God savesus single handedly.
The word of the Gospel, afterall those centuries of trying to
(08:28):
lift yourself into heaven byworrying about the perfection of
your bootstraps, suddenlyturned out to be a flat announcement
that the saved were homebefore they started.
Grace has to be drunkstraight, no water, no ice, and certainly
(08:48):
no ginger ale.
Neither goodness nor badness,not the flowers that bloom in the
spring of super spiritualitycould be allowed enter into the case.
And he was.
Capen was not only a scholarbut a historian.
And he goes to great lengthsto prove that this is the most historical
(09:09):
doctrine that you can find inall of the various times in history
that you mentioned.
Long before the Reformation,they, they rediscovered it during
the Reformation and it set theworld on fire.
And I, I think, I think thereason again and Joan, sorry to interrupt,
that it's so important for youto hear this, is that you know, you're.
Right, you're not Alone.
(09:30):
You're not alone.
You stand in a long line ofegos that have been crushed by grace.
Well, the one, I mean, the onehistorical figure.
I mean, I think I could takethis quote and rewrite it into modern
English and attribute it toyou and people would say heretic.
See, it just proves it.
He who makes the worship ofGod consist in faith and repentance
(09:54):
by no means loosens the reinsof discipline, but compels men and
women to the course they aremost afraid to take.
John Calvin.
Yeah.
What do you say?
I mean, yeah, he's saying ifyou, if you boil it down to faith
and repentance, you havethrown off everything.
(10:16):
You've thrown on the hardest thing.
Yeah.
Which is to be done with yourself.
I can't tell you how strangelyI'm attracted to you am, that you
quoted John Calvin by heart.
It's just like freaking me out.
This is my love language.
I've got, I've got it, I'vegot a quote.
But I take Luther over Calvinany day though.
It's a mind blowing conceptthat the God who created the universe
(10:39):
might be looking for company,a real relationship with people.
But the thing that keeps me onmy knees is the difference between
grace and karma.
You see, at the center of allreligion is the idea of karma.
You know, what you put outcomes back to you.
An eye for an eye, a tooth fora tooth, or in physics, in physical
(10:59):
laws, every action is met byan equal or opposite reaction.
It's clear to me that karma isat the very heart of the universe.
I am absolutely sure of it.
Yet along comes this ideacalled grace.
To upend all that stuff.
Grace defies reason, logic,love interrupts, if you like, the
(11:22):
consequences of your actions,which in my case is very good news
because I've done a lot ofstupid stuff and that's between God
and me.
But I'd be in big trouble ifkarma was going to finally be my
judge.
I'd be in deep shit.
It doesn't excuse my mistakes.
(11:42):
But grace loves me despite my mistakes.
And I am clinging to Jesus whotook my sins on the cross because
I know who I am in him.
And I know I don't have todepend upon my own religiosity anymore.
Bono, Bono, Bono, the greattheologian Bono.
(12:05):
For the older people here,he's the lead singer of YouTube.
For the younger people here,he was the lead singer of YouTube.
So good, great time.
So good, great time.
Please do send.
Send your questions, we'llpick them up on social media.
Thanks for sitting in with us.
This was definitely a welcome,welcome surprise to have the faces
(12:27):
and the warmth.
Big Mike, one more time.
There we go.
You've been listening to themisfit preachers.
Like subscribe and share moregrace centered resources@prodigal
podcasts.com that's Prodigal PR O D I G A L podcasts with an s
(12:51):
dot com.
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