Talking to people who were part of the Jesus Movement back in the 1960s and early ’70s, the main complaint they have about the movie, The Jesus Revolution, is that only one side of the story is being told.

The grace that God pours out for salvation is real and tangible, it’s the spark of life from God Himself that attests to the fact that He is real and living and caring, and that He is the only hope for us.

God placed that hope in Jesus and His promise is that we can connect to Him and be washed of our sins. We can come as we are to the cross and receive forgiveness. Jesus said these things while He was here on earth. He said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

You don’t have to do anything to receive grace for salvation because God destined all souls to receive His visitation. However, Grace for salvation is only one side of the story. Grace for growth is the other side of God’s story, where He teaches those who have come to Jesus how to enter into a covenant relationship with Him.

It’s vital for the church to learn to differentiate grace for salvation from grace for growth because that’s how our relationship with God becomes two-sided. We learn,

— why God values apostolic stewardship,
— the importance of the foundation of truth,
— how and why God seals our faith with a token of Himself,
— how to receive His grace daily,
— how to start building and bonding with Him; we learn
— why God gave us a new priesthood in Jesus,
— how to function in the body of Christ,
— how to work with the Holy Spirit to allow God to create His fruit in the inner man, and
— how to progress with the anointing through our daily growth cycles.

Some might look at these functional connections as something that is not relatable to the problems they face today and may wonder why they would need to know any of that. Preaching and testifying of grace for salvation is as far as most want their relationship with God to go because it allows them to continue to tell their story (their separation from God, their hope for something better, their desire to be part of something bigger than themselves).

But something is lost in that message in that a connection with God is not being established and the mind becomes puffed up against the Lord and His plan to send apostles to instruct His saints in the doctrine of Christ (Rom. 1:5; Acts 2:42). The thinking that came out of the Jesus Revolution is that since God showed up to give people grace for salvation in such a powerful way and no apostle was present to direct that experience, God will continue in the same way; He will guide everyone into the Christian lifestyle without any teaching about Jesus’ covenant or His doctrine.

But this is not God’s plan. We can clearly see that by looking at the thousands of churches there were born out of the Jesus Revolution. Believers never progressed beyond grace for salvation and the heart that was so fervent toward God was lost in self and grew cold and empty.

The grace God sparked for salvation was to be followed up by instruction that came through Jesus’ apostles and the rest of His spiritual government. This is the pattern God established in the book of Acts and in all the epistles. Without instruction, grace for salvation becomes self-referencing and does not prepare the heart to enter into a covenant relationship with God.

Know this: When grace becomes self-referencing, a person has entered into a one-sided relationship with God; he just doesn’t know it.

When I say, self-referencing I mean that the only questions that are asked are those that have to do with day-to-day struggles and the issues and politics of life. Think about the emptiness you often feel after experiences with grace for salvation dissipates, and think about the questions your mind goes back to.

One of the most pressing questions is about that spark of grace from God. How can it become the hearth of your home? How can that powerful spark be kept alive? How can the power you felt under that influence be carried into your day-to-day living? That’s God’s covenant plan; to have His grace freely available to you every day to be a present living force, an effectual working power of the Holy Spirit that is central to your life in Christ and changes who you are on the inside. That’s God’s covenant promise when a two-way relationship with God is entered into.

It’s the daily, tangible supply of living grace from God stemming from all of Jesus’ covenant tools being present and accounted for that creates a two-way relationship with Him. In order to get you supplied with God’s living fountain of grace to heal your soul and create in you the fruit of the Spirit, a different form of instruction needs to take place and this is why God called apostles into the church again today.

The understanding that God is getting across is that a message based on grace for salvation that never progresses into grace for growth (that connects believers to the things God placed in Jesus for us to walk with Him), is a one-sided message; it does not connect people to God, it just gives them a hope that they can connect to God.

Know this: Once the promise of life in Jesus has become a one-sided message, it is stripped of all the things we need to live the life of Jesus’ covenant and is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ. It becomes a sales pitch, something you would expect from the proverbial car salesman who is determined to hook everyone who comes through the showroom doors.

Ministry leaders make sure that they’re saying all the right things to try to establish the authenticity of their message, that it is truly only about Jesus Christ; that God speaks to the hopeless to give them hope; that God speaks to those who feel alone to let them know that they are not alone, He is with them; that God is a God of love; the yearning you feel inside is the same yearning God has for you; that God doesn’t want life’s disappointments and challenges to stand in your way; you can come to the cross as you are and find forgiveness and love.

As true as this is, the promise is not the reality. God’s plan is to have people progress from grace for salvation to grace for growth and that’s why He installed Jesus’ new covenant. Jesus’ covenant is the gospel of salvation because it brings a believer into contact with everything God placed in Jesus for us to live our lives fully in Him.

In Hebrews chapter 10, the Apostle Paul instructs the church on the importance of Jesus’ covenant gospel. When we agree to the terms of God’s new covenant, He not only forgives our sins, but remission of sins begins as we are brought into that fruit bearing process where He creates in us His nature.

Hebrews 10:16-20
¹⁶ This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

¹⁷ And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

¹⁸ Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

¹⁹ Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,

²⁰ By a new and living way [covenant], which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

We underlined the word “remission” of sins and “no more offering for sin” in verse 18. God establishes that grace for salvation is His invitation to enter into the new covenant He made with us through Jesus’ blood (vs. 19). This new covenant contains the new spiritual tools and new spiritual priesthood and new holy knowledge and new stewardship (vs. 16 and 20) that changes and shifts our focus from the issues of life and our present daily routine.

God changes our routine: God reintroduced the apostolic stewardship to bring the church through a transition, whereas believers would progress from building a routine with sin, to building a routine with righteousness. Where remission of sins is (where we enter into a new routine with the Holy Spirit in our priesthood, using the tools that God sprinkled with Jesus’ blood) our prayers are no longer being offered for sin. We are not praying the “sinners’ prayer” over and over again, stuck in grace for salvation mode.

What Jesus said in John chapter 16 was well into His ministry. He told His apostles that the truth of the gospel that they would preach was yet to be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. And when we read the epistles we observe how Apostle Paul, Apostle Peter, and Apostle John identified their calling and the position God placed them in and the authority He gave them to teach the church; we see that they are teaching the gospel of Jesus’ covenant.

In other words, the apostles instructed the church how we are to live the life of Christ here on earth, in a new priesthood that God selected for us and empowered with spiritual gifts to reciprocate to God the likeness of Christ.

How long can a message that is based on grace for salvation rather than the gospel of Jesus’ covenant be preached? Obviously, people can tolerate this one-sided relationship with God for a long, long, time.

What happens when preachers and ministry leaders ignore the gospel of Jesus’ covenant? They continue to preach grace for salvation, preaching about sin and the anomalies of their own nature, thinking they are giving the people something bigger than themselves to believe in, but they are not giving them Jesus.

People do respond in a positive way to the message about sin and the need for grace for salvation, just as couples do when an old song sparks remembrances of earlier days when their love was first kindled.

It’s very nostalgic. The song allows them to reminisce as they’re brought back to those first moments when their love began to bud. Christians are also looking for ways to go back to their first love with God. The Jesus Revolution movie delivers that nostalgic, homecoming feeling in living color. In other words, “This is where God forgave me, so I’m coming back to this moment.” Christians want to go back to the first moment they felt hope and acceptance and relief for wrong doing.

Those who have been churched by the Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and’70s, when they hear stirring sermons about sin and the hope of coming to a God of love, they say, “They’re playing our song.” Yet, God says that they have become dull of hearing. They put their whole love affair with God into their struggle with sin instead of growing in grace.

Pastors view themselves as veterans of the struggle and you can hear it in what they preach. They’re addicted to devotional material that allows them to reminisce their struggle, but not grow in His grace.

Matthew 13:15
For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

So then, grace for salvation is real and powerful, but that’s not the gospel. The gospel is about our adoption and healing by covenant.

Ministry leaders have neglected to ask what comes next. People have gone home after attending revival without any instruction in Jesus’ covenant so there is no way for them to gain a lasting connection to God. The message they heard was full of promise, but without connecting them to the teaching of the new covenant, a person is left with no guidance apart from the obvious tidbits of advice about how to look for a “good” church home, how to get water baptized, and how to count the cost of being a Christian.

The instruction in righteousness is necessary to nurture the heart in faith, but the instruction in righteousness (covenant lifestyle) never happens. The instruction about sin continues to be preached so that the sinners’ prayer can be prayed again in a heartfelt way.

The importance of the church recognizing the headship of Jesus in the apostolic instruction is what comes next. This is symbolized by the woman who broke the alabaster box and poured out upon Jesus’ head the expensive oil the vessel contained.

Mark 14:3
And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

The woman in this verse represents the restored church and this act that she performed (to pour oil over Jesus’ head), symbolizes the challenge God sets before the church today. A relationship with Jesus is not possible unless believers recognize that He is head of the body of Christ and they accept what that headship looks like to Him.

To many standing by, observing what this woman did, they saw only a senseless waste of precious oil that could have been utilized in a better way to have brought relief to the poor. Their eyes were only adjusted to the world in need and they wanted to seize every opportunity to make the need of the people the conversation.

We see that same mindset present today in the church system that grew out of the roots of the Jesus Revolution. As ministry leaders falter at the door of Jesus’ covenant, they wonder how the acknowledgment of Jesus’ headship through the apostolic stewardship has anything to do with the needs of the people.

The habit of man is to take the precious oil (the anointing) and pour it out upon the pressing issues of life to relieve the suffering of sin. But God reserved the oil (anointing) for apostolic stewardship to give the life of Jesus in His covenant knowledge. To deny believers apostolic teaching is to deny them access to Jesus. The very thing that is promised (you get Jesus) is being denied.

Down the road preachers are going to point out in scripture God’s call to live after the Spirit and not after the flesh and how that comes at a cost. Yet, to deny believers the teaching of the covenant is to keep them imprisoned to the flesh. Victory over the flesh is promised, but never becomes a reality because the covenant (two-way relationship with God) is never established when believers are denied apostolic stewardship.

Romans 1:5
By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:

We see what happened next after Jesus rose from the dead, after He ascended to heaven, the church was born on the day of Pentecost and God established the apostolic stewardship (Acts 2:42). Believers understood the significance of the act of the woman pouring oil upon His head.

Jesus said that “this gospel” that established His headship over the church would stand apart as the true gospel. He said, “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” (Mark 14:9)

The woman who anointed Jesus’ head symbolizes the church that knows Jesus because Jesus knows us. Knowing has to do with fruit bearing. God knows us by the fruit He creates in our hearts.

A relationship with Jesus is not created by a planned proposal whereas all the right scriptures are lined up to draw from God His consent to our desire to be joined to Him. A relationship with God is not by coercion, it’s by covenant obedience. Jesus says that He knows His sheep and calls them by name.

John 10:2,3,14
² But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

³ To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.

¹⁴ I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

Jesus knows us and calls us by name because we’re building and bonding with Him in His fruit bearing process. The Lord knows those who are building with Him (two-sided relationship). The Lord says that He only knows us through the building of His house and that’s what we’re doing.

Exodus 31:1-3
¹ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

² See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:

³ And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,

As much as every believer is promised a personal relationship with Jesus, this only takes place once the pride of man is broken and Jesus’ apostolic stewardship is accepted. Those who are stuck preaching grace for salvation are trying to coerce a relationship with God by passion and that’s why they constantly examine themselves:

— I confessed my sins,
— I cast out devils,
— I heal the sick,
— I believe in miracles,
— I prophesy.

Matthew 7:22-23
²² Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

²³ And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

With all the seemingly right ingredients present, why does Jesus say that He does not know these believers. Again, when Jesus talks about knowing us, it is on the basis of the divine exchange that takes place when we draw from His covenant truth.

Jesus knew from the beginning that there would be those who would take from God the things they felt represented the Christian life and apply that to themselves. Sermons that build with passion rather than covenant ask believers to imagine how they might tie into the idea of “surrendering” to God and the need to “release” control of their lives. These messages are based on the needs of the people rather than the covenant of Jesus. They’re not building and bonding with God.

When the gospel of the covenant is not preached, then grace for salvation shapes the mind of the church and sin continues to be preached. Assurance is given that you can always trust in God, but the tools and holy knowledge are not given for trust to be based on God’s covenant contact. Assurance is given that God will never fail and that we should never doubt His love and goodness, but God’s love, when it remains self-referencing, is about self-survival; it is not servitude to His covenant. God is breaking this self-serving mold to free His people to Himself.