What are the defining characteristics of the Calvary Chapel Movement?

In this series, members of the Calvary Chapel Association Leadership Council define some of Calvary Chapel’s historic Core Convictions on key topics such as ministry, church leadership, theology and more.

Grace has been defined as God’s unmerited favor. In contrasting grace, mercy and justice: I see that justice is getting what I deserve, mercy is not getting what I deserve, and grace is getting what I don’t deserve. I don’t deserve the blessing that He bestows daily on my life. In Newell’s commentary on Romans chapter 6, he has some great comments on grace. He declares that it is God acting freely, according to His own nature of love, with no promises or obligations to fulfill. Furthermore, God is acting righteously in view of the cross, it is uncaused in the recipient: its cause lies wholly in the giver. God’s love cannot act where there is cause or merit, it is absolute, it does it all. Thus, our proper attitude should be, to consent to be loved, though we are aware of how unworthy we are of that love. We must refuse to make resolutions and vows to be better (for that is to trust in our flesh). We should expect to be blessed, though we know how unworthy we are. Satan would have me to focus on myself, and when I do, I can see many reasons for God to withhold His blessings. Yet, when I focus on His grace, I expect and receive abundant blessings that never end.

Word of wisdom- A word of wisdom comes when critical issues arise and important decisions must be made. It is a wise word that is so right it brings divided factions together.

• 1Kings 3:25-27 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to one, and half to the other.” Then the woman whose son was living spoke to the king, for she yearned with compassion for her son; and she said, “O my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him!” But the other said, “Let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him.” So the king answered and said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him; she is his mother.”

Word of Knowledge- What is the word of knowledge? It is information given to us supernaturally, knowledge of things that we could not know through natural acquisition or study.

• Acts 5:1-4 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

Teaching- The spiritual ability to take the truth from the Word of God and explain it clearly so that converted people can under- stand it and apply those spiritual truths effectively to their daily lives.

• Mat 7:28-29 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Faith- The spiritual ability from the Lord to see what isn’t, believe it to be, and trust God to do it in His way and time.

• Acts 27:22-25 And now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, saying, “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me.

Gifts of healings- The spiritual ability to heal someone who is sick. God uses certain people in helping others to believe that God will heal them.

• Acts 3:4-7 and fixing his eyes on him, with John, Peter said, “Look at us.” So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

Gift of miracles- The spiritual ability to do works of a supernatural origin and character, a miracle is something that is humanly impossible but divinely simple.

• John 2:7-9 Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it. When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.

Prophecy- The spiritual ability to speak forth the mind and counsel of God. The prophets in the body of Christ were called to speak forth the word of God about present and future events, as well as edify, comfort and encourage believers within the body of Christ.

• Acts 21:10-11 and as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, “So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.”‘

Discernment of Spirits- The spiritual ability to discern between the spirit of evil and of God, the flesh and the spirit, and truth and error, before the fruit is evident. Not the gift of suspicion.

• Acts 16:16-18 Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.”And this she did for many days.But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.

Helps Ministry- Those who help…The spiritual ability to come alongside others and support them and their ministry in physical ways.

• 2 Timothy 1:16 The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain;

Exhortation- People with the gift of exhortation encourage and urge us to put into action the things we know we should be doing.

• Acts 4:36 And Joses^, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite of the country of Cyprus,

Giving- Ability to give financially or materially above and beyond…

• Acts 4:37 Baranabas…having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

Leading or administration- The spiritual ability to lead a group of people in a deep walk with the Lord, a great mission from God or even within church government.

• Genesis 41:39-40 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you.”

Mercy- The ability to express compassionate loving action and lift up the one who is downtrodden and to do it joyfully.

• Mat 9:35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were wearyand scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.

Evangelism- Preaching is declaring or heralding the truth of God to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

• Acts 2:40-41 And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation…Then those who gladlyreceived his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.

Tongues- The spiritual ability to speak an unknown foreign language without learning it beforehand. The gift of tongues is to be used publicly to bring praise to God. Speaking in tongues also strengthens your walk and gives you the power to commune with God on a deep, spiritual level.

• Acts 10:44-46 While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God.

Interpretation- An interpretation gives the sense or meaning of an utterance in tongues, by the spirit, without learning the language beforehand.

• 1 Corinthians 14:26-28 What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.

*The gifts of the Holy Spirit are found in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12.

One day Paul and his ministry buddy, Silas, got thrown into a filthy prison for freeing a slave girl from demon possession. The local magistrates ordered them beaten and placed in stocks in the inner dungeon, a place full of rats, disease, and all kinds of filth. Nobody had washed off their dried blood, and now it was caked on their raw backs. In fact, no one did anything to help them. They simply left them in this miserable condition.

Imagine if you were thrown in a Tijuana jail, with no one to bail you out. No one knows where you are; they know only that you went on a ministry trip to Mexico. They have no idea why you haven’t returned. No doubt you’d be wondering, What’s going to happen to me? How long will I be here? And you’d probably ask, “Why, God? Lord, did You really call us to Mexico? Did we make a mistake?” Questions would fly through your mind. But my question to you is: How do you suppose you would react?

Paul and Silas reacted by singing praises to the Lord.

Sitting in those painful stocks, the two men prayed and sang praises. The other prisoners heard them—and you can well imagine the crude remarks they employed to tell Paul and Silas to just shut up. But at midnight the bars began to shake when a strong earthquake rumbled the very foundations of the prison. All the cell doors burst open, awakening the guard. Figuring that the prisoners had all escaped—and fearing his inevitable and severe punishment—the guard took out his sword to commit suicide.

“Don’t do harm to yourself!” Paul called out. “We are all here.”

In the darkness the guard sought out Paul and Silas, and in a trembling voice said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” God used Paul’s miserable condition to bring another soul to Him.

When we find ourselves in difficult, confusing circumstances, what a great opportunity we have to pray and to praise the Lord! You might not be able to praise God for your circumstances, but you can praise Him. Because even though your feet are locked in stocks, your spirit is free. Rather than feeling sorry for yourself because of your physical misery, you can sing praises to your Lord. You never know who might be listening.

But that takes a transformed heart!

As you pray and sing, you will find your faith growing and your worries fleeing. Soon you can find yourself rejoicing in the goodness of God, in the greatness of His power and the immensity of His love, knowing He’s in control and Jesus will not fail.

As a young boy my brother had serious asthma attacks. Whenever he would get one, my mother would come into the room, lift him out of bed and carry him to an old rocking chair that squeaked whenever someone used it. My mother would rock him in that chair, and as I would lay there in bed, I could hear him wheezing and fighting for breath. I could also hear my mother singing: “Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Jesus never fails.” That song became her anthem.

As my three siblings and I grew up, we often required Mom’s help. She would pray and she would sing, “Jesus never fails.” It became so much her life theme that when she died, we had those words inscribed on her tombstone. If you were to visit my mother’s grave at Fairhaven Cemetery, you would see the words, “Jesus never fails.” And He hasn’t yet, and He won’t.

The really interesting thing is that not long ago I was in Santa Barbara, presiding over a memorial service for a relative. My mother’s mother had been buried at that cemetery. So we asked at the office where we could find my grandmother’s burial place. They showed us its location on a map and after the service we went looking for my grandmother’s grave. I had never been there before, so you can imagine my surprise when we found it and I read her tombstone: “Jesus never fails.”

What a marvelous testimony to pass down from generation to generation. You can put that on my tombstone when I go: “Jesus never fails.”

You may be going through some hardships. There may be some difficult things that you just don’t understand—the “whys” of whatever is happening to you. But know this: He loves you, He’s concerned, He knows all about it, He’s in control, and Jesus will not fail. That conviction, more than anything, will transform you into a follower of Christ whose heart beats wholly for Him.

– excerpted from Love The More Excellent Way by Chuck Smith

Have you ever heard a sermon on the devastation caused by “genera­tional sin”? Preachers base their frightening comments on texts like Exodus 20:5: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.”

Some people hear such a verse and say, “God’s not fair! Why should children suffer for their parents’ sin?”

Let’s admit that the sins of parents often have terrible consequences upon their children. It’s unavoidable. Many studies have shown, for example, that children of divorce tend to struggle in certain predict­able ways, no matter how amicable the separation or how well the former partners get along with each other after the divorce. Despite any of that, their children still suffer.

Most children feel a deep sense of rejection when their dad takes off with another woman. Despite giving repeated assurances of his love, they just don’t believe him. Because his actions speak louder than his words, they feel rejected and even responsible for the broken marriage. Many times, in fact, a child feels even more rejected than the wife or husband left behind. Children are the ones who generally suffer the most—and so the sins of the parents are visited upon their sons and daughters.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that if you had unrighteous parents, then you must face the wrath of God for the rest of your life—because, after all, the Bible says, “He’s going to visit the sins of the parents on the children to the third and fourth generations.” Don’t overlook the crucial condition there: “To the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5, italics added for emphasis).

If you continue in the hatred of God that your parents modeled, then God’s judgment will continue, even to the third and fourth generations.

Oh, but don’t stop with verse 5, as far too many preachers do. Continue reading through to Exodus 20:6, which puts the whole thing in a much more hopeful context: “But showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Exodus 20:6).

While it may logically follow that a boy raised in an ungodly atmosphere is apt to grow up to be very ungodly himself, thank God for the love and grace of Jesus Christ. You can break any hurtful or wrong relationship with the past. Maybe your parents did not bring you up in the fear and admonition of the Lord; perhaps they set a very poor spiritual example. But thank God, that chain can be broken.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

You don’t have to suffer because of your parents’ hatred of God or because of their mistakes. You can break that curse. When Moses repeats this speech in Deuteronomy 7:9, he revises it to make his point even plainer. He says, “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.”

Do you see the stark contrast? While sin may hold sway for three or four generations in families whose parents hate God, the Lord displays His love and mercy to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.

– excerpted from Love The More Excellent Way by Chuck Smith

God wants you to love your friends, but He also expects you to love the difficult people in your life. And we all have them!

The apostle Paul certainly did. While he could count on the Philippians to support and encourage him, he anticipated that the Corinthians would give him plenty of opposition and discouragement. They were his problem church.

As Jeremiah earned the title “the weeping prophet,” so Paul probably could be called “the weeping apostle.” He speaks often of the tears he shed over the church in Corinth and of the anguish in his heart over their poor choices. And he declared plainly in his second letter to them, “Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you, with many tears.” Why did he mention his turmoil? “Not to grieve them but that you might know the love which I have so abundantly for you” (2 Corinthians 2:4).

Paul is one of those individuals with whom I hope to spend a few hundred years in heaven. I’ve always been a great admirer of the apostle and of his ministry, so when he writes to the Corinthians, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ,” I accept his counsel unreservedly (1 Corinthians 11:1). I’ve sought to follow the example of Paul: the love he had for the church, and the concern he displayed for even the diffi­cult people of God, his great desire to see them walking in truth and in fellowship with the Lord. I would like my own heart to mimic the great heart of the apostle Paul. Of course, I don’t pretend to come close to Paul.

In writing of his tremendous love for his fellow Jews, he wrote, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). That’s beyond me. I cannot begin to grasp that level of concern and love. But oh, what a mighty man of God, and what a heart for God and the people of God—even the difficult people of God!

Paul wanted to make sure in his second letter that the Corinthians understood the tone of his heart as he wrote his first letter. He explained that he wrote not out of anger, but with a heart that ached for them, a heart filled with anguish, a heart filled with love—yet a heart power­fully grieving over the children whom he had brought to the Lord, children who had gone so badly astray to their own hurt.

“That heavy letter that I had to write to you,” he wanted them to know, “it was hard. I did it with anguish. I wrote it with many tears.” Note how the apostle bares his soul when he recalls his first letter and the response it received:

“Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.

“For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of him who had done the wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear to you” (2 Corinthians 7:9-12).

No, the apostle did not find it easy to write his letter, nor did he get any pleasure from the rebuke he felt forced to give. But he loved the Corinthians—his difficult church—and therefore he expended himself in love for them. And God honored his labor of love.

– excerpted from Love The More Excellent Way by Chuck Smith