The Gospel of Hypergrace

This is the latest installment in a series that looks at different churches through my perspective. Here is the one about CCI, about Harvesters, about The Lord’s Chosen, Christ Embassy and Jehovah’s Witness.

The first thing you need to know is that LOGIC church is actually L.O.G.I.C church. And that stands for the Love of God in Christ. You may wonder why that particular name was chosen — was the name grafted onto the word, or was it a mere coincidence? Who knows. All I can say is that it is fantastic marketing. Some marketing purists (if they make enough to have the luxury) may call it low level clickbait, but if it works, it works. The game, as they say, is the game.

The people of LOGIC are aware of this quirk, and to their credit they immediately let you know LOGIC doesn’t mean what you think it means. We aren’t Logicians, they say. We are only spreading the love of God in Christ.

This explanation, to me, assumes that it is impossible — or at least seriously discouraged — to be a Christian “Logician”. But I find that those positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as long as a few priors are taken for granted. Some of the most celebrated Christian fathers were very logical. It also seems incoherent as most of the sermons on any given Sunday are advanced by a recourse to cold, hard, legalistic logic.

When you wake up on Sunday morning, and put on your best dress, you don’t really expect to go to Church to experience Twitter Comment Section Live. But if you go to the LOGIC church, that is what sometimes happens. If you attend the Island service, you may even experience a special crossover episode with real life stars from Instagram, and real life talking points from Twitter. Ah, sweet man-made horrors beyond my comprehension.

The first service I attended was on the Island, and it had interesting quirks. They had their own special terms (GIST stands for God Is Still Talking, actually), and had a very interesting service. There was a news of the week reel to update us on the church’s comings and goings. You may imagine that such a segment would take maybe 5 minutes, but it took more than ten.

During the segment, we learn of a Bible competition with a take-home prize of 2.5 million naira. When I hear this, I chuckle as the week prior Dangote had announced a research prize for 1.5 million. Indeed, what God cannot do does not exist.

Another quirk of the Island service was recognizing many, many famous people in the Nigerian entertainment scene. Every other face was some skit maker with 300k followers on Instagram and TikTok, and it fascinated me so. But the most interesting quirk, to me, is the speed at which the sermon often wanders into online talking points.

Right out of the gate, you can deduce the pastor referencing his haters and enemies who are insulting his (or the) gospel. For instance, instead of just asking people to turn to the book of Matthew like a normal person, he says something like this; you know they said our gospel is only from Paul, and that we should focus on the words of God — well, let us see what Jesus himself says.

Now, that may be interesting on the first listen, but by the tenth appeal to the haters, it gets ridiculous. Not just because it added nothing to the sermon, but because it seemed somewhat mean spirited, which is a quality I wouldn’t want to see on the pulpit.

Of course, members can counter by arguing that the church is often the subject of even more mean spirited insults, and that would be true. But I wonder what Jesus would do if he found himself in that situation.

The interesting thing about this quirk is that it is also found in other branches of the church. I went to the mainland branch for a couple of Sundays as well, and the interesting references to haters and enemies and the open mockery from the pulpit remained.

At some point, and God forgive me for saying this, the service felt like a Twitter comment section. I feel that if you feel so strongly about people hating on you online, you should put the sermon in a Twitter thread and be done with it. It feels cleaner that way.

The entire service seemed like it was produced to be experienced online. Almost everyone was making videos during the service, and you get the sense that this was encouraged right from the pulpit. Now, I understand this attitude, as social media is the best marketing tool any church can have. In fact, if one truly considers the great commission, christians are supposed to be marketers par excellence. However, I feel this displays a level of irreverence towards God that even I (noted irreverent of the divine) felt uncomfortable with.

My (some say unreasonable, but that is because they cannot be reasoned with) pet peeve is hearing gist from the internet in church. It is so on account of the fact that I hate to be reminded of our collective failures as a species while in the presence of God. Therefore you can imagine my horror when the pastor starts referencing an Olodo Uprising and arguing, quite interestingly, that the Olodos are uprising because they don’t know the gospel. He adds that the Olodos are doubly cursed to be Olodos because they do not talk Bible, they talk feelings.

What does that even mean, I wonder. I hear you sir!!, someone in the audience screams. The duality of man.

On my first Sunday at the mainland service, I enter the compound and someone is hyping me up and taking a video of me. I did not know this at the time, and completely ignored them. I might have a few thousand subscribers on my poor substack, but I am surely not that popular. Why would anyone care about making a video of me?

The woman doing the video took this in her stride, and immediately started doing the same thing to another fellow. That is when I realized that this was just a thing they did, and my notoriety on the internet had nothing to do with it. The fellow being hyped was a good sport about it, and she even did a dramatic twirl for the camera. Not everyone will be a cranky 80 year old in the body of a young man like Mr Elewa. It is just as well.

I must have fallen in love a hundred times across my time there — at every turn was a nice Christian lady I would love to marry. I wondered whether a poor person wouldn’t feel intimidated by all the lights and aura, but I suppose it comes with the territory these days. Churches cannot reasonably tell members to not look as good as they want, so the poors (like me) will have to suck it up or find another church — a solution I believe many already take.

My next huge shock was entering the hall and finding not one — not two — but many boys putting on facecaps of different sizes and styles. I grew up in a conservative church, and as such I know the rules for headgear in church; men mustn’t cover their heads, and women must cover theirs.

My explanation as a young boy for that rule was this; men shouldn’t cover their heads so that the word of God can enter and soften their very hard mind, and women should cover theirs because they have enough of God’s spirit already and more would only make them mad. It was a stupid heuristic (but is it really? wetin u dey think though?), but it’s as good an explainer as you will get from any conservative preacher.

At first I was irritated at this blatant show of disrespect in the house of God, but over the course of the service I began interrogating my own biases. What is really the big deal about men wearing caps in church? It isn’t like the women wore any headgear either. During that particular service, the pastor was talking about how many modern day christians are actually no different from Pharisees, and I wondered if I was the same. Isn’t this the same sort of thing a pharisee would be irritated with?

I think I would make a good pharisee, now that I think about it. Born too late to be a pharisee, born right in time for AI to steal my job. Fantastic timing.

In any case, the headgear rules all seem like man-made ideas that God likely wouldn’t give a shit about, right? And if God doesn’t give a shit about those rules, he likely also wouldn’t give a shit about church ushers wearing sunglasses indoors, which is, to me anyway, an even worse sin than wearing a face-cap in church. God’s mercies may be everlasting, but fashion isn’t that forgiving.

Holiness, I learn at the LOGIC church, isn’t a function of what we do or how we conduct ourselves, but a characteristic of the position we are in with God. Therefore, someone who believes in God, is already holy, no matter what they do. The evidence for this claim is shockingly exhaustive.

The first line we have is from the Old Testament, where God tells Moses he is on holy ground. How can a ground be holy, asks the preacher. Did the ground do anything to get that holiness? Of course it didn’t. The principle we learn here is that God bestows holiness on people, and their action or inaction isn’t a part of that calculus. Before he continues, the pastor warns us that logical explanations and definitions are not always accurate with biblical interpretations. But I wonder why he said that disclaimer — his argument, as he was putting it forward, seemed rather logical to me. Precisely what I would expect from a LOGIC church, in fact.

Before we get on, the preacher tells us that the English translations of the Bible can be rubbish actually, and to get deeper knowledge we need to understand the original context. Regardless of the truth of that claim in any specific verse, I think christians ought to know that this idea categorically questions the sovereignty of God. If we believe that the Bible, as a canon, is actually divine, then it must have come to us via providence — that is, what is in it means exactly what we interpret it to be. If the “true meaning” has to be discerned by walking back a few steps on the journey, then we question the providence.

Secondly, the “original scriptures” that the Bible was translated from, are not original in any real sense of the word. Most of the books were written decades after the events, and the history of the textual transmission of the New Testament is so convoluted that people who believe translating select words back to the “original greek” to get the “real meaning” are, at the very least, working on a faulty theory.

For instance, the King James Bible, which is the “oldest” translation of the Bible, is actually translated from sources that are newer than the new translations of the Bible today. The point here is that the assumption that you can reverse-engineer an unambiguous “original meaning” by looking up individual Greek words is A) theoretically faulty even if correct by accident and B) People who play it aren’t equipped to play it.

In any case, one wonders why the pastor has to tell us all this in the first place. What fresh hell are we about to learn, I wonder. Well, we are about to learn about Judas.

“You know they say we don’t teach holiness. All these christocentric people, you don’t teach about holiness.”

“Judas did everything religion teaches us to do, yet he wasn’t saved”

What do you think the word repent means? Do you believe it means restitution and forgiveness? Well, you happen to be a fool if you think that. If you cheated in an exam, and you’d like to repent, do you need to go and confess that you cheated? Are you literally Judas?

You see, Judas was just someone like us. He had walked with Jesus for a long time, and had probably seen Jesus come back from incredible odds. In Luke 4:28, we learn how Jesus miraculously escaped a crowd trying to throw him off a cliff. In John 8:59, he escapes another crowd that tries to stone him to death. In John 10:31, he escapes yet another crowd.

From the foregoing, we can see why Judas may have reasonably expected Jesus to escape after he kissed him on the cheek. However, that didn’t happen, and the son of man was crucified. Judas, upon learning this, is so struck with grief that he tries to return the payment he got for betraying Jesus. This, our pastor tells us, is the classic case for restitution. Judas sinned, tried to repent through restitution, was unsuccessful, and he killed himself.

The point he tries to make here is that the Bible — Matthew specifically — describes Judas’ repentance as Metamelomai not Metanoia. Both words, as you may guess, broadly mean repentance, but Metamelomai means regretting one’s action, which often leads to restitution, and Metanoia, which is the word mostly used for repentance in the Bible, means changing your mind towards God. Judas, like we often do, regretted his action, but didn’t change his mind towards God. Because he did one and not the other, he killed himself.

How do we know this? How can we reach this conclusion? Because of the one greek word used there, can you not read?

You see, if Judas had understood the gospel to the extent that the LOGIC church preaches it, he wouldn’t have killed himself because he would understand that Jesus was going to resurrect anyway. But because his restitution — which were his works — was what he based his repentance on, it wasn’t sufficient. In truth, Judas could have been proud of himself since it was through his betrayal that salvation came to the world. But he metalomied and didn’t metanoia. Too bad.

Oh, no greater love can a man have than this; to betray his master for thirty silver coins, get bummed out when his master allowed himself get arrested instead of performing magic, repent and throw the coins at the temple, then find a sturdy branch to hang himself — all for the salvation of the world.

But how does this relate to holiness, you ask. Very good question.

What do you think the word holiness in the Bible means? Do you think it means sinlessness? Righteousness? What are you, some sort of retard who cannot read Hebrew?

The Hebrew word for holiness is Kadesh, and Kadesh means apartness, separateness, sanctification and sacredness. There is nothing that tells us the word Kadesh means sinlessness. Of course, you may wonder what the word describes being apart from, but that is because you don’t have the holy spirit. If you had the holy spirit, you would know this obvious question is irrelevant to the point.

The evidence for this claim is similarly exhaustive. When Jesus is about to be crucified, he says he will sanctify himself for our sake. If sanctification truly meant sinlessness, would that mean that Jesus was washing himself of sin? Of what sin? There is certainly no other way to interpret that verse. Indeed, there is no mention of sinlessness in the Bible.

Therefore, holiness is a position with God, not an action or a state of being. A person who commits no sin can be unholy if they are apart from God, and one who commits a lot of sin can be holy as long as they believe in God. This, of course, the preacher stresses, isn’t the ideal case — but it is the truth nonetheless.

Furthermore, children of God — true believers, that is, do not actually need to fear rapture. Take a look at 1st Thessalonians 5 2-5.

2For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.

3While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.

4But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;

Since believers are holy regardless of what they do, there is no chance that rapture would take them by surprise. To further substantiate his point, the preacher gives us the analogy of the Air Force 1. His argument is that Air Force 1 doesn’t refer to an actual plane, but any plane the United States President is on. Therefore, holiness doesn’t refer to an actual act or state of being, but anywhere God is. If even common dirt can be holy because God is there, why can’t we?

If you are some big brained theologian, you may think all of this is silly actually. But if it’s so silly, and so wrong, and so heretical, can you explain Romans 11:6? In fact, the entirety of Romans 11? In which Paul tells us that only unbelief engineers a change in position? And as long as we are in position, we are holy? What of Ephesians 1:4 that implies this exactly? It’s not so funny anymore, is it?

To end the service, he does sui on the pulpit.

Are you not entertained, simple yes or no?

But this was the dosage of preaching of just one Sunday. On another Sunday, we learn the difference between the law and grace. You see, grace doesn’t only remove the necessity of sacrifice for the redemption of sin, it also removes the necessity for good works.

“Tell your neighbor stop flirting with the law… you are dead to your ex, stay with your new man”

The law, which we may understand as the old covenant, is bad because it reverses your psychology into doing what is prohibited. That is, people commit even more sins because they are told not to commit sin. People similarly commit crime because the law warns them not to.

Unfortunately, this is a strawman that I recognized immediately. No christian preacher preaches “the law”. To be a Christian is to definitionally believe in the covenant of grace. But a belief in grace doesn’t necessarily infer a belief in grace no matter what you do. I suppose that is why this gospel is called hyper grace, much in the same way straight people who wouldn’t get involved with trans or bisexual people are called super-straight. Strange analogy, but it works if you really think about it.

In another service, we learn that when Jesus tells the adulterous woman to go and sin no more, he wasn’t giving her an instruction, instead he was empowering her. From that moment on, she basically lost the desire to sin.

As I looked around me and saw people nodding, I wondered at the second order effects of believing this gospel. If, for instance, God could subvert anyone’s nature by removing their ability to sin, it would mean there is no actual difference between sinners and non sinners but the grace of God. That sounds good enough to believe — in fact, it seems to be the right christian understanding of the matter — but do people seriously believe it? Do they seriously think the only difference between them and a serial killer, for instance, is the grace of God? That the only difference between someone like Shekau and them is their faith? Is that truly the way they think about the world? Or is this just some word game they play on Sundays to feel good about themselves? Who knows? Who can tell?

“Everytime you go back to the law, you’re a lawman because you’re packing dirty”.

The incredible thing, to me at least, is how every sermon is the same. At my conservative church, every sermon has a different theme. You never know what the pastor plans to talk about. However, every sermon at LOGIC was about how you don’t have to worry about sin and how God has given you everything you could ever want, and all you need to do is to reach out and grab it.

There are fifty two Sundays in a year, how can someone dream up a different sermon with the same theme every week for fifty two Sundays, I thought. But that was foolish — the Bible is a large book. Moreover, it is harder to stay on doctrinal point every Sunday than it is to turn Sunday services into a coursework of moral lessons.

James 4:13–16 (KJV) reads:

13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.

If my grasp of English is right, this verse says, quite frankly, that God’s will is A) Not in the whims of man and B) superior to those of believers. James is speaking to a gathering of Christians here, and he tells them that nothing is a given — even living — and that mere words of their mouth doesn’t control their destinies. Again, I might be wrong, but this seems a sensible interpretation of the verse.

If you agree, LOGIC isn’t the church for you. While they don’t quite think you are Christian superman like Christ Embassy, there is no reason why they cannot assume that position.

Both branches I attended took this idea, backed up by Jesus’s admonishment for earth bending, as a given. You really needed to decree and declare if you wanted something. This doctrine wasn’t all that new to me, after all I had attended Winners for a large part of my childhood, and that is what the church is all about.

However, it is only recently that I learnt that the entire word of faith doctrine — despite its safe alibi in biblical earth bending — is merely a century old. It was mostly propagated by a preacher named E. W. Kenyon (1867–1948), and later Kenneth Hagin spread it across the world like a modern day Paul.

None of the early church fathers believed that one could be assured of anything by decreeing and declaring. It is unlikely that any of the apostles (else we have had 19 hundred years of the Bible being blatantly misinterpreted) believed it either. Yet, every other Sunday Nigerian Christians are taught that they could indeed decree and declare whatever they wanted and it would come to pass. Why wouldn’t it? After all, they are joint heirs of Christ, the very children of God. And in all honesty, can you blame them? Didn’t the Bible also say what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven?

If, after the Sunday at the first service, someone had walked up to me and informed me that the church had an aura maxxing department, I would have believed. It was that good. The aura was incredible. Even the tagline for new comers sounds like a pick-up line. Serious.

You actually have to attend to understand. Serious. I could write about it but you just wouldn’t get it.

The big argument against this type of gospel is that they are an invitation — or at least an excuse — to sin. That is true, but it really doesn’t matter as long as it is the correct interpretation. If the truth encourages people to sin, that is a problem with them, not with the truth. Aside from that, there are some reasons to dispute even that argument on its merits.

Firstly, is there any evidence that hypergrace churches contain — or encourage — more sin per capita than other ordinary-grace churches? While it may be possible, I don’t think there is any actual evidence to that effect. A lot of the scandals in the Nigerian pentecostal community comes from traditional churches with conservative values.

Secondly, people who make the argument often only relate it to sexual sin, which is the one type of sin that seems to animate everyone. But it seems foolhardy to assume that would be the view God takes of the situation. Other types of sin — gluttony, pride, covetousness — are allowed to run rampant in the christian community without anyone batting an eye. But when it comes to hypergrace churches, everyone has an opinion on the sin-o-meter. I think that is a bit silly.

One big problem with Nigerian pentecostalism of many churches is the total lack of a doctrine. Every church preaches Christ. Every Church preaches redemption. Every church preaches the real and true Bible. Every church is about the deeper Christian life. All churches want you to win. Every single one wants you to be redeemed.

Since there is hardly a collation of doctrinal positions anywhere, everyone just believes whatever they want to believe, and a “big church” may have hundreds of pastors preaching mutually exclusive interpretations of the Bible every Sunday. Even worse, the head pastor may contradict himself in different services in the same month. Some really gifted orators can even do it on the same day, and the true savants may do it in the same sermon. No one cares. After all, every church preaches Christ. They all say they do anyway.

The same is true for LOGIC. While you certainly have a vague understanding of the general trend of the doctrine, the positions are not collated in any real sense. This is in great contrast to the Catholic Church and even Jehovah’s Witness, which are both Christian traditions that have A) answered every conceivable question on their doctrine and B) Have strict control over what parts of scripture is up for interpretation, and what interpretation may be derived. Of course, the churches I list as examples are extremely old, and the LOGIC church is just five years old, so maybe it would be unreasonable to expect that from them. However, this same shortcoming can be found in most pentecostal Nigerian churches, even the biggest ones.

The larger point, though, is that Nigerian pentecostal christian doctrine is so convoluted that the fact there is a uniform body called the PFN where they all call themselves brethren in public is incredible. It would be just as reasonable as Catholic bishops and Cele Wolis to belong to the same association.

Of course, we all worship the same God. But do we really? The truth is, given the vast differences in doctrine between these churches, and the mutually exclusive nature of the truth, someone here has to be committing some unbelievable heresy. Who is it? Who can tell? Who is brave enough to call a spade a spade?

Unfortunately, I do not have enough aura to regularly attend the LOGIC church. Additionally, it is so far away from my house that the trip is agonizing. I am not sure where I stand with hypergrace. It would certainly make the lives of many easier, as it would mean they no longer need to fear hell. However, it is so different from every variation of mainstream gospel I have heard that I believe it is of the same doctrinal quality as the Great Apostasy that the Jehovah’s Witnesses swear by. I certainly don’t think the church’s doctrines are similar enough to be housed in the same home as mainstream christianity, warts and all.

If you just attend church for somewhere to be, people to talk to, and a vague feeling that you have held on to your side of whatever bargain with God, there aren’t many churches better than LOGIC. If, in addition to this, you also have a debilitating fear of hell, then you really need to attend LOGIC. However, do not make the mistake of forgetting your aura at home.

It has been a crazy journey with all of you. I can’t believe it. To celebrate, I will be writing a special substack answering all your questions on anything here.

The Joys of Poverty

·

Jun 10

I recently lost my job (well, just one of them) and after lamenting to one of my friends, he told me to write a Substack about it and stop disturbing him. So here is the Substack.

Who's Afraid of a 50/50 Relationship?

·

December 1, 2025

In 2023, I wrote a much-liked review of ISWIS. I wrote the article only because I thought it would be a fun experience for me, and I only posted it on my Substack at the urging of friends. At the time, I had less than 500 subscribers, and I did not seriously expect people who didn’t know me to read it, so I was at liberty to be as *me* as possible.

Why I Am Not A Feminist

·

November 15, 2024

Last month, I published an article about why male feminists are stupid. Upon reading that article, one of my male friends told me he disagreed. He said he worked in an NGO that helps women and children, and that all the women in that NGO identified as feminists. How could feminism be wrong when feminists do so much good, he asked. Many people have also …