Theological antinomians simply fear that the effort of spiritual growing might be more spiritually damaging than staying where they are.
They consider spiritual growth through effort in obedience to the law as a slippery slope back to their old legalism. Thus, they teach that if God wants one to do good works, His sovereignty will cause these works to occur. The believers themselves must make no effort towards those works.
Doctrinally
The antinomian places great emphasis on the prevenient, eternal, electing, distinguishing grace of God. To them, requiring obedience to the law clashes with the mighty grace of God.
They emphasize that justification is eternal; and our ‘justification in time’ is merely an expression of that eternal justification. They teach an immediate assurance experienced only by the indwelling witness of the Holy Spirit, almost apart from faith.
For them, any assurance certainly must be apart from Spirit-worked holy obedience in life. Otherwise, they will surely get led back into their old legalism.
The antinomian claims that they have ‘the redemption of God changing them and shaping them. What need of law?’
The consequence
So, the consequence of these views is that the law of God in all its objectivity, doesn’t apply to the Christian. There is no need for an objective standard for such a believer who is so in grace.
But scripture teaches that we are to guard our freedom and our redemption. We guard it exactly because we are being renewed by Christ in our sanctification. That’s Lord’s Day 32.
Jehovah says, ‘you shall have no other gods before me. You shall live a life that is worthy of the calling you have in Christ. And here are my ten great words to you to direct you in the way in which you should live’. The Heidelberg Catechism goes on to flesh that out for us.
So, the great error of the antinomians is to rip apart the things that God had joined together in his inspired Word: the law from our daily life.
Scripturally
The idea of the three-fold division of the law goes at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas. But, to antinomian thinking, the three-fold division was imposed on scripture. The Mosaic law is simply one law code for that epoch, and not for this one.
For the antinomian, the law is Old Testament stuff. Thus, for the antinomian, the law only ever says: ‘obey, or else!’.
Nor does it help to tell the antinomian that the Spirit’s mighty work of grace in him empowers him to keep the law. Because, for the former legalist turned antinomian, the law always opposes grace.
So, antinomian teaching sets the law over against grace in rigid and independant terms. Antinomians take Paul’s contrast of a ‘slave now made a son’ as teaching absolute opposites. But Paul is making a comparative difference. For Paul, the law had glory, and grace had more glory. Obedience as a slave was right and good. Obedience as a son is right, good, and glorious for both Father and son.
A lost distinction
For the antinomian, sanctification must exist within justification to avoid legalism. To antinomianism, the definition, experience, and purpose of sanctification is ‘seeing and knowing ourselves as a sinner before God’. This employs only the first use of the law (Lutherans label this the 2nd use). Because of his lost distinction, this is the only use, or role for the law that the antinomian permits.
But, the Westminster Confession (19.6) teaches that while the law is not a ‘covenant of works’ to the believer as something he must do to earn salvation, the law remains as a rule of life for the believer, Gal. 3:16-18. He is not bound to the law as though it were a covenant of works to earn or maintain salvation. That’s because even at Sinai the law was never a covenant of works, Gal. 4: 22-30.
Christ’s work of sanctification breaks the bondage and power of sin. Thus, the believer is freed from that bondage. He is freed in order that he may obey the law as he lives by faith. But faith does not free him from required obedience. So, throughout his pilgrimage, the believer remains bound to the law as a rule for his life. And it is this binding that antinomianism denies.
A lost mirror
And, because of this antinomian viewpoint regarding the use of the law, the law is not a mirror for believers. They do not look at the law to test themselves according to the work of the Spirit of grace.
Thus, there are no ethical imperatives in the life of the antinomian believer. No fruits are necessary as the evidencing signs of the work of the mighty Spirit within him.
The resulting Easy-Believism of simply knowing one’s self as a sinner, replaces a holy, obedient walk. And, being doctrinally right takes the place of the fruit of the Spirit.
In contrast to Paul, both legalists and antinomians see the law as the problem. But Paul is at pains to point out that sin, and not the law is the root issue, Romans 5:12. Paul says in Romans 7:12 & 14, the law is holy, just, good, and spiritual.
The remedy for sin is neither the law, nor its overthrow.
The remedy is grace; Romans 5:12-21. Grace as set in context of union with Christ; Romans 6:1-14. That union whereby we are dead to sin, not to the law.
Antinomianism ignores the fact that on this side of the grave we remain tainted by sin. We continue to struggle with a divided heart.
Practically
The antinomian does not concern himself with pleasing or displeasing God because he is justified from eternity. He safely says, ‘it doesn’t matter what I do because I am not under the law; I am under grace’. He says, ‘God accepts me the way I am so I ought not get straight-jacketed in the law of God. I ought to be myself, even my worst self’. He declares, ‘God accepted me even as a depraved sinner. Therefore, I will remain as I am’.
His only ‘must’ is that he looks to and rests in his justification.
The teaching that the law has nothing to say in the New Testament dispensation of grace changes the nature and purpose of sanctification: to be more Christ-like.
Paul writes in Rom. 3:31 that we establish the law. Matthew Henry explains Paul’s assertion. He writes, “though we do say that the law will not justify us, yet we do not therefore say that it was given in vain, or is of no use to us; no, we establish the right use of the law, and secure its standing, by fixing it on the right basis. The law is still of use to convince us of what is past, and to direct us for the future; though we cannot be saved by it as a covenant, yet we own it, and submit to it, as a rule in the hand of the Mediator, subordinate to the law of grace; and so are so far from overthrowing that we establish the law”. (emphasis MH).
