We‘ve learned how mankind naturally tends towards the bareness of legalism since the Fall.
A recap
In Eden, Satan did exactly what the apostle Paul describes in Romans 7:11 ‘sin, seizing opportunity by the commandment, deceived me and killed me’. Satan is the person behind the sin that Paul speaks of in that text.
Satan used the good commandment that God gave and deceived Eve about the nature of the commandment giver. This in turn produced in her a legal frame of mind. This expressed itself when she overstated the command as God gave it. She added the extra ‘neither shall ye touch it’.
A spirit of bondage came with her legal frame of thinking. The bondage led to death. Eve saw only one law – the negative one; and not the many blessings of God’s commands (Gen. 1:28-29). She saw only prohibition and not the heavenly Father that God was. She no longer saw God as the gracious person, full of wisdom and love.
Satan found a landing place in her heart and mind to make God appear harsh, demanding, and austere.
Ever since then, Satan has been using the law to keep us in a legal frame of spirit. He continues driving people to keep the law as a contract. He continues pressing down on our failure to keep the terms of the law. Thus, he confirms our worst fears about our relationship to God. He blackmails us into further bondage in our legalism.
We hear the Evil One whisper, ‘Look, you have sinned. You have broken God’s law. You are under condemnation. Therefore, you are not qualified to be a believer’. See how he implies that we must make ourselves ‘qualified’ first? He is bent on destroying the relationship we have in God through Christ.
The law’s power
When Eve separated God’s gracious character from his law and disobeyed the law; the law was no longer a blessing to her. Instead, it now had a sinister power over her as Paul describes in Romans 7. Since then, the law retains its power over us, death retains its sting, and sin retains its strength against us. We allow this when we listen to our legalist mindset.
Even Dewey admitted that his legalism drew him ever-downward; this is a true and real thing.
To be free of the law’s judgment we must be dead to the law as a covenant of works, a contract to be met.
Dead to the law
Does that mean that the law no longer serves a purpose for the Christian? Did Christ redeem us from obedience to it? Does New Testament grace overtake the law and establish a brand-new covenant where all language of ‘must’ is outdated? Some during the Reformation thought so.
Johannes Agricola began to drive the great preaching of free grace to humanly logical conclusions that were not biblical. He took what Luther taught about free grace and began to speak about the believer as being entirely free from law. For Agricola, this included the moral law of God, the Decalogue which Moses received. He insisted the law was no longer binding on Christians as a rule of life.
Thus enters the final, and most erroneous answer to ‘Now what?’
Enter: Antinomianism
Some legalists cure their legalism with the thing they view as legalism’s opposite: antinomianism.
The legalist was infatuated with the law. He felt he could keep it enough to serve his purposes. The legalist, now turned antinomian, formerly saw the law as a rigorous pathway to grace. But, now he sees the law as opposing the grace of the gospel.
Remember, legalism does oppose grace. The legalist too is opposed to grace by his view and use of the law. So, to the former legalist, the law itself now threatens grace. He was infatuated with the law, and now he thinks he must hate the law in order to love the gospel.
Thus, the antinomian starts out a very determined and diligent legalist. Dewey admits his determined diligence and its ladder-climbing qualities. Rather than fully embracing the true opposite of legalism which is grace in Christ Jesus, the legalist turns to antinomianism. Thus, antinomianism becomes the medicine for a legalist’s legalism once he realizes his legalism.
According to Ferguson, this was a key insight of the 12 Marrow men: every Christian is by nature a legalist; and every antinomian is actually a legalist, trying to escape from their legalism.
The antinomian principle
According to Thomas Boston, “The antinomian principle is that it is needless for a man, perfectly justified by faith, to endeavor to keep the law and do good works”. In other words, there is no ‘necessary’ good works. All ‘must’ and ‘necessity’ belong only to the law. Therefore, all preaching of ‘must’, ‘necessity’, a ‘calling to do’ good works, and ‘demands of obedience’ are legalism.
This antinomian principle is based on a very biblical and true premise.
The true premise
The true premise is that where sin abounds, grace superabounds over it; grace is always ‘larger’ than sin. Always. That grace super abounds over sin, is a premise that is biblical, apostolic, and true. It comes from the very heart of the gospel and the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The second true premise is that justification is finished. The state and level of your justification does not change from the first day of your justification to the last day of your life. This too is the heart of the gospel, full justification is declared and finished! In the reformed teachings justification does not progress.
The third true premise is that grace is always free.
The false conclusion
The true premise that grace is always free and we do nothing to receive it, leads the antinomian to say ‘then good works are not necessary. Requiring obedience threatens the freeness of grace’.
The true premise that our justification is finished and Christ’s work for us is accomplished, leads the antinomian to say that salvation itself is finished and that sanctification is merely remembering and resting in our justification. As Tullian Tchividjian writes, “sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification. It’s going back to the certainty of our objectively secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button a thousand times a day. …real spiritual progress … requires a daily going backwards”, Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything, 2011, pg 95.
The true premise that even where sin is very great, grace is still greater, leads the antinomian to say ‘what I do in this life really does not matter because I am under grace’, or even, ‘therefore we may go on in our sin’, or ‘we may sin to our heart’s content’. Some go so far as to preach ‘sin boldly!’; this includes Andy and Nate.
An old debate
The debate over the role of the law in the life of the believer was mostly an academic argument between theological scholars during the time of Luther. But it eventually threatened the reputation of the Reformation. And, it injected into the Reformation a concern for any erroneous conclusions regarding the issue. Any theology that casts the law in a poor light continues to be viewed as the first domino in a series to fall, leading to total collapse.
Different waves followed over the years. But the simplest way to think of antinomianism is that it denies the role of the law in the Christian life. The favorite proof text of antinomianism is Romans 6:14, “you are not under the law but under grace”.
The term antinomian may never be used as slander against someone. And, drawing the charge from others should always make one examine oneself. It isn’t always a ‘red herring’.
