A brief recap:
When a man realizes he is a legalist, he can never escape his legalism by becoming an antinomian. Still, according to Ferguson, antinomianism is most often his answer.
This is because in his heart of hearts the antinomian is a legalist in disguise, trying to struggle free from his awful bonded spirit. He mistakenly binds his legal heart with new “chains of antinomianism”, Ferguson Lectures PDF, pg 43.
So, in the name of grace, the antinomians void the law as the medicine for their legalism.
The true answer
True grace in Christ knows no such voiding of the law. All things are one in Christ, the Creator, Redeemer and Mediator, Col. 3:11, Rom. 11:36.
According to Ferguson in chapter 8 of The Whole Christ, what both legalists and antinomians need is a new love for and obedience to the law, which Christ now mediates to his people in the gospel.
This is Christ’s gracious work in our salvation too. He reigns over all, and rules over our life. Christ mediates the law to us. Thus, he uses the law for our instruction; for our spiritual and even earthly good.
Only by understanding and tasting union with Christ himself by faith, can we have a right relationship to the law. Only by our union to Christ can we view the law as Jesus truly did. It was no legal burden to him; it was his delight. It was his bread, Deut. 8:3, Matt. 4:4, Luke 4:4. As his disciples, so it should be for us. There’s no ignoring Psalm 119.
“After all, the greatest joy of all the joys of being part of God’s people, and the only thing we truly need in order to experience life at its very best, forever is Jesus himself”. ~Allistair Begg
The perfect target
The footsteps of Jesus whom we are to follow were marked out with the law. He aimed for perfect obedience and never missed the target. He went through the narrow gate, and walked the narrow path perfectly. Jesus walked the narrowest way of all – the completely sacrificial way of the cross, Phil. 2:8.
Christ showed us the narrow path, he did not remove it. Thus, the narrow gate and a narrow path remains for us to walk as followers of Jesus, who went upon that path before us.
The narrow path is laid out for us in the law, our guide. After all, how else shall the young direct their way? What light should be their perfect guide?
What once only condemned us, now, through Christ, by grace, shows us the path of life. Only on this path will we honor and glorify God, win others to Christ, and build up each other in the faith.
And this path is also the Path of Life; our sanctified walk, Matt 7:13-14. God prepares us for our place in glory through sanctification.
Should we depend only on our finite human understanding of God’s great holiness to guide our life here below? Or our subjective experience of God’s goodness? Should we rely on our fleeting gratitude to inspire us to walk according to the law?
Shouldn’t we rather see the law as Jesus did? As the perfect explanation of God’s holiness? Should we not look at the law and follow the example of our Savior’s obedient life? The law shows us the perfect mark where our aim in life should be. Without it, we miss the mark completely.
Grace for the legalist
The legalist would see the grace of the law by seeing that the Spirit works in us a new love for and obedience to the law. Thus, the law is no longer divorced from the person of Christ.
He no longer must obey to earn or even maintain God’s gracious attitude toward him. The Spirit works in us the proper love for the law to see the gracious character of God instead of an austere and vengeful deity. A deity who might fall out of love with us if we ‘drop the ball’.
The legalist always knew that the path of Life is narrow. But now by grace, the yolk of obedience is light. It becomes light because of the work of Christ in sanctification which causes him to dutifully obey out of love, by faith, and according to the law.
Formerly, his bonded will tried to obey by the beggarly, limited, self-power of his bootstraps. Now, his freed will obeys by the power of faith.
Grace for the antinomian
The antinomian would see the grace of the law by seeing that the law comes to him from the hand of Christ. Thus, the law comes by the empowerment of the Spirit, who writes it in his heart.
The Spirit powerfully enjoins the christian to not only desire to obey, but to truly obey; albeit in a small and new-beginning way.
The antinomian’s wholesale removal of the law denies the presence of the narrow path and the narrow gate. He teaches that remaining on the wide path is fine; even making him better able to ‘truly see’ all that Christ covered for him.
But now, by grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, he can see the narrow path clearly as the path of Life. He sees this path as the holy way to live until we are called home.
Formerly, the antinomian could only see his sin and hate it, but he was not free to purposefully live for Christ on the narrow path. Now he can hate his sin and freely live a new and godly life for Christ.
A word about the work of the Spirit
This Spirit is a real Person who empowers believers by grace through faith. He is not a ‘power’ that we harness ourselves. Because of our union with Christ, we believe that the power of the Spirit is real and alive in us.
This power of the Spirit is the link between God turning us and our turning. This is what Andy questioned at Synod 2017 where he asked, ‘What happens between when God turns us, and then we turn?’ He struggled.
Answer: the power of the Spirit happens. The Spirit powerfully carries salvation through from God, into us. The Spirit’s power sweetly takes us from God’s turning us to us turning from sin and death unto God in Christ, Psalm 80, Lam. 5:21, H. Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, 1966, pg. 555. Odd that Andy did not know this.
Antinomianism’s blindness
The antinomian cannot see that unconditional grace involves us in the most unconditioned, serious obligations to the God who has redeemed us.
The result is that for the antinomian, sanctification becomes merely ‘resting in our justification’ because he fears falling back into legalism.
The antinomian cannot see that Christ did what the law could not do so that what the law could not do in and by itself, God might do in us by the power of his Spirit. It is this power, through faith, whereby we obey the law. The ‘power’ does not obey for us. Rather, it is the power through faith whereby we fulfill the just requirements of the law, Romans 8:4-5.
We are unconditionally slaves, servants to righteousness, Rom. 6:18-19, 22-23. Our service is the unconditional service of a friend, John 15:15. This unconditional service to righteousness is ours by adoption, being made sons of God, Rom. 8:11-15.
Both the antinomian and the legalist are blind to the grace of God, and to the gospel. The very gospel that makes men not like themselves, not even like their best self; but like Jesus.
Both are blind to the gospel-word that teaches how Jesus Christ conforms the saved believer to His image, not any version of their own image. The ‘how’ is through sanctification by the Spirit, and the power of living by faith in the promises of God, Heb. 11, especially verse 6.
