Tag Archives: legalism

05/4/21

The Full Assurance of Faith

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In his talk, “The Marrow of Assurance,” Sinclair Ferguson said one of the questions the church put to the men defending The Marrow of Modern Divinity was, is the assurance of salvation the essence of faith, or a byproduct of faith? “If you believe in Christ, does that mean you are certain to have full assurance of salvation?” If someone doesn’t enjoy full assurance of faith, are they still a Christian? At the very moment you come to faith In Jesus Christ, “do you have assurance?” If not, can you say you have really become a Christian?

From the days of the Marrow Controversy, and even before, this has been an issue that believers had to wrestle with and think through. “What does it mean to enjoy the full assurance of our salvation?” It can be a complex, complicated question. But the real complication is not in the gospel, but in ourselves.

For example, someone who has been abused may find it impossible to believe that somebody loves them. It would be a wonderful event for them to discover that Christ loves them. But they don’t have the mental and emotional framework to grasp how Christ could love them. “Nobody has ever really loved me. I see it tells me that in the Bible, and I trust him, but I don’t feel loved. I don’t feel the full assurance of faith.”

An all-or-nothing sense of assurance implies that if you’re not absolutely sure you’re saved, you’re not a Christian. Ferguson said, “The problem there is, that doesn’t really take account of the complex psychological makeup we have as individual Christians.” The gospel works equally in us all, but deals with different obstacles in each of us. God is both more patient and personal with us than we often are with each other.

Historically, we see in the early church an extraordinary outbreak of gospel power. Christ was raised from the dead. “What could have given the early disciples more assurance than that?” As Paul said in Romans 8:37, “We are more than conquerors through him who loves us.” They grasped that justification was by God’s free grace received by faith and enjoyed by the believer. But they also realized there were obstacles along the way.

As the centuries passed, some of the obstacles were put up by the church. By the sixth century, the church’s view was largely that while it may be possible to have assurance of salvation, that may not be such a good thing. Because people might begin to live any way they wanted. Church leaders forgot that salvation worked because God infused grace into a believer; and as we progress in life, He gives us more grace.

And as you respond to that grace faithfully, God gives you more grace. . . And as that grace continues to work in you, it changes you more and more. It’s like a medicine that has been put into you that increasingly heals you until eventually your faith is suffused with perfect love. And at that point, you become justifiable. And so God declares you justified on this basis, that He has worked in you by His grace to deliver you inwardly from sin. And so you are righteously justified because you’re righteous and therefore justifiable.

This “medicine,” the remedy for both legalism and antinomianism, is Jesus Christ. He dissolves our legalistic view of God by taking up the burden of our guilt and setting us free.  He empowers us by His Spirit, which is the promise of the new covenant. And He prevents us from veering off into antinomianism because He died in order to transform us into the likeness of His own image and make us living illustrations of the commandments of God.

The problem throughout the medieval period is represented by the story of Martin Luther’s struggle in coming to faith. He fought against doubt regarding his assurance. “How could I possibly know I’ve got to that stage where my faith has been perfected in perfect love, and that I am a righteous man or a righteous woman and therefore God can righteously justify me?” In his article, “Martin Luther on Assurance,” Joel Beeke said Luther ultimately found the grace of God in Christ, through whom forgiveness of sin was complete and not dependent on human merit. He quoted Luther, who said:

We must daily more and more endeavor to destroy at the root that pernicious error that man cannot know whether or not he is in a state of grace, by which the whole world is seduced. If we doubt God’s grace and do not believe that God is well-pleased in us for Christ’s sake, then we are denying that Christ has redeemed us—indeed, we question outright all his benefits.

Medieval teachers of this view of salvation could say, “God justifies us by grace.” But they could not say, “God justifies us on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.” If your justification was on the basis of a righteous that was taught to you rather than credited (imputed) to you, then only when that righteousness was perfected could you be justified. If you were asked if you knew whether or not you were going to heaven, your answer would be something like, “I hope I’ve done enough.” Within such a system of belief, it wasn’t actually possible to enjoy the assurance of salvation, unless you had lived a life that made you a candidate for sainthood, or you had a special revelation from God that you had been justified.

It was as if there was a great darkness covering the earth. There was a tiny minority who knew of their assurance of salvation. Everyday believers had no possibility of such assurance. “And then comes the Reformation.”

The story of the Reformation is that justification is given to us not on the basis of infused righteousness, but imputed righteousness. The righteousness of Jesus Christ, not something that Jesus Christ works in us, but what He had done for us. And that justification takes place at the very beginning of the Christian life. And it cannot be increased, and it cannot be destroyed. And from the very moment that we have become Christians, from that very moment we have become Christians, we are as righteous in the sight of God as Jesus Christ is.

To people brought up in the old theology, it’s a terrible thing to say you are as righteous before God as Jesus Christ. But if you don’t say that, then you don’t yet grasp what justification really is. The only righteousness with which we are righteous before God is Jesus Christ’s righteousness. We have no righteousness of our own. We are clothed in His righteousness.

This wonderful sense of assurance exists in a life that is full of difficulties. Therefore, it was often challenged. In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a great deal of discussion of this question. When we review the history of the Christian church, there is a single point to which Reformed Christians keep coming back.

Didn’t John Calvin say that assurance was the essence of faith? This is often affirmed by quoting a statement of his in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin said: “We will possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded on the truth of the freely given promise in Christ revealed to our minds, sealed in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” But Calvin wasn’t describing assurance here; he was defining faith. “That’s the definition that then has to be worked out in the laboratory of the conditions of our human experience as Christians.”

“It’s one thing for our assurance to be guaranteed in Christ, and it’s another thing for us to become conscious of that.” Assurance has something to do with us. Faith says that Christ saves, but assurance helps us realize something about ourselves. “Assurance is not only the way we think about Christ, it’s about the way we think about ourselves in relationship to Christ.” This is often challenged and questioned, especially by the devil.

When we sin, he points to the sin and says, “Can you possibly be a Christian with that kind of thing in your life?” Then the sense of assurance we have, the sense of poise that it brings, may diminish. There is a kind of assurance in faith, “but it is an assurance of Christ’s ability to save, or we wouldn’t actually be trusting Him. We trust Him because precisely He is able to save us.”

This is a reality that is progressively worked out in our lives. Some people experience the fruit of it almost immediately. Others, at times, will walk in gloom, as in Isaiah 59:9. Justice will be far from them and righteousness will not overtake them. Yet, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone” (Isaiah 9:2). They need to learn in the darkness to trust God.

 Until the light dawns and the shadows flee away, and we are able to say, ‘I know that nothing will ever be able to separate me from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 8:38-39).

This article has been based on “The Marrow of Assurance,” the 10th video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.

03/30/21

The Cure for Antinomianism

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Sinclair Ferguson opened his talk, “Cures for Antinomianism” by noting that legalism is a common problem in the Christian life. It was initially injected by the serpent into the relationship between God and Eve in the garden of Eden. The serpent “very subtly turns her into a legalist.” He did this by distorting the commandments of God, and giving Eve the sense that God was not a gracious God, giving them commandments for their benefit. Rather, He is a jealous God, one who doesn’t want any joy or happiness, who wants to restrict their lives. And the reaction that set in was that of antinomianism—going against the law.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, a number of teachers of the spiritual life have recognized that from the time of Adam and Eve antinomians were never fully and finally delivered from legalism. “Only the grace of God in the gospel can deliver us from legalism.” Ferguson pointed out the problem was not just that we don’t understand the gospel, we also don’t understand the law. “So, how should we understand the relationship that a Christian believer has to the law of God?”

In 1 Corinthians 9:20-21, Paul said he became “as a Jew,” that is he lived as though he was required to obey the Mosaic law, when he worked with Jews in order to win them to Christ. When ministering to Jews, Paul lived like a Jew even though he knew the ceremonial regulations were not binding or essential. When ministering to those “outside the law” (in other words to Gentiles or non-Jews), he lived as if he too were outside the law. Paul clarified that when he said he lived “outside the law” he was not saying he lived as an antinomian or without any law at all. Rather, he did it for the sake of the gospel, meaning he lived under the law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:23).

“We are not directly related to the law as though in order to be saved we needed to keep the law, because Christ has kept the law for us.” But as Paul said in Romans 7:4, like a married woman whose husband died, we also have died to the law through the body of Christ. This was so that we may belong “to him who has been raised from the dead.” Through faith, we are united to Christ by the ministry of the Spirit. As Ferguson said, “We are married to Christ” and “the law becomes our in-law.”

We can’t say to Christ, “I want You, but I don’t want Your Father’s commandments. I never really liked your Father’s commandments and they always condemned me.” And He says, “Marry me, and I will have borne all the judgment of God against your breach of the commandments, but marry Me and you will become the in-law of the law. The law and you through Me, will be related to one another.”

What Paul said in Romans 8:3-4 begins to become true. In Christ’s flesh, the law was fulfilled. Its penalties were fully paid in order that now, married to Christ through the Spirit, the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us “who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” The law and the gospel are harmonized in the person of Jesus Christ. This points us in the direction of the gospel cure for antinomianism. “The gospel cure for our antinomianism is our union with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, who in that bond leads us to love the law, and to be obedient to the law.”

At this point, Christians sometimes have difficulties. When you read through the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s letters and the letter to the Hebrews, there seems to be some negative things said about the law. The difficulty is that we need to think of New Testament Christians who had gone through the barrier between the old covenant and the new covenant as being like underaged children, as Paul did. “The law was our guardian until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24). We were heirs, but under guardians and managers. “None of the inheritance was actually coming to us” until the fullness of time when God sent forth his Son to redeem those who were under the law (Galatians 4:2-5).

“We are to understand that when the New Testament seems to speak critically of the law, it’s not an absolute statement. It’s really saying, now, look at how the law worked.” The commandments of God were surrounded by civil regulations and liturgical guidelines, so that you were restricted as children are restricted. God was saying, “It’s for your own good that I don’t just let you loose.” Now, when you look back on the Mosaic administration, the law in that sense, looks “as though they were the shadowlands, and now you’re beginning to live in the sunshine.”

And there is yet more to come. “We may be enjoying the Christian life now, but it’s little compared to the glory that is to be revealed.” Given that antinomians misunderstand the law of God, Ferguson thought it would be helpful to work through a series of stages in biblical theology that should help us appreciate why God gave the law, and how it functions. He began at Romans 2:14-15.

Ferguson said that in the creation of man, God wrote His law into our nature. Thinking about New Testament times, Paul said Gentiles may by nature do what the law requires, even though they do not have the law. “They are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.” He is saying you can see non-Jews, Gentiles, who live according to the commandments of God. “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.”

Instinctively we did what pleased God. Paul is saying that the image of God was not destroyed by the fall. However, it has been seriously marred by the fall. “But it shouldn’t surprise us that in every culture there will be echoes of those laws that God built into our constitution.” The Marrow of Modern Divinity put it this way: “Adam heard as much of the law in the garden as Israel did at Sinai, but only in fewer words and without thunder.”

The next stage is fallen man. “His mind is darkened; his heart is twisted.” Because he is the image of God, the law has been written into his life, but now it’s distorted. “It’s as though the mirror is smashed and broken, and the law of God is no longer clear.”  No matter how damaged they may seem to be, the works of the law are still written on the human heart.

So, what happens at Mount Sinai is that what was written on the heart and has now become unclear, is now made clear by God by writing it on tablets of stone. So that we can be in no doubt what the law of God that was originally written in our hearts was meant to say.

But we don’t live in the days of the old covenant. We live in the days of the new covenant and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We might then ask what was the promise of this covenant and what does the Holy Spirit do? “The promise of the new covenant is that when the Spirit of Christ comes and indwells believers … He writes the law of God into our hearts.” This law is the same law of God that was written for Israel and placed in the ark of the covenant (Exodus 25:16). “What the Spirit does, is transform us into the likeness of Jesus Christ that we may be restored to the likeness of the heavenly Father.”

This article has been based on “Cures for Antinomianism,” the ninth video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.

03/16/21

The Antinomian Is a Legalist

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As he began teaching in “Causes of Antinomianism, Sinclair Ferguson made a startling statement: “We are all legalists, and all antinomians are by nature legalists.” Most Christians, he said, would think the opposite of antinomianism was legalism. In a dictionary sense, that seems to be true; they seem to be opposites of one another. “But actually, the opposite of antinomianism is gospel. And the opposite of legalism is also gospel, or grace, or Jesus Christ.”

This statement suggests antinomianism and legalism are rooted in the same errors. But they respond differently “to the character of God.” Legalism divorces the law of God from the character of God. It sees the law of God as simply commandments, commandments not related to God’s loving generosity to us. Therefore, they are no longer suffused with God’s desire for our very best, with His concern that we should enjoy Him and enjoy living for His glory. The is true of antinomianism.

Most antinomians think they are reacting against the crippling effects of the law of God in their life. “But actually, they’re really reacting against the gracious God who gave that law.” While the reactions pull us in different directions, they share the same sickness. That sickness goes back to Genesis 3, to the legalism that was generated in the heart of Eve. The serpent tempted her and distorted her understanding of God; he bent her sense of God’s generosity.

God gave Adam and Eve commandments to enjoy everything in the Garden. As for the one tree, it was as if He said, “Show Me that you really love Me by not eating the fruit of that tree.” You could almost say it was an incidental part of His commands. Ferguson said it was as if God said, “Just remember who your Father is by obeying this one command.” And then the whole state of affairs was turned on its head by the serpent.

“Both legalism and antinomianism are bad reactions to God’s graciousness.” At it happened with the Fall, it all begins with legalism. Individuals who become antinomians never really delivered their hearts from legalism. “It never really sets their hearts free from the spirit of bondage that their legalism had produced in the first place.” An individual who was once a legalist and then becomes an antinomian also seems to have had an exceedingly low view of the grace of Christ.

When we have a low view of the grace of Christ, it’s as if our “immune system” to legalism and antinomianism is weakened. This immune system “is the understanding of our union with Christ, and the grace of God and the favor of God upon us in Jesus Christ, the reality of our justification.” This God-given immune system keeps us from becoming imbalanced—either towards legalism or antinomianism. It helps us see that the grace of Christ, in union with Him, is the solvent that dissolves our legalism and antinomianism.

Ferguson said people are sometimes astonished when they hear him say, “we are all legalists at heart.” They are even more astonished if he says, “Antinomianism is simply a false escape from our legalism, and it doesn’t really deliver us.” But don’t simply take his word for it. Consider what a few of the ministers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, around the time of the Marrow Controversy, said about antinomianism.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691) wrote, “Antinomianism rose among us from an obscure preaching of evangelical grace, and insisting too much on tears and terrors.” Ferguson said Baxter was talking about the very thing that caused the Marrow Controversy (see “The Marrow of the Whole Christ”). In other words, preaching that insisted if you were going to come to Christ, you needed to have a radical, dramatic repentance experience. You needed to repent with tears and terrors. Sometimes these experiences were held up as models of how we should come to faith in Jesus Christ.

The problem was if you didn’t have the agonies of Martin Luther, or felt the burdens the pilgrim had in Pilgrim’s Progress, then people concluded they weren’t ready to come to Christ. Baxter was saying there was such an insistence on getting ready, that people never thought they were ready. “They could count their tears, but how could they know they had shed a sufficient number of tears to be ready to come to Christ?” Baxter supposed antinomianism arose as a result of the ambiguous preaching of evangelical grace. When the grace of God in Jesus Christ is not adequately preached or understood, he thought antinomianism results.

Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) was a minister in Scotland and one of the original Marrow Men. He said: “The greatest antinomian is actually the legalist.” Ferguson said Erskine had seen it in himself and in others. “It’s this whole idea that we try to dissolve our legalism but we use the wrong chemistry.” Instead of dissolving it, we just push it further down into our hearts, and remain legalists.

We see this when people take pride in their antinomianism—”dismissing and demeaning those who don’t have our liberties.” People enter into what they regard as the liberty of the way they live their lives, and they demean Christians who don’t do what they do. Doesn’t that remind you of the Pharisees? They didn’t realize how much they were still in bondage. Although he wasn’t thinking of them in particular when he wrote this, Thomas Boston (1676-1732) said:

This antinomian principle that it is needless for a man perfectly justified by faith to endeavor to keep the law and do good works, is a glaring evidence that legality is so engrained in mans’ corrupt nature that until a man truly come to Christ by faith, the legal disposition will still be reigning in him. Let him turn himself into what shape or be of what principles he will in religion, though he run into Antinomianism, he will carry along with him his legal spirit which will always be a slavish and unholy spirit.

The freedom of the gospel is a freedom for obedience. The gospel creates a freedom that makes obeying God a delight. Instead of the law feeling like a burden that weighs us down (as it felt before we became Christians), the law now feels as though it were our wings, helping us to fly. Consider the transformation of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2-10).

He was a rich, “chief tax collector.” Tax collectors were private subcontractors, as it were, for the Roman government. They earned a profit by demanding a higher tax from the people than was owed to the Roman government. This system led to widespread greed and corruption, as it did with Zacchaeus. Since the Jews considered themselves to be victims of Roman oppression, Jewish tax collectors like Zacchaeus were particularly despised. The Lexham Bible Dictionary said Rabbinic sources considered Jewish tax collectors to be robbers.

Zacchaeus told Jesus that he would restore fourfold to anyone he had defrauded. The law required only a fifth (Leviticus 6:5). Zacchaeus was going beyond what the law required, not because of the law, but because he found salvation; he was saved. “The commandment that he hated because he was breaking it became a commandment he began to love because he loved Christ. And the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ brought him into conformity with the Word and law of God.”

As he concludes his teaching video, Dr. Ferguson said: “We’ve been saying all along that both legalism and antinomianism fail to understand the gospel. But it is also true that both legalism and antinomianism fail to understand the law of God.” He asked us to recall how Paul wrestled with this Catch-22 in Romans 7. Paul spoke of the great sense he had that he was a sinner, and that he wanted to keep the law, but could not. You could say he was in the “prime position” to just forget about the law and become an antinomian. “In a sense, he felt that the law was his problem.”

But he came to a two-fold realization. The first realization was the law is good, God-given and spiritual. Paul emphasized this in verses 7, 12, and 14 of Romans 7. He was helping the Roman Christians—and us—to discover the law itself is good because it is God’s law. “The problem is not with the law. The problem is with me and my sin.” When he sees that, he then sees the way to deal with sin is not to get rid of the law and become an antinomian.

The way to deal with it comes at the end of the chapter (Romans 7:25), who will deliver me from this body of death, in which I continue to break the law and feel sometimes the law is accusing me as if it were my enemy? “Thanks for to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” His second realization was that grace deals with sin. “Not legalism or antinomianism, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ.”

This article has been based on Causes of Antinomianism the 8th video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.

12/29/20

The Grace Exposé

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In “Suspicious Symptoms,” the sixth video in the teaching series The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson reminded us of what Geerhardus Vos said of legalism—that it was a distortion of the relationship between the person of God, and the commandments of God. The commandments of God were turned into depersonalized rules, “rather than the Word of our loving, heavenly Father.” This leads to a distorted view of God’s generosity and kindness, and a contorted sense that He wants us to not only glorify Him, but enjoy Him forever. “He has made us so that we could have fellowship with Him, and He gives us directions, laws, in order that we may live for our pleasure and for his glory.”

Legalism is not simply a mental attitude. It creates an atmosphere in our lives. Like we see in the Pharisees, it creates in us a self-righteous temperament. But modern people have lost the sense of shock and surprise that would have occurred with his audience when Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. Jesus said the tax collector, not the Pharisee, was justified! “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Ferguson suggested we can recover that sense of the shock in the parable by recognizing how we are more like the Pharisee than the tax collector.

Consider this question to see if you are legalistic. Have you ever, like the Pharisee, looked down on someone else? Remember that you make a decision, you decide to become a Pharisee. Have you ever thought you were accepted by God because of a religious decision you made? “There are people who believe that they are justified because they had decided for Christ, not because Christ died for them on the cross.” That decision becomes the key factor in their justification: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11).

Why am I as an evangelical Christian, potentially more like the Pharisee than the tax collector? Because it may have been a long time before I’ve beaten my breast and said, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.”

Jesus compared and contrasted the Pharisee and the tax collector in order to expose the very human inability to understand and trust “in the absolute free grace of God in the gospel.” We tend to slip back into the idea that it was because of something we did, something in us that makes us acceptable to God. Ferguson said Jesus engaged in what he called the grace exposé. He showed it was not the person who thought he was more acceptable in the sight of God because of what grace had done in him. Rather, it was the person who knew he didn’t deserve grace, who walked away experiencing grace.

We see this also in the parable of the prodigal son (See “Ready for the Gospel”). Everyone in the village would have thought the father had lost his senses. They would have said instead of a feast, there should be a service to shame the younger boy; and another one to celebrate the faithfulness of the older son. We see how grace reverses that expectation. And it does something else—it really irritates the older brother. Jesus is making a big thing of showing grace to the undeserving son in order to illustrate, as we see in the older brother, how those who begin to think they are deserving of grace react to the unanticipated favor of God. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard makes the same point (Matthew 20:1-16).

The guys who have been laboring all day long … what really irritates them is they think they deserve more, when it was the employer’s good pleasure to distribute lavishly, graciously, to those who had contributed almost nothing. And it irritated them to see grace being extended to those who were, dare we say it, in their eyes less deserving than they themselves were.

When you hear these parables of Jesus and understand the way in which his audience would have heard them, you can sense the shock of what he said. Many of these people were overawed by the religious show of the Pharisees, but in the parables, they realized the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ. When you see that you are irritated by that grace, “when someone’s display of their consciousness of their sinfulness before a holy God embarrasses you, that may be one of the signs that this old legalistic spirit has crept back, and you’re resting on what you have accomplished.”

Legalism also creates a spirit of bondage in the Christian believer, because we can never fully keep the law of God. And therefore, the law of God that we think is the determinating fact of our relationship with God is always going to be an irritant to us, a burden to us, and we’re never going to be free from it.

This creates an atmosphere in our lives. Our life shows whether we are trusting in the Lord, have graciously repented of our sin, and know something of the sweetness of His grace. Or it shows if we’re always thinking of whether we’re truly qualified; whether other people have in fact qualified. “Somehow or another it creates the atmosphere of our lives, whether the gospel has really gone deep down.”

Whether we’ve really grasped the grace of God in the gospel or not—yes, it tells in our level of ability to articulate it. But the place in which it really tells is in the atmosphere. In the breath we breathe out every day by the grace of God. So may God deliver us from legalism and fill us with His grace.

This article has been based on “Suspicious Symptoms,” the sixth video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.

10/20/20

Wandering into Legalism

© Erin Donalson | 123rf.com

Sinclair Ferguson opened the fourth session of his teaching series on The Whole Christ, with a question: “When you’re so free in offering the gospel to people, aren’t you in danger of teaching them that the gospel is so free that they can go on and live any way they please?” In the New Testament, both Jesus and Paul were accused of this kind of thinking. The argument of some believers was in order to prevent this from happening, you should emphasize how people need to repent, and how important the law and obedience are in their lives. But a problem occurs when that obedience gets into a place where it doesn’t really belong, and begins to obscure Christ.

Advocates of the initial importance of repentance for salvation say, “There needs to be something that you need to do to qualify, to get yourself ready to trust in Christ. Unless you’ve done that, you’re not really fitted to hear the gospel.” Some ministers even say they could not preach the gospel to a particular crowd, because they weren’t sorry enough for their sins. One of the things the Marrow Men wanted to emphasize is how in Romans, the apostle Paul says that it is the kindness of God that leads you to repentance. When you see repentance as a necessary step to salvation, you turn the gospel on its head; you wander into legalism.

Ferguson thought the following definition and discussion of legalism by Geerhardus Vos was the best that he had found. Vos defined legalism as “a peculiar kind of submission to God’s law, something that no longer feels the personal divine touch in the rule it submits to.” Legalism creeps in when we separate the law of God from the person of God. “When we begin to interpret the law of God without taking account of the person whose law it is.” When that happens, Ferguson said we always fall into legalism.

Keep the Ten Commandments, but divorce the Ten Commandments from who God actually is, and you’ve done something to the Ten Commandments, haven’t you? You’ve destroyed them of the atmosphere, the character, the personalness of the One who gave them.

This can be traced back to the Garden of Eden, where the commandment of God was divorced from the character of God, from the love and generosity of God. We see where the serpent denied the authority of God’s Word. Yet there was more to it than simply denying the authority of God’s Word. His intent was to destroy the character of God’s person. It’s as though the serpent was saying,

Look, God doesn’t really love you unless you take the medicine that tastes pretty vile. Unless you be subservient to Him, He doesn’t really love you, but if you keep His commandments you can maybe work your way up into His good graces.

Eve responded, saying God said we weren’t to eat of the fruit of the tree, or touch it. By this statement, she added to God’s command, just as the Pharisees did. “Whereas God had given them a simple loving commandment, now it’s becoming complicated, and you’ve not only not to eat the fruit of the tree, you’ve not to touch the tree, and everything about it is very atmospheric.” This is significant point, for legalism is not just an intellectual matter, it’s an atmospheric matter in the lives of Christian people. The serpent is bringing Eve to think of God as a restricting God, who is only pleased and satisfied with you if you meet all the restrictions.

It’s almost as though the serpent is breathing out into the atmosphere this spirit: that God is a God who will only be pleased once you have met these enormous restrictions. Instead of being a God who has given you everything, but who wants you to grow in love for Him and obedience to Him, and show that you love Him as your God just by doing what He says because He says it.A spirit of legalism is injected into the relationship. “God’s law, His commandment, has been severed from God’s character, and it’s lost its sense of His goodness, His generosity, His grace.” It implies a God for whom we need to meet all kinds of restrictions before He loves us. “And that’s the root of legalism.” But the evil one is not finished.

Now Eve perceives her relationship with God to be restrictive and she reacts by becoming an antinomian. The serpent says to her, in effect, the only way you will be free and enjoy what you were created to be, is if you reach out and take the fruit of that tree, freeing yourself from the restrictions of God’s command not to eat it. God is restricting you. “He doesn’t want you to be like Him.” Ferguson said she’s now thinking through her eyes, she’s thinking about what she sees. The fruit of the tree is beautiful to look at, and it will be delicious when she eats it. “She’s lost touch with what God has said about it.”

And so she breaks out of her sense of the restrictiveness of God. “I’ll only be free if I can take the fruit of the tree,” and so she breaches God’s law. “My happiness, my joy, my fulfillment is going to be found only if I can break free.”

Ferguson then states this study of the first chapters of Genesis teaches something us something about legalism. “It teaches us that every antinomian is a legalist at heart. And legalism is not only a distortion of the law; it’s a distortion of the heavenly Father.” We can even say antinomianism is always the fruit of legalism. “Antinomianism is actually what they thought was the medicine for their legalism. He quoted Thomas Boston, who said:

The antinomian principle that it is needless for a man, perfectly justified by faith, to endeavor to keep the law and do good works, is a glaring evidence that legality is so ingrained in man’s corrupt nature, that until a man truly come to Christ by faith, the legal disposition will still be reining in him. Let him turn himself into what shape of be what principles he will in religion. Though he run into antinomianism, he will carry along with him his legal spirit which will always be a slavish and unholy spirit.

According to Ferguson, this was a key insight of the Marrow Men: every Christian is by nature a legalist; and every antinomian is actually a legalist, trying to escape from their legalism.

This article has been based on “Danger! Legalism,” the fourth video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.