01/4/22

The Foundation of Our Assurance

There are Christians who seem to live a kind of sun-filled Christian life. They never appear to encounter anything that challenges their assurance of salvation; nothing that disturbs them or their assurance. But others struggle to recognize the tell-tale signs of genuine Christianity in their lives. For most of us, we know there are going to be obstacles and disturbances as we seek to become more Christ-like. “We always need to be prepared for the way in which Satan seeks to spoil our assurance.”

Sinclair Ferguson observed this was what Satan always tries to do. “He knows he cannot destroy our salvation.” But he does everything he possibly can to destroy our enjoyment of salvation. Part of our enjoyment of salvation is knowing that we are truly the Lord’s, that we are really saved. So, in the video, “Hindrances Strew All the Way,” Ferguson invited us to think about a number of possible hindrances that could be obstacles to our enjoyment of salvation.

Sometimes we have a tendency to confuse the foundation of our salvation in justification with the super-structure of that salvation. “If we don’t understand that justification is complete, then in our Christian life, we’re likely to try to add to our justification, or complete our justification.” If that is true, we will not be able to enjoy our justification, because we don’t believe it is really complete enough. Justification is complete when we come to faith in Jesus Christ. “No degree of sanctification will add to your justification.”

If you try to rebuild the foundation of justification by adding to it, you will destroy the assurance you have.

A second thing that can hinder our assurance is inconsistent obedience. If we live in a way that is inconsistent with the gospel, then we’re not far from wondering whether the gospel is really ours.

There is a third hindrance to assurance that is a serious misunderstanding of affliction and suffering. “God promised me blessings, and look at what’s happening to me. How can I be sure of my salvation?” Ferguson said we need realize the problem may be deeper than it first seems. Many Christians are sure God loves them because of the blessings they experience.

“If you base your assurance on the providences of God rather than on the promises of God, when the providences of God become difficult for you, you’re bound to lose your sense of His love.” The first remedy is to understand that our persuasion of God’s love is based on the cross of Christ, not on His providences. God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), not that He showed His love by giving us many blessings. “So, we don’t find our assurance of our salvation in the blessings that God gives to us.”

Sometimes those blessings come to us in very dark parcels, according to Ferguson. God fulfills many purposes in our lives through suffering, not blessing. Christians need to understand “that sufferings produce character.” If God never disciplined us, it would raise the question of whether we were illegitimate children and not sons (Hebrews 12:8).

So, because we are sinners, of course there are going to be things God does in our lives that grate upon us, because He’s transforming our lives and our wills to conform to His character and His will.

Ferguson makes a point here about affliction that I’ve long seen with recovering alcoholics and addicts. Sometimes God uses afflictions in our lives to prepare us for future service to others. “The day will probably come when you look back on this experience and this hardship and say, ‘Oh, I think I understand now part of why that came into my life, because it’s enabled me to minister to somebody else.’” Now that you’ve walked a little further in the aftermath of your personal affliction, you can help another person understand how things will go; that they can get through it.

Even if I can’t say exactly what God is doing at this point in my life, when I’m struggling with affliction, or suffering, or disappointment, I know the kinds of things He is doing, and I realize everything He is doing, as Paul says in Romans 8, is working together for the good of those who love Him.

That good Paul referred to is to conform us to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many (Romans 8:29). So, when you go through affliction, don’t say, “He doesn’t love me any longer.” Because now we understand He demonstrated His love towards us in that while we were still sinners, He died for the ungodly. “And there I rest, and in that light, I know that whatever afflictions I may go through are part of His purposes to make me more like Jesus.” Rather than diminishing the sense of His love and oujr assurance of his salvation, they minister to it.

The fourth hindrance to assurance is a misunderstanding of what union with Christ does and doesn’t do. When there has been a sudden, radical transformation in a person’s life, there can be a tendency to think this is what the Christian life is like—overcoming sin is easy. There is a tremendous transformation, and “it’s almost as though it’s easy to deal with sin.” We don’t realize that the Lord has been carrying us, His lambs in His bosom (Isaiah 40:11). Then at some point He says, “You’re going to have to learn to walk the walk.”

There are lots of obstacles as you walk the walk. And the danger arises that you can become prey to others who will say, “Now, are you feeling a bit disappointed with your Christian life? Here is the plan . . . Here is the method, and it will raise you above all the struggle, and you will have fullness of life.” If you are really united to Christ, then you will be delivered from the struggle. This is the very opposite of Paul’s teaching, who says the reason for the struggle is because you have been united to Christ.

Something similar is said about the Holy Spirit, “If you were just filled with the Holy Spirit, all those struggles in the Christian life would go.” Again, Paul counters by in effect saying: “I wouldn’t have any of those struggles were it not for the presence of the Holy Spirit! It’s precisely because the Holy Spirit has come to indwell me that the struggles have begun.” Young Christians will often say that since becoming a Christian life has become more difficult. “If we think union with Christ is the way to be delivered from challenges, difficulties, struggles with indwelling sin, then we haven’t really understood what union with Christ does.”

It transforms our lives and puts us into the battle; the battle with the Devil. Remember that the Devil cannot destroy your salvation, so he will try to destroy your assurance of salvation. In The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin said: “Satan’s aim is to drive the saint to madness by despair.” Satan wants to make the Christian believer so ashamed of their spiritual condition that they will despair of their salvation.

I cannot say to Satan, “I’m not as bad as that.” The truth may be that I am worse than that. But I am able to say to him along with John Newton, “Although I’m bowed down with a load of sin, by Satan sorely pressed, I may my fierce accuser face, and tell him, ‘Christ has died’” (from the hymn, “Approach, My Soul, the Mercy Seat,” by John Newton). It takes us back to Jesus Christ, the foundation of all our assurance.

This article has been based on the 12^th and final 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.

08/31/21

Assurance of Transforming Grace

According to Sinclair Ferguson, assurance of salvation is like being married. “Once you’re married, you’re married. It’s yours, you can be sure about it. But you can still struggle with the question, ‘Does she still really love me?’” As a wedding ring is a pledge of your spouse’s love towards you, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are tangible gifts reminding us of our salvation. They reassure us of God’s love for us.

Faith brings assurance, but like in marriage, assurance can grow over time. And just as everyone’s marriage is different (and their experience of being loved in marriage), everyone’s individual experience of assurance is different. “Assurance, in a sense, is shaped individually to us.” Your assurance of salvation is for you; not me or anyone else. I need a sense of assurance that Jesus Christ saved me.

It’s possible for us to grow in assurance, just as our love for a spouse grows with time. “There is an absoluteness about the relationship and there is a progress in it; and that progress is a very individually experienced reality.” How do we grow in the assurance of salvation? How does God lead us on from that initial sense of assurance to the full assurance of salvation? The theologian John Murray said,

The germ of assurance is surely implicit in the salvation which the believer comes to possess by faith. It is implicit in the change that has been wrought in his state and condition. However weak may be the faith of a true believer, however severe may be his temptations, however perturbed his heart may be respecting his own condition, he is never, as regards consciousness, in the condition that preceded the exercise of faith. The consciousness of the believer differs by a whole diameter from that of the unbeliever. At the lowest ebb of faith and hope and love, the believer’s consciousness never drops to the level of the unbeliever at its highest pitch of confidence and assurance.

Right from the beginning, the believer’s consciousness of the Father’s love is always on a higher plane than that of the unbeliever. There are a couple of ways that indicate how this works out. First, assurance is ours because we trust in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ to pardon us and to save us. We need to understand here that we are justified by faith. “But the faith by which we are justified contributes nothing to the justification it receives.”

Faith is the gateway by which we come to Christ. It doesn’t contribute to salvation. “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). “When we don’t get that clear, our assurance is going to dissipate.” As long as we think our faith contributed to our justification, when our faith grows weak, we lose assurance instead of our faith making us stronger in Christ. “Few things could be more important to us than having a right understanding of how our justification is by faith.”

In the justification of God through faith, the Father loves us just as much as the Son. Some Christians seem to believe that Jesus had to die in order to convince the Father to love us. “If we think in that way, it will not be long before we are doubting whether the Father really loves us or not. We are sure of Jesus, but we’re not sure of the Trinity. And because we’re not sure of the Father, we’re not sure of the Holy Spirit.”

We need to learn to understand that justification is an eschatological reality. By this Ferguson means it is the judgment of the last day being manifest in the present. This is where and when our assurance rests. If you suppose justification to be progressive, only to be completed on the last day, you will never grasp the full assurance of salvation. “Rightly understanding the gospel enables us to trust in the absolute sufficiency of Jesus Christ to save us eternally because He has already justified us now.”

Sometimes when people are struggling with the problem of assurance of their salvation, it is best to refrain from talking to them about assurance. “Their problem and confusion is actually about justification.” As we minister and encourage one another, we need to realize problems with assurance are often problems understanding justification by God’s free grace. So, one of the ways we can grow into an assurance of salvation, given to us by God in the gospel, is by deepening the appreciation of “the reality of what has been given to us in our justification.”

There is a second way by which assurance may grow illustrated in the epistle of 1 John. The gospel of John was written evangelistically (John 20:31). But the first epistle of John was written to those who already believe in the Son of God, that we may have an assurance of our salvation (1 John 5:13). Unfortunately, the first epistle of John is sometimes read as if he were speaking about qualifications for being a Christian. But Ferguson said, “He’s not speaking about qualifications for being a Christian.”

When reading the epistle, it’s as if John was pointing out to the believer various character traits that indicate whether or not they were saved. “If this is true, then you can be sure” of your salvation. We can be assured we have been born of God if we have keep His commandments (1 John 5:2). Only Christians want to please the Lord by keeping His commandments. This is a kind of medicine that begins to deal with the uncertainty. Sometimes the uncertainty is in the psyche; the way the person thinks about himself or herself.

Another character trait of assurance is found if we practice righteousness (1 John 2:29). Those who are born of God live righteously. “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous” (1 John 3:7). “Only those who are aligned with the gospel live lives aligned with the gospel.” And then John said he was writing these things to us “so that you may not sin.” Ferguson thought what John meant by that statement was, there must be evidence of a radical breach with sin in my life.

“It doesn’t mean that I never commit sin, it means that my relationship with sin has been radically transformed.” Sin and its dominion is a thing of the past. If you live as though sin reigned in your life, you actually live as though you aren’t a Christian. “And if I’m living as though I’m not a Christian, it’s not very likely I’m going to be sure that I’m a Christian.” Without evidence that a change has really taken place, how could you believe that a change occurred?

“Everyone Jesus Christ saves He transforms.” We are transformed by grace through faith. And this is not our own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). The gateway of faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

This article has been based on “Toward Assurance of Salvation,” the eleventh 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.

08/10/21

My Rock and Redeemer

© Zvonimir Atletic
Saint George monastery in Judea desert

As Christians, we often think of the Psalms as songs to be sung. The word psalm means “a song sung to an instrumental accompaniment.” Yet we can see as we read through the Psalms that many were written not to be sung, but as poems, expressing the praise of the psalmist, the sense of puzzlement of the psalmist, or the joys and sorrows of the psalmist. “They are poems of the spiritual life.” Psalm 19 stands out as one of the greatest of these poems. C.S. Lewis said of Psalm 19: “I take this to be the greatest poem in the psalter. And one of the greatest lyrics in the world.”

In his commentary on Psalms 1-50 for Word Biblical Commentary series, Peter Craigie said it was hard to disagree with such a judgement, “for the psalm combines the most beautiful poetry with some of the most profound of biblical theology.” The psalmist moves from the universe and its glory to the individual in humility before God. The key clause is “there is nothing hidden from its [the sun’s] heat” in verse 19:6. This clause simultaneously marks the transition between the two parts of the psalm and links them together.

Just as the sun dominates the daytime sky, so too does Torah [meaning Law] dominate human life. And as the sun can be both welcome, in giving warmth, and terrifying in its unrelenting heat, so too the Torah can be both life-imparting, but also scorching, testing, and purifying. But neither are dispensable. There could be no life on this planet without the sun; there can be no true human life without the revealed word of God in the Torah.

According to Sinclair Ferguson, Psalm 19 is a psalm of orientation—a psalm that gives basic instruction for living a godly life; to understand it through godly eyes. It is meant to be memorized and recited, as verse 14 suggests: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.” If you get the building blocks of this psalm into your life, “then much of your life will be simplified and clarified.”

It has two sections, addressing the general revelation of God in creation and the special revelation of God in Scripture. Each segment begins with a general statement and then provides specific illustrations of what it declares. In both sections the psalm is a declaration of the wonder and splendor of God’s self-revelation. In verses 1 to 6, the psalmist speaks of the almighty God who reveals himself in the glory of creation. Verses 7 to 14 tell us that this same mighty God, who revealed his glory in creation, is the covenant Lord, who reveals his personal will in his word. “God reveals his majesty in the book of nature, and he reveals his will in the book of Scripture.”

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Ferguson said if you have the spectacles to see, everything within creation bears the stamp: “made by God.” This proclamation sounds throughout the day and the night. It goes throughout the earth, to the end of the world. This knowledge is universal.

The psalmist tells us, the heavens communicate this knowledge to us wordlessly. They pour forth speech, even though they use no words. Even though no sound is heard from them, their voice goes out into all the earth. Both the night and the day sky demonstrate God’s glory. This wordless speech extends throughout the entire world. All the earth is beneath God’s awesome heavens.

In his commentary on the Psalms, Tremper Longmen noted the word for “sky” in verse 19:1 is rāqîa, the same word translated in Genesis 1:7 as “expanse” or “firmament.” A Handbook of the Psalms said the firmament was thought of as a solid plate, as we find in Job 37:18: “Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?” This plate kept the waters above from the waters below (Genesis 1:6). The Hebrews seemed to have a three-tiered cosmology of the universe, with the earth in the middle between the heaven above and the deep beneath, as in the illustration below. For more information on the ancient Hebrew conception of the cosmos, see “Why Is the Sky Blue?”

To the ancients, without the modern knowledge of the actual vastness of the heavens, the sky still gave a sense of transcendence, of someone above them. “Even today, with all of modern science’s descriptions and explanations, it is not rare for us to have our minds stunned by God’s incredible creation.” No one can escape the truth that day and night the heavens declare the glory of God. As Paul essentially said in the first chapter of Romans, “That revelation given to us is so clear, that nobody can consistently resist it.”

The sun illustrates this. It leaves its tent and “runs its course with joy,” from the morning until the evening: “There is nothing hidden from its heat.” In Scripture and Cosmology, Kyle Greenwood said Psalm 19 has an ancient Near Eastern understanding of the cosmos. Both the earth (v. 19:4) and the heavens (v. 19:6) are said to have ends, or points of termination. This suggests a flat earth, illustrated in the graphic above. In Psalm 19:6, where the sun rises and completes a circuit of the heavens, it implies an earth-centered cosmos: “It’s rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.”

There is also an interesting parallel to the sun running its course in Psalm 19 within Egyptian mythology. Ra, the creator god and god of the sun, traveled across the sky in a barque or barge called the Mandjet providing light for the world. He then switched to the Mesektet Barque to descend to the underworld (Sheol in ancient Hebrew mythology) and made the journey back to reappear each day on the eastern horizon. “The progress of Ra upon the Mandjet was sometimes conceived as his daily growth, decline, death, and resurrection and it appears in the symbology of Egyptian mortuary texts.”

Ra in the underworld in his Mesektet barque.

The Covenant Will of the Lord

In verse 7 there is an abrupt change of subject from God’s creation to God’s law, written in a wisdom style that Peter Craigie thought was reminiscent of Psalm 119. The bountiful nature of the Lord’s law is carefully presented in balanced poetry. One scholar sees an allusion to the tree of knowledge in Genesis 2-3 here, with further parallels between verses 1-6 and Genesis 1. While the generic word for God, El, appears only once when the psalmist reflects on the revelation of God in creation (verse 19:1), the covenant name for God, Yahweh (translated as Lord), is used when referring to God in 19:7-14. As noted by Ferguson, this implies the covenant God revealing his will in the book of Scripture.

The psalmist doesn’t just speak about the law, he praises it and says it is as more precious than gold and sweeter than the sweetest honey (Psalm 19:10). Verses 7 through 9 declare a multifaceted reality to the preciousness of the Law. The law of the Lord is perfect; the testimony of the Lord is sure; the precepts of the Lord are right; the commandment of the Lord is pure; the fear of the Lord is clean; the rules of the Lord are true. They revive the soul; make the simple wise; enlighten the eyes. They endure forever and are righteous altogether.

Once again, the concluding section of the psalm changes its tone. “The initial praise of God in nature and law evokes in the psalmist a sudden awareness of unworthiness.” After looking at the heavens and reflecting on the divine law, which naturally evokes praise, he becomes aware of his own insignificance and unworthiness in so glorious a context and feels compelled to pray. The final verse (19:14) ties together the themes of praise and prayer, with the psalmist saying:

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

06/29/21

Assurance by Imputed Righteousness

In the controversy that arose as a result of The Marrow of Modern Divinity in the eighteenth century, one of the questions that arose was whether assurance of salvation is of the essence of faith, or is it a byproduct of faith. “If you believe in Christ, does that mean you are certain to have full assurance of salvation?” Put another way, if someone doesn’t enjoy the full assurance of faith, can they still be a Christian? If you don’t have assurance, “can you really have become a Christian?”

Before and after the Marrow Controversy, pastors have had to help members of their churches who struggled with what it means to enjoy the full assurance of their salvation. It’s a complex and complicated question, but the real complication lies in ourselves, not in the gospel. We are complex and complicated beings. For example, if a Christian has been abused, they may find it is almost impossible to believe anybody loves them.

While it is a wonderful thing for them to discover that Christ loves them, often they’ve scarcely got the framework to comprehend that Christ really loves 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. Does that mean I’m not really a Christian?”

Some would answer, if you’re not absolutely sure you’re saved, there’s no degrees of assurance allowed, no spectrum on which you might fall, you can’t possibly be a Christian because every Christian enjoys the full assurance of faith. The problem is this doesn’t take account of the complex psychological makeup we have as human beings, as individual Christians. “The gospel works equally in us all, but it’s dealing with different obstacles in each of us. And clarity comes at different speeds in our Christian life.”

When we finally “get” a truth of the Christian life, we can get impatient with others who don’t see what we see. “God is much more patient and individual with us than we often are with one another.”

In Church History

In the early church, the was an extraordinary outbreak of gospel power. God raised His Son from the dead. “What could have given the early disciples more assurance than that?” The Holy Spirit was poured out, giving the early Christians great assurance of faith. “They grasped that justification is by God’s free grace received by faith and enjoyed by the believer.” But they also understood there were obstacles to overcome. And some of those obstacles were put there by the church.

By the sixth century, the church’s view was, it might be possible to have assurance of salvation, but that might not be such a good thing. The thinking was that if people did have assurance of their salvation, then they might begin to live any way they want.

Then something began to develop in the way the church understood how salvation works. According to Sinclair Ferguson this was, “Salvation works by God infusing grace into you at baptism.” As we progress in life, God gives us more grace. And as we respond to that grace faithfully, He gives us even more grace. If we lapse back into our old sinful ways, there is a sacrament that will bring us back to the original grace we enjoyed. And as that grace continues to work in us, it changes us 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.” At that point, we become justifiable. God declares us justified on this basis, namely that He has worked in us by His grace to deliver us inwardly from sin. And we are righteously justified because we’re righteous and are therefore justifiable.

The problem with this view of salvation, seen throughout the medieval period, is seen in Martin Luther. He wondered how he could possibly know he had got to the stage where his faith was perfected in perfect love; that he was righteous and God could righteously justify him. The medieval teachers could say, “God justifies us by grace.” But they were not able to say, “God justifies us on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.”

If you are justified on the basis of a righteousness that’s imparted to you, then only when that righteousness is perfect can you be justified.

It wasn’t actually possible to enjoy the assurance of salvation in that system of theology 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. Although his fellow monks thought Martin Luther was a candidate for sainthood, he had no assurance of salvation. In that context, the assurance of salvation belonged to a tiny minority. Then came 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 has 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.

Guaranteed Assurance

If you don’t say this, you don’t yet grasp what justification really is. The only righteousness with which you are righteous before God is Jesus Christ’s righteousness. You have no righteousness of your own. “You’re clothed in His righteousness.” And when that realization bursts through, as it did with Luther and then with John Calvin, “there was an outburst of joy, an outburst of salvation.”

It did not mean that people no longer had doubts; that they did not struggle. The assurance of faith existed in a life full of difficulties and it was often challenged. Nevertheless, believers could say: “We rest on Christ by faith. And that means our assurance is guaranteed.” It’s one thing for our assurance to be guaranteed in Christ, and it’s another thing for us to become conscious of it.

Faith in Christ clearly brings assurance, because “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him.” (Hebrews 7:25) Faith knows that Christ saves. However, assurance also has something to do with us. “Assurance is not only the way we think about Christ, it’s about the way we think about ourselves in relationship to Christ.”

There is a kind of assurance in faith, “but it’s 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 instantaneously. Others are like it says in Isaiah, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” (Isaiah 9:2) And by this light we are transformed into the likeness of Christ, making us, living illustrations of the commandments of God.

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.

05/4/21

The Full Assurance of Faith

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 16^th and 17^th 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 10^th 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

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

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.

01/12/21

Going Off the Tracks with Antinomianism

In “Faces of Antinomianism,” Sinclair Ferguson said, “We learn in the gospel that we need to be delivered from the way in which the law beats us and condemns us.” Yet it often happens that the way in which people seek to deliver themselves is by denying that the law of God, the commandments of God, have any significant place in the Christian life. “That is antinomianism. And it comes in various shapes and sizes.”

The term antinomianism comes from the word “anti,” “against,” and “nomos,” “law.” It is a view that suggests there is no place in the Christian life for the Old Testament law of God. This view came into the Church during the time of the Reformation. Initially, Martin Luther understood the law of God as the instrument that had crushed him to death. So, in his earlier ministry he had a tendency to see the law of God as his enemy.

One of Luther’s disciples, Agricola, began to teach the law was an unnecessary carry-over from the Old Testament and too similar to the Roman Catholic emphasis on good works. Agricola said: “The law has nothing to do with the Christian believer.” After Agricola’s denial of the significance of the law to Christians, Luther realized his own error and opposed what he called “antinomianism.” Luther even writing a treatise, “Against the Antinomians.” Afterwards, Luther’s theology began to change and in Ferguson’s view, became more biblical.

Ferguson said there were at least four kinds of antinomianism. The first kind appears in a doctrinal form. This error can be seen in the lives of individuals whose personal Christian experience is otherwise praiseworthy and who are known as model Christians. In the seventeenth century there were several well-known antinomian individuals, men such as John Eaton and Tobias Crisp. They had been deep-seated legalists who thought the only way they could be free from the condemnation of the law was to take Paul’s teaching that we are free from the law as applying to the totality of life.

“All that we do now is trust in the Holy Spirit.” Contrasting the old covenant and the law, they said the key thing in the Christian life is the indwelling of the Spirit. “And if the Spirit indwells us, then we will be safely guided by the Spirit as to how to live for God and for His glory.” In other words, by relying on the Holy Spirit, we can live by the exhortations of the New Testament. “The problem with that, of course …, is that it didn’t take account of the way in which the New Testament speaks about the commandments of the law still being relevant to the Christian life.”

One example is In Ephesians 6, where Paul referred to the commandment for children to honor their parents as the first one with a promise. Paul seems to assume here the Christians in Ephesus will keep the Ten Commandments. “And so, it’s important for us to see that while God in Christ delivers us from the condemnation of the law, what He does is actually turn the condemning law into our friend rather than our enemy.” Another example, noted later on, is in the Sermon on the Mount.

Today, there is a kind of exegetical antinomianism. Often scholars argue that whereas the Ten Commandments were important under the old covenant, they are no longer significant under the new covenant. Agricola believed the Ten Commandments belonged in the courthouse, not in the pulpit, saying: “To the gallows with Moses!”

In contrast, the Westminster Confession of Faith said the law has three dimensions in the Old Testament. It has a moral dimension, it has a civil dimension in the Old Testament, and it has a ceremonial dimension. The Westminster Divines thought through Jesus Christ, the ceremonial law was fulfilled, so we no longer need to keep the Old Testament liturgical rights. The civil law was given to a particular people rather than intended to be applied to all peoples. Apart from the fact that we can still learn from its principles, the civil law is also abrogated.

But the moral law, the Ten Commandments, they continue because they were given by God as a design for our lives in this world.

Exegetical antinomians argued that the law was the law. It was all one law without facets or dimensions that could be separated. When the New Testament tells us the law of Moses has gone, it meant that we are no longer under the law. Pointing to Scriptures like Romans 6:14 and Galatians 5:18, they argued that the law of Moses was ended. “We live now by the teaching of the New Testament.” We shouldn’t turn back to the teachings of the Old Testament, particularly to thinking that Christians should live by the Ten Commandments.

Ferguson astutely said if you ask scholars that hold this view, “Which of the commandments can I forget?” It becomes obvious they don’t really want to discard the Ten Commandments. “The problem here is the Commandments in Exodus 20 are actually the design that God wrote into the hearts of Adam and Eve at creation.” When that law was broken, God rewrote it for them. “Their fuzzy minds needed the law to be written down for them.”

There may be elements in the Ten Commandments that are not relevant to us today, but the basic principles are surely the very principles that Jesus expounds in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is not saying there you can forget about the Old Testament law. Rather, he is saying, “I want you to understand what that Old Testament law really said, because it went far deeper than the teachers you have actually say today.” In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus said he did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass away from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Then there is a kind of antinomianism that comes with an experiential face. This is seen with Christians who seem to think that because they are Christians, they can live fast and loose to the law of the land. “And if they live that way with respect to the law of the land, it’s highly probable they’re living that way with respect to the law of God.” Their attitude is that their sins are forgiven. “Experiential antinomianism manifests itself in a life of sin that presumes upon the work of Christ in our forgiveness and freedom from the law, as well as presuming upon the work of the Holy Spirit.”

In effect, they say: “I made my decision, so it really doesn’t matter what happens thereafter.” Ferguson said what is tragic about this is, not only does it fail to understand the law, it also fails to understand how the gospel works.

In Romans 8:3-4 Paul said God did in Christ what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. According to Ferguson anyone who says they don’t need the Ten Commandments because they walk by the Spirit, they live in the Spirit, they have the Spirit, has not really read Romans. What experiential antinomianism doesn’t grasp is that the object of Christ’s work is to transform us into His image and to enable us to live godly lives in accordance with the law by His Spirit. Experiential antinomians have not appreciated the beautiful harmony that the New Testament teaches between the law of God and the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

There is a fourth kind of antinomianism that is really a form of experiential antinomianism, but it comes in a particular form. People frequently say, “God loves me the way I am,” so, they stay just the way they are. There are two things wrong with that kind of thinking. The first thing is God loves you despite the way you are. “So long as I think that God loves me the way I am and because I am the way I am, I have no sense of His love whatsoever.”

The second thing wrong with saying God loves me just the way I am is that because He loves you, God doesn’t mean to leave you the way you are. That’s not what love does. “Now what we see is not only a misunderstanding of law, and a misunderstanding of grace and gospel and Christ, we see a misunderstanding of love.”

Love is so loving it will never want us to remain the way we are, because it’s not good for us to be the way we are. And so when we are loved with God’s everlasting love and embraced into His family, His love wants to make us like Himself.

So, what is the relationship between the law and the gospel, the law and the Spirit? “The law is the train tracks on which our life runs. The Holy Spirit is the engine that drives the train forward to live for God’s glory.” When we see these things, we will be delivered from the fear and possibility of antinomianism.

This article has been based on “Faces of Antinomianism,” the 7th 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

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.

11/17/20

Ready for the Gospel

In “The Order of Grace,” the fifth video in the teaching series The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson remarked how the serpent distorted the character of God in Genesis 3. He noted this was the very essence of legalism, when God’s loving character was divorced from His law. Our eyes become focused on the law as if it consisted of naked commandments and not as the directives of our heavenly Father who wants the very best for us. In a remarkable way, Genesis 3 underlines how closely related to one another legalism and antinomianism are. We often think of antinomianism and legalism as opposites to one another, but we discover in the gospel they are dealt with “by using exactly the same medicine.”

One of the questions raised by the controversy over the “Auchterader Creed,” and The Marrow of Modern Divinity, was, do we forsake sin and repent in order to be prepared to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Thomas Boston thought that putting repentance first was not a helpful way to understand the message of the gospel. However, there was a concern that failing to put repentance first would lead people into antinomianism if they did not have the law of God leading to conviction of sin, and then to faith. Boston and others wanted to argue that just as an increase in our sanctification does nothing to our justification, repentance does not precede faith as a condition for coming to Christ.

For some people that was a very frightening thought. If you don’t insist that you’ve got to add to your justification and your sanctification, then will people not live any way they want? If you’re as justified in the first day of your Christian life as you will be on the last day of your Christian life, and you’re saying to people, “You can live any way you want in between.”

Insisting that there were conditions that need to be met before you came to faith in Christ “poisoned the waters, rather than brought forth the pure water of the gospel.” Yet, does not the very language of Scripture indicate that repentance must come before believing? Ferguson then reminded his audience of what was said previously about the “ordo salutis,” the order of salvation (See “Wandering Into Legalism”), that it was often conceived of as a chain. Ferguson said this image of a chain necessarily has one link closing over another, in a kind of progression of links.

And it seems to me that that very way of looking at things, understanding the application of redemption by looking through spectacles that have been crafted, as it were, to see a chain as the organizing principle, almost inevitably means that either you put the link of repentance before faith or you put the link of faith before repentance. And when you’ve done that, you’ve already produced a way of looking at things that is likely, it seems to me, to lead you astray.

Repentance and faith are not joined together like two links in a chain, “They are simply ways of describing what happens when we are united to Jesus Christ and trust Him. We cannot come to Him without leaving the past. And we certainly cannot leave the past unless we come to Him.” Calvin and the Westminster Confession of Faith put it this way—repentance is necessary for salvation, but repentance is not the instrument by which we come to faith in Christ. Genuine repentance takes place within the context of faith, the context of us responding to the grace of God and Jesus Christ in the gospel.

This is why Paul said the law ultimately will not lead us to repentance. Ferguson said: “It may convict us of sin, but the turning around requires the kindness of God, the hope of salvation.” There is no genuine repentance unless there is a sense and a trust in the promised mercy of God in Jesus Christ. “This is what transforms repentance from a work that we accomplish to a response that we make wrought in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we turn from our sinful lifestyle to a genuine faith in our Savior Jesus Christ.” Genuine repentance always takes place within the context of saving faith.

If repentance is not steeped with faith in Jesus Christ, then it’s legalism, not evangelical repentance. “Repentance is not the means by which we come to Christ.” It is the other side of the coin of faith in which we entrust ourselves to Christ. If you think about repentance and faith chronologically, you are in danger of legalism. “You need to set it within the context of the grace of God in the gospel.” John Calvin said: “A man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace.”

At this point, Ferguson referred to the parable of the prodigal son, or as he retitled it, the parable of the waiting father. Chapter 15 of Luke begins with the Pharisees and scribes grumbling that Jesus receives and even eats with (unclean) sinners. The rabbis taught that God welcomes a penitent sinner, but Jesus sought out sinners, and even ate with them. By their complaint, the Pharisees and scribes effectively were saying that sinners were not good enough to receive the gospel. They’ve not repented, so they’re not really qualified to hear the gospel; they’re not ready for the gospel.

In response to their complaint, Jesus told three parables: the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7), the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32). There is a heightening tension here. In the far country, what leads the son to repentance? “It is the memory that there is food in his father’s house.” He is at the end of himself, but does not say, “I think I need to repent.” Rather, he recalls there is food in the father’s house. “In the story, it’s just the possibility that there might be provision for his need in his father’s house that first brings about the turning home.” Theologically, it is the way the mercy of God evokes the beginning faith in his life and leads him to say, “I will arise and go to my father”—I will go home; I will repent.

The theme that emerges from these three parables is God and the angels rejoice when one who was lost, is found; when one who was dead becomes alive again. God freely offers mercy and salvation to sinners and he celebrates when a wayward son returns to him. Although repentance of the son is important in the parable of the prodigal son, the father’s readiness to forgive stands out. His unexpected actions represent the fatherly love of God for wayward human beings.

Notice that the father sees his returning son when he was still a long way off (Luke 15:20). The father was apparently watching closely for his son’s return. Then the father does something extraordinary—he runs to his son. Culturally, it was undignified for an older man to lift up his robes and run. This father could have done nothing more shameful than what he did. “What that father should have done was to have arranged a ceremony in which the prodigal son would be shamed.”

The father’s actions indicate complete forgiveness and restoration of the younger son. He embraced and kissed him. He ordered the best robe to be put on his son and for shoes to be found for his feet. To commemorate this special occasion, he called for a fattened calf to be killed. The father unequivocally rejected the son declaring he was no longer worthy to be called his son (Luke 15:21). Before the son can say, “Make me one of your hired servants,” the father embraced him in his love.

He’s not going to let this boy say, “Make me one of your hired servants,” because, “This my son was lost and is found. He was dead and he is alive.” And pictorially it’s as though the grace of the heavenly Father—although to be truthful, in the parable it’s really Jesus who is the father, isn’t it? . . . He says, “My child, you were lost and you’re found. You were dead and you’re alive.” The father is a picture of the Lord Jesus.

The older brother complained that despite all the time he served the father, never disobeying him, he never received even a young goat to celebrate with his friends. But when this son, the one who squandered the father’s property on prostitutes comes, “You killed the fattened calf for him!” We see here the reflection of the judgmental spirit of the Pharisees. The father’s reply to his older son is telling: “All that is mine is yours.”

Those who rely on their faithfulness, expecting that they should receive a greater reward than a mere repentant sinner, have missed the point. Jesus Christ came to seek the lost and rejoices when the wayward repent and return.

This article has been based on “The Order of Grace,” the fifth 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.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: Sinclair Ferguson