Tag Archives: Thomas Boston

03/16/21

The Antinomian Is a Legalist

© Erin Donalson | 123rf.com

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.

07/28/20

Offering the Gospel in Christ

© Ronda Kimbrow | 123rf.com

As a young pastor, Thomas Boston noticed the Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher sitting on a shelf during a pastoral visit. He borrowed it, read it, “and discovered it spoke to his heart and mind, and to a wide variety of pastoral issues in his ministry.” Seventeen years later, at the assembly that overturned the Auchterarder Creed (“It is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.)”, Boston recommended the Marrow to John Drummond, saying it had helped him work through many of the same issues debated by the assembly. This comment led to a reprinting of the book and the expansion of the debate over the Auchterarder Creed and the Marrow throughout the Church of Scotland. Boston and others who had been transformed by the book had been preaching its doctrines and commending it to others. Ultimately, the Church of Scotland banned the book. Boston and those who protested this action became known as the Marrow Men.

In the second installment of video series “The Whole Christ,” Sinclair Ferguson asked a series of questions that came out of the controversy over the Auchterarder Creed and the Marrow of Modern Divinity, including the following. How do you offer Christ if you believe that Christ died exclusively for the elect? What does it mean to offer Christ to sinners; and how can you be really sure that you are a Christian believer? How do you live the Christian life and be obedient to God without becoming a legalist or wrongly responding to the law of God and becoming an antinomian? But for Thomas Boston and the Marrow Men, the main question was, exactly what is the gospel and how then should you proclaim it?

Ferguson said when he asks Christians the question, “What is the gospel?”, they often answer in terms of the experiences they have had. They describe how they were converted. They give a personal testimony; they describe how they found peace with God—how they felt guilty and then felt that their sins were forgiven. While that’s the experience or consequence of the gospel, it is not the gospel. “The gospel at the end of the day is Jesus Christ Himself and all that Jesus Christ has done.”

When Paul spoke to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5, he didn’t say to them, “Listen to my experience on the Damascus Road because that is the gospel.” Rather, he proclaimed that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. He didn’t count our sins against us, “but he counted them against Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ was offered as a Savior; and it is on that basis that we come to Christ and put our trust in Him. “But how can you say this to everybody if you believe that Christ died just for the elect?”

The critics of Thomas Boston and the Marrow Men were saying, if you offered Christ to people freely without saying to them, “First of all you’ve got to repent,” then you’ve offered Jesus Christ to some people that you don’t know He really died for. And the Westminster Confession teaches, on the basis of Scripture, that Jesus died only for His sheep; only for the elect. So, if He didn’t die for every single human being, how can you offer the gospel to every single human being? These critics therefore believed you could offer the gospel only to those you had a sense were really and truly elect. They had a kind of circular logic that supported this belief: The way you could tell if someone was elect was when you saw signs of repentance in their lives, because repentance is the fruit of God’s election. So how could you preach Christ and offer Christ to all?

The answer to that question is because God has promised that anyone who comes to Jesus Christ will be saved. “Since it is Jesus Christ Himself who saves us, Jesus Christ is sufficient to save anyone who comes to Him in faith and trust.” The promise of God is, whoever believes will be saved (Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9). So, the business of the preacher is not to try and work out who in the congregation was elect and who wasn’t—an impossible task. “The business of the preacher was to offer Jesus Christ to everyone, and allow, as it were, the Holy Spirit to do His work through the preaching of the gospel to bring the Lord’s people to Himself . . .  The business of the preacher is to point to Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

We must remember the gospel is not the same thing as the blessings that result from the gospel. It is Jesus Christ in Whom all the blessings of the gospel are found. There is nothing between you and Jesus Christ that bars you from Him unless you qualify. As Isaiah 55:1 says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” As Jesus Christ Himself says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). The proclamation of the gospel is not just offering Christ to the elect. “The proclamation of the gospel offers a crucified Christ to the world.”

The problem with seeing repentance as a prerequisite for saving grace is this: How would you know when you had adequately repented? When would you know if you had done enough? This is a belief that in many ways is still present in the church today—God gives you grace in order to transform you; and then eventually as you are transformed, “once all the conditions have been met, God will justify you on the basis of what His grace has done in you, because that grace has made you justifiable.”

This way of thinking is endemic in the natural man, then and now. People still felt there had to be something they needed to do in order to be fully justified. The net result was many were left asking themselves, “Have I repented enough yet? Have I been sufficiently sorry for my sin to receive grace?” They were confusing the way in which the Spirit often works in our lives with the warrant of the preacher to offer the gospel.

The chief thing is now come to faith in Jesus Christ . . .  There’s nothing in between. There’s no qualification. There’s no mark that needs to be reached. Sinners all stand before Jesus Christ, hopeless and helpless, and we offer Jesus Christ to each of them and to every one of them, in order that they may come and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, because their salvation is not found in the extent to which they have felt sorry for their sin. My sorrow for my sin contributes nothing to my salvation. All of my salvation is to be found exclusively in Jesus Christ.

In “Grace in the Gospel,” the second installment of his video series on The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson has given answers to the questions of what is the gospel and how we should proclaim it. He has wrestled with the conundrum of how you can offer Christ to all, if you believe that Christ died exclusively for the elect. He showed how seeing repentance as a prerequisite for saving grace leads ultimately to another question for these believers: how can I know that I have repented enough to be sure I am a Christian? He also left another question unanswered: “How can we live the Christian life and be obedient to God without becoming legalists or wrongly responding to the law of God and becoming antinomians”? But he will address these questions as this video series on The Whole Christ continues.

This article has been based on “Grace in the Gospel,” the second 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.

04/28/20

The Marrow of the Whole Christ

Old church tower at the village of Auchterader © wfmillar (cc-by-sa/2.0)

“Everything God has to give us He gives to us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We must never look at the benefits Our Lord gives us, without seeing them in Christ’s hands, because we have them only in Him. “It takes a whole Bible, to teach a whole Christ, in order to make a whole Christian. . . . So often Christians are diverted from the Lord Jesus Christ.” These remarks were spoken by Sinclair Ferguson in his video series on The Whole Christ. They helped introduce his first talk on the Marrow Controversy, a little-known dispute within the Scottish church that took place in the early 18th century. But the dispute involved issues that exist in the church today.

In February of 1717, the Presbytery of Auchterarder intended to ordain William Craig, who was seeking to preach the gospel within the Presbytery of Auchterarder. There was a unique question asked of every candidate, a question that became known as the Auchterarder Creed. Craig had previously said he could give a satisfactory response to the question, but then he began to have second thoughts. He came back to the Presbytery and said he did not think he has been entirely honest and could not affirm the Auchterarder Creed. He was voted on again, and his license to preach was revoked.

The decision of the Presbytery was appealed to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the General Assembly overturned the decision of the Presbytery. William Craig was then allowed to be licensed as a minister of the gospel. The question asked of him was: Do you agree that, “It is not sound and orthodox to teach that we need to forsake sin in order to come to Christ?” After the General Assembly had overturned the decision of the Presbytery of Auchterarder, Thomas Boston said to a minister sitting next to him that he had read a helpful book some twenty years before on the issue at hand: The Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher.

The Marrow addressed how we should offer the gospel of Jesus Christ to people, and what was the relationship between repentance and coming to faith in Jesus Christ—do we need to repent first, in order to a come to faith in Jesus Christ? It asked, what is legalism and what is antinomianism? Was it possible for a Christian to have assurance of salvation? The out-of-print book was then reprinted in 1718 by James Hog. Ferguson said it added “fuel to the fire” of the controversy begun by the Auchterarder Creed. The General Assembly began to discuss not only the Auchterarder Creed, but also The Marrow of Modern Divinity; and eventually banned the book.

A group of twelve men, including Thomas Boston and the Erskine brothers, Ralph and Ebeneezer, objected to the condemnation of the book by the General Assembly. Historically, they have become known as the Marrow Men. Although it was far from a perfect book, they felt the book enabled them to offer Jesus Christ freely to the lost. They also felt it helped them minister to Christians struggling with legalism or antinomianism, as well as bring doubting Christians to a full assurance of faith.

The Marrow of Modern Divinity was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue, a literary genre that uses a question-and-answer methodology, where two or more characters participate in a dialogue. The characters in the Marrow represented different points of view: Neophitus, the new Christian; Nomista, the legalist; Antinomista, the antinomian; and Evangelista, the wise pastor. The accusations that arose against the book and the Marrow Men, were that they taught, contrary to the Westminster Confession of Faith, a universal offer of the gospel based on universal redemption. Also, they were accused of teaching antinomianism—that in Christ, Christians were free from the law. And finally, that assurance was the essence of salvation; and if you were a Christian, then you would have assurance.

The charges were false. These were not the views of the Marrow Men; nor were they the views of The Marrow of Modern Divinity. But as Ferguson pointed out, these issues keep coming up in the church. If we believe Christ died to secure the salvation of the elect, how do we present Christ to people? Does it mean we should only offer Christ to the elect, and how do we know who are the elect? We would know by their repentance from sin; and when we see their repentance, we could offer Christ and his salvation to them. But then there is the question of the law: if the gospel is true, what is the purpose of the law now that we have become Christians?

And what about assurance? If I am a Christian, shouldn’t I enjoy the full assurance of salvation? One of the things The Marrow of Modern Divinity did for the Marrow Men was to set them free from some of the misunderstandings of the gospel which they had inherited from the kinds of teaching and preaching they had heard. Namely, that you could only offer the gospel to some people, because he only died for some people. Secondly, there was the problem of legalism, often characteristic of Christians who think that by their obedience, they can add to their justification.

Isn’t it true that it is actually quite difficult for many Christians to believe that they can never add to their justification? That they will never be more justified than they are the moment they come to faith in Jesus Christ. “Surely my sanctification will add to my justification.” Not if it is the justification of the gospel.

The “2016 State of American Theology Study” found that 53% of Americans believed salvation always begins with God changing a person so they can turn to Him in faith. 76% of Americans believed an individual must contribute his or her own effort for personal salvation. But how or when do you know if you’ve done enough? Many people, including the followers of the prosperity gospel, look at the blessings of faith in Christ. Martin Luther noted how Christians often become incurvatus in se, turned in upon ourselves. We begin to look at the benefits we have received rather than our benefactor, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You might think sanctification adds to your justification, if your justification was derived from yourself. But it can’t add to your justification if your justification was derived from Jesus Christ. We are in Christ; and in Christ every spiritual blessing is immediately ours. Ferguson said Thomas Boston thought the Auchterarder Creed was badly worded, but he knew there was nothing you do to qualify yourself to come to Jesus Christ. “You simply come to Him, because He’s invited you.”

This article has been based on “How a ‘Marrow’ Grew,” the first video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. There is a link above 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.