Antinomianism: I’ve only been accused once, to my recollection, of holding an antinomian view of the Gospel, a charge that didn’t come as much of a surprise. It came up during a conversation in which I had spoken favorably of Tobias Crisp, whose writings have often been misunderstood. When the word antinomian was raised, I replied, “I can accept that description, so long as I may explain what it truly signifies.”
For if by antinomian you mean one who is “dead to the law by the body of Christ,” Romans 7:4, who is “not under the law, but under grace,” Romans 6:14, who knows that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth,” Romans 10:4, then I cheerfully plead guilty. For Scripture declares that “we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” Romans 7:6. To such a one, the law has no more dominion; its claims have been satisfied, its penalty borne, its demands fulfilled. In Christ’s death, the believer died; and in His resurrection, he now lives, not lawless, but liberated, walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:1-2.
(In truth, I’m fairly certain I didn’t say any of those things. I don’t even recall exactly how I responded, as confrontation tends to leave me uneasy and slow of speech. I often walk away wondering if I said the right thing, or if I even know what I’m talking about; or look back and wish I had spoken with greater clarity or courage. I think we’ve all had those feelings, those moments when you replay a conversation in your mind and think, I wish I’d said this or that. Yet in hindsight, we realize that the Lord governed our words, and what was spoken was precisely what He intended for that moment, Luke 12:11-12, and what we may think was clumsy or incomplete is often those God most perfectly uses to accomplish His purpose.)
The accusation of antinomianism arises whenever one dares to proclaim that the believer is no longer under law, but under grace. The law we speak of is that divine standard which demands perfect obedience and pronounces death upon the least transgressor; from this law the believer is set free through Christ, who was made under it, fulfilled all its righteousness, bore its sentence, and silenced its every claim against His people.
Such a message appears unsettling to those who have never understood that Christ Himself is both the believer’s righteousness and rule, to minds that cannot imagine devotion apart from prescribed regulations, or obedience apart from the fear of breaking them. To them, the thought of being freed from the law feels like being freed from God, not knowing that it is in Christ alone that holiness finds both its root and its fruit. Grace teaches what the law could never command, its liberty produces love, and its power transforms the heart; for the Spirit who delivers from the law’s condemnation also implants a love for its holiness. Romans 8:5-6.
The heart of the misunderstanding lies here; men cannot bear the thought of a salvation that leaves them with nothing to contribute. Grace, to the natural mind, seems reckless and unsafe. It strips away every ground of boasting, leaving man with no role but that of a beggar receiving mercy. To such minds, the gospel of Christ’s finished work appears dangerous, too free, too final and too secure. They imagine that without the law’s restraint, sin will abound, forgetting that it is grace, not law, that teaches us to deny ungodliness. Titus 2:11-12.
And so the charge of antinomianism becomes the ready weapon of those who would rather bind grace with law than trust a righteousness wholly outside themselves. The irony is that the righteousness they labor to extract from the law dwells only in Christ, and in grasping for it elsewhere, they may lose sight of Christ altogether or see Him only through the distorting haze of their own self-righteousness. But true gospel liberty is never lawlessness, for those who are born of God know that freedom in Christ is not freedom to do wrong, but freedom to love what is right. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Galatians 5:22-24.
Such obedience cannot be legislated; it is the fruit of life, not law. The believer’s life is not governed by an external code, but by an inward power that produces what the law could never compel. Romans 8:3-4. Grace frees us from sin, not to sin. He that loves Christ hates sin. Hence he “lives unto the Lord,” Romans 14:8, not as a slave trembling under threat of punishment, or dread of disapproval, but as one whose heart has been made free, John 8:36, obeying not to obtain divine approval, but because he possesses it through Christ. “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” Ephesians 2:18. Love becomes the new commandment, not written on stone, but engraved upon the heart. Jeremiah 31:33. Yet it is precisely this liberty, this Christ-wrought obedience, that so often provokes misunderstanding.
The term antinomian is usually spoken with a certain scorn, and more often than not, it’s joined to another word, hyper-Calvinist, as though one insult alone weren’t enough. Together, they form the sharpest rebuke that many self-described calvinists can muster, meant to silence and sideline those whose message of grace doesn’t fit within their well-defined boundaries. What they see as a crushing verdict is, in truth, a confession of how far their theology has drifted from the freedom that is in Christ.
The label antinomian has rarely been used with care; its history is cast more as a weapon than a definition. From the apostolic era, when Paul’s gospel was slandered as, “let us do evil, that good may come,” Romans 3:8, down through the tumultuous years of the Reformation and the Puritan controversies, the charge has been the reflexive outcry of those unsettled by the doctrines of free and sovereign grace. Luther, Crisp, Huntington, and many others were all tarred with the same brush for proclaiming a salvation that leaves no room for human boasting. Ephesians 2:9. What bound these men together was not a lax view of holiness, but a fierce loyalty to Christ’s finished work, a refusal to dilute grace with human effort. And because that message dismantled the scaffolding of works-religion, opponents resorted to whatever slander might silence it.
In truth, the gospel has always borne this ancient slander, for wherever grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, legal minds will calculate that holiness must be maintained by law, unaware that the same grace that pardons also purifies. In essence, they imagine that Christ is sufficient to justify but not sufficient to sanctify, dividing what God has joined together. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” I Corinthians 1:30.
Ultimately, this accusation frequently uncovers the innate hostility of the unrenewed mind toward sovereign grace. The natural man cannot endure a gospel that strips him of boasting and enthrones Christ as the sole Author of righteousness. Man instinctively resists any gospel that leaves him powerless, penniless, and dependent upon Christ for everything. Yet hostility is not the only cause of confusion; even true saints may struggle beneath old shadows. Surely there are also many of the Lord’s own dear people who harbor no resistance to grace, they long for righteousness, they crave a life ‘pleasing’ to God, they thirst, as do all saints, for purity of heart. What they have yet to see clearly is that the righteousness they desire is not found in their striving but in Christ alone, who is sufficient not only to pardon but to shape and sustain every step of their walk. Their affections are toward Him, yet their thoughts still echo remnants of the former rule, producing a sincere yet confused mixture of law and grace in their daily walk.
They love grace, though they see it only through the haze of a framework they never thought to question, and the only teaching they have ever known. Their difficulty is not doubting Christ but unlearning the mixture of law and gospel that has surrounded them all their days. For many, the idea of departing from the tradition that shaped them, perhaps for decades, feels like abandoning the faith itself, like disinheriting the spiritual culture that formed them from childhood. Their entire sense of what “Christian” means has been tied to that system. And who cannot sympathize? When a believer has spent a lifetime walking a certain road, it becomes altogether familiar, and all the more difficult to veer from, especially if a church, tradition or some confession is waiting at the end of it. It seems unthinkable to turn aside! This is not the resistance of an unrenewed mind, but the slow untying of knots formed over years of mingling law with gospel.
Additionally, those most eager to denounce antinomianism are generally those who believe the law was intended as a map for moral living, a divine handbook for respectable conduct to help men live uprightly. We do not deny that the law is holy, just, and good, nor do we imagine that anything within it is contrary to righteousness. Yet its holiness serves a higher end than mere behavior. The Scriptures reveal that the law was given to show man what he is not, to define sin, to measure guilt, to prove inability. It commands righteousness but imparts no power to perform it. The design of the law was never to sanctify the flesh, but rather to expose it. The law defines sin with surgical precision, condemns every deviation, and shuts every mouth beneath its verdict. Romans 3:19. It reveals man’s ruin, not his remedy; it declares God’s standard but imparts no strength to reach it. Its work is to strip man of boasting, that grace alone might be magnified in Christ.
Into that helpless condition the gospel enters, not to mend the law, but to manifest the righteousness of God apart from it. What the law could never do, grace has done through the obedience and death of Christ. The very sentence that once demanded our condemnation now finds its satisfaction in Him; and in that triumph the apostle exults, “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:1. (Many have read this as a conditional promise, as if the believer’s peace with God depended on the consistency of his walk, but that is to invert the gospel. This is no admonition to walk in the Spirit, but rather an affirmation that all who are in Christ Jesus do walk after the Spirit. Paul is not setting forth a requirement to be met, but a reality already established.) The believer’s freedom from judgment rests wholly upon the finished work of Christ, and the Spirit’s indwelling presence stands as the sure evidence of that redemption. The cause is Christ; the conduct is its fruit.
If there is such a thing as true antinomianism, it is not found in those who rest wholly upon Christ for righteousness, but in those who diminish the law’s perfection so that man might seem able to keep it. The genuine antinomian is not the one who exalts grace, but the one who lowers the law, making it content with human sincerity, effort, or moral reform, for to relax its demands is to destroy its glory. The law knows nothing of partial obedience; it requires all or condemns all. Only in Christ is the law honored and fulfilled, every precept kept, every curse endured. Thus, the gospel does not make the law void; it establishes it. Romans 3:31. In magnifying Christ’s obedience, we magnify the law’s holiness; in confessing our utter inability, we uphold its unbending standard. The believer, therefore, is not without law to God, but under the law to Christ, I Corinthians 9:21, a new and living law of faith and love, written by the Spirit, and fulfilled not by fear, but by the power of divine life within. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Romans 8:3.
In conclusion, every part of our salvation, from its first stirring in eternity to its final glory, rests entirely in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ above us, Christ for us, Christ in us, Christ through us, and Christ before us at every step. Thus, the gospel stands firm. Grace is invincible because Christ is unchangeable. Men may accuse it or misread it, but its power abides, for Christ Himself is its substance. MPJ