The Antinomian view rests upon a misinterpretation of Rom. 6:14—“Ye are not under law, but under grace.” Agricola and Amsdorf (1559) were representatives of this view. Amsdorf said that “good works are hurtful to salvation.” But Melanchthon's words furnish the reply: “Sola fides justificat, sed fides non est sola.” F. W. Robertson states it: “Faith alone justifies, but not the faith that is alone.” And he illustrates: “Lightning alone strikes, but not the lightning which is without thunder; for that is summer lightning and harmless.” See Browning's poem, Johannes Agricola in Meditation, in Dramatis Personæ, 300—“I have God's warrant, Could I blend All hideous sins as in a cup, To drink the mingled venoms up, Secure my nature will convert The draught to blossoming gladness.” Agricola said that Moses ought to be hanged. This is Sanctification without Perseverance.
Sandeman, the founder of the sect called Sandemanians, asserted as his fundamental principle the deadliness of all doings, the necessity for inactivity to let God do his work in the soul. See his essay, Theron and Aspasia, referred to by Allen, in his Life of Jonathan Edwards, 114. Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts, in 1637, for holding “two dangerous errors: 1. The Holy Spirit personally dwells in a justified person; 2. No sanctification can evidence to us our justification.” Here the latter error almost destroyed the influence of the former truth. There is a little Antinomianism in the popular hymn: “Lay your deadly doings down, Down at Jesus' feet; Doing is a deadly thing; Doing ends in death.” The colored preacher's poetry only presented the doctrine in the concrete: “You may rip and te-yar, You may cuss and swe-yar, But you're jess as sure of heaven, 'S if you'd done gone de-yar.” Plain Andrew Fuller in England (1754-1815) did excellent service in overthrowing popular Antinomianism.
To this view we urge the following objections:
(a) That since the law is a transcript of the holiness of God, its demands as a moral rule are unchanging. Only as a system of penalty and a method of salvation is the law abolished in Christ's death.
Mat. 5:17-19—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”; 48—“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”; 1 Pet. 1:16—“Ye shall be holy; for I am holy”; Rom. 10:4—“For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth”; Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ”; 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”; Col. 2:14—“having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross”; Heb. 2:15—“deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
(b) That the union between Christ and the believer secures not only the bearing of the penalty of the law by Christ, but also the impartation of Christ's spirit of obedience to the believer,—in other words, brings him into communion with Christ's work, and leads him to ratify it in his own experience.
Rom. 8:9, 10, 15—“ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but [pg 876]the spirit is life because of righteousness.... For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear: but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”; Gal. 5:22-25—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof”; 1 John 1:6—“If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth”; 3:6—“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him.”
(c) That the freedom from the law of which the Scriptures speak, is therefore simply that freedom from the constraint and bondage of the law, which characterizes those who have become one with Christ by faith.
Ps. 119:97—“O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day”; Rom. 3:8, 31—“and why not (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come? whose condemnation is just.... Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid: nay, we establish the law”; 6:14, 15, 22—“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid ... now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life”; 7:6—“But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter”; 8:4—“that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”; 1 Cor. 7:22—“he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman”; Gal. 5:1—“For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage”; 1 Tim. 1:9—“law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly”; James 1:25—“the perfect law, the law of liberty.”
To sum up the doctrine of Christian freedom as opposed to Antinomianism, we may say that Christ does not free us, as the Antinomian believes, from the law as a rule of life. But he does free us (1) from the law as a system of curse and penalty; this he does by bearing the curse and penalty himself. Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation; this he does by making his obedience and merits ours. Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion; this he does by giving to us the spirit of obedience and sonship, by which the law is progressively realized within.