Christ, then, 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. Just as law can do nothing with a man after it has executed its death-penalty upon him, so law can do nothing with us, now that its death-penalty has been executed upon Christ. There are some insects that expire in the act of planting their sting; and so, when the law gathered itself up and planted its sting in the heart of Christ, it expended all its power as a judge and avenger over us who believe. In the Cross, the law as a system of curse and penalty exhausted itself; so we were set free.
Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation: in other words, he frees us from the necessity of trusting our salvation to an impossible future obedience. As the sufferings of Christ, apart from any sufferings of ours, deliver us from eternal death, so the merits of Christ, apart from any merits of ours, give us a title to eternal life. By faith in what Christ has done and simple acceptance of his work for us, we secure a right to heaven. Obedience on our part is no longer rendered painfully, as if our salvation depended on it, but freely and gladly, in gratitude for what Christ has done for us. Illustrate by the English nobleman's invitation to his park, and the regulations he causes to be posted up.
Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion. In putting an end to legalism, he provides against license. This he does by giving the spirit of obedience and sonship. He puts love in the place of fear; and this secures an obedience more intelligent, more thorough, and more hearty, than could have been secured by mere law. So he frees us from the burden and compulsion of the law, by realizing the law within us by his Spirit. The freedom of the Christian is freedom in the law, such as the musician experiences when the scales and exercises have become easy, and work has turned to play. See John Owen, Works, 3:366-651; 6:1-313; Campbell, The Indwelling Christ, 73-81.
Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 195—“The supremacy of those books which contain the words of Jesus himself [i. e., the Synoptic Gospels] is that they incorporate, with the other elements of the religious life, the regulative will. Here for instance [in John] is the gospel of the contemplative life, which, ‘beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord is changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:18). The belief is that, with this beholding, life will take care of itself. Life will never take care of itself. Among other things, after the most perfect vision, it has to ask what aspirations, principles, affections, belong to life, and then to cultivate the will to embody these things. Here is the common defect of all religions. They fail to marry religion to the common life. Christ did not stop short of this final word; but if we leave him for even the greatest of his disciples, we are in danger of missing it.” This utterance of Gould is surprising in several ways. It attributes to John alone the contemplative attitude of mind, which the quotation given shows to belong also to Paul. It ignores the constant appeals in John to the will: “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me”(John 14:21). It also forgets that “life” in John is the whole being, including intellect, affection, and will, and that to have Christ for one's life is absolutely to exclude Antinomianism.
B. The Perfectionist,—which holds that the Christian may, in this life, become perfectly free from sin. This view was held by John Wesley in England, and by Mahan and Finney in America.
Finney, Syst. Theol., 500, declares regeneration to be “an instantaneous change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.” The claims of Perfectionists, however, have been modified from “freedom from all sin,” to “freedom from all known sin,” then to “entire consecration,” and finally to “Christian assurance.” H. W. Webb-Peploe, in S. S. Times, June 25, 1898—“The Keswick teaching is that no true Christian need wilfully or knowingly sin. Yet this is not sinless perfection. It is simply according to our faith that we receive, and faith only draws from God according to our present possibilities. These are limited by the presence of indwelling corruption; and, while never needing to sin within the sphere of the light we possess, there are to the last hour of our life upon the earth powers of corruption within every man, which defile his best deeds and give to even his holiest efforts that ‘nature of sin’ of which the 9th Article in the Church of England Prayerbook speaks so strongly.” Yet it is evident that this corruption is not regarded as real sin, and is called “nature of sin” only in some non-natural sense.
Dr. George Peck says: “In the life of the most perfect Christian there is every day renewed occasion for self-abhorrence, for repentance, for renewed application of the blood of Christ, for application of the rekindling of the Holy Spirit.” But why call this a state of perfection? F. B. Meyer: “We never say that self is dead; were we to do so, self would be laughing at us round the corner. The teaching of Romans 6 is, not that self is dead, but that the renewed will is dead to self, the man's will saying Yes to Christ, and No to self; through the Spirit's grace it constantly repudiates and mortifies the power of the flesh.” For statements of the Perfectionist view, see John Wesley's Christian Theology, edited by Thornley Smith, 265-273; Mahan, Christian Perfection, and art. in Bib. Repos. 2d Series, vol. IV, Oct. 1840:408-428; Finney, Systematic Theology, 586-766; Peck, Christian Perfection; Ritschl, Bib. Sac., Oct. 1878:656; A. T. Pierson, The Keswick Movement.
In reply, it will be sufficient to observe:
(a) That the theory rests upon false conceptions: first, of the law,—as a sliding-scale of requirement graduated to the moral condition of creatures, instead of being the unchangeable reflection of God's holiness; secondly, of sin,—as consisting only in voluntary acts instead of embracing also those dispositions and states of the soul which are not conformed to the divine holiness; thirdly, of the human will,—as able to choose God supremely and persistently at every moment of life, and to fulfil at every moment the obligations resting upon it, instead of being corrupted and enslaved by the Fall.
This view reduces the debt to the debtor's ability to pay,—a short and easy method of discharging obligations. I can leap over a church steeple, if I am only permitted to [pg 878]make the church steeple low enough; and I can touch the stars, if the stars will only come down to my hand. The Philistines are quite equal to Samson, if they may only cut off Samson's locks. So I can obey God's law, if I may only make God's law what I want it to be. The fundamental error of perfectionism is its low view of God's law; the second is its narrow conception of sin. John Wesley: “I believe a person filled with love of God is still liable to involuntary transgressions. Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please; I do not.” The third error of perfectionism is its exaggerated estimate of man's power of contrary choice. To say that, whatever may have been the habits of the past and whatever may be the evil affections of the present, a man is perfectly able at any moment to obey the whole law of God, is to deny that there are such things as character and depravity. Finney, Gospel Themes, 383, indeed, disclaimed “all expectations of attaining this state ourselves, and by our own independent, unaided efforts.” On the Law of God, see pages 537-544.