Thursday, August 29, 2013

Beware Antinomians

Antinomians, Paul has his sights set on you:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? [Rom 6:16]

You misunderstand your freedom. Grace is not license to do as you please [Rom 6:15]. If that is your perspective, you don't really understand grace. Your faith is not in the Savior; your faith is still in you. That is the heart of the rebellion of mankind, and the person who puts away God's law (making a new one unto himself) is still vying for God's throne.

However, the solution to antinomianism is not to destroy justification by faith alone. A misunderstanding of Sola Fide and Sola Gratia by a few does not invalidate its truth. God saves by grace through faith [Eph 2:8] and calls us to walk in newness of life [Rom 6:4]--not in oldness of the flesh, as we had always stumbled along.

I don't think I've ever met a pure antinomian. I'm sure they exist, but the pure doctrine is a rare elixir. Yet, is that struggle not within each of our hearts? A watered down version of this poison still courses through the veins of the flesh. Don't we occasionally think that "this one sin" is okay because God will forgive? Isn't it easy to presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience. God extends that grace to us for an opportunity to repent [Rom 2:4].

The good news is that God does forgive this sin, and in our repentance we will bear good fruit.

Jesus said, "For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit" [Luke 6:43-44].

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