The Dystopian Marriage of Antinomianism and Legalism

What is the Spirit of our Age?

We live in a day of lawlessness that has been allowed to redefine true salvation.  The spirit of the age has infected the gospel with antinomianism, cleverly disguising it as “grace.”  It has also mislabeled obedience as "legalism," going even so far as to call faith and repentance "works." But obedience has no more to do with legalism than antinomianism has to do with grace. In order to return to a Biblical view of salvation, we must expose the false equivalence of obedience and legalism, while also realigning obedience with grace and legalism with antinomianism.

Although antinomianism and legalism would appear to be opposites and even enemies, they have formed an alliance against God from the beginning of time. They are but two sides of the same coin of rebellion against God. The serpent's question to Eve, "Has God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" betrays the spirit of legalism looking for loopholes. And, in the spirit of legalism, the serpent's wording deceptively exaggerates the one prohibition from God--an over-pious behavior known as supererogation. Apparently, Eve was supposed to answer, "Well, no, God didn't say that, just this one tree." What the serpent has done by causing Eve to correct his question is to implant in her mind a sweeping (and nearly correct) legal justification of eating from any tree, and since it's just one tree that they can't eat from, it's no big deal if she takes just one bite from just one tree.

Eve also feels entitled, now that the serpent has insinuated that God makes unreasonable demands, even though her answer to the serpent's question was "no." The serpent has succeeded in making Eve think that the one thing she can't have is the one thing she needs. Now she wants to disobey, for obedience itself seems wrong. Enter antinomianism. But even if eating the fruit is wrong, the size of the "one" prohibition is miniscule (legalism) compared to everything else God wants her to have. So, why shouldn't God agree to giving her this, too? Thus has the serpent infected Eve's mind with doublethink and seduced her into quantifying disobedience.

But such is the spirit of legalism. And so much for the knowledge of good and evil. Legalism can't tell which is which but instead majors on the minors (the one prohibition) and minors on the majors (Paradise). Ironically, the fact that legalism is strictly literal places it at odds with what is truly spiritual. Eve has deceived herself into thinking that the size of her sin--if it even is sin--is the size of the one bite she ate. She misses the forest for the trees, or, in this case, the Garden for the fruit. And such is always the case with sin. The temptation looms larger than life until yielding makes the sin seem small and unworthy of death. The real sin is in questioning God in the first place, as if He shouldn't make any laws against sin. But, even though Eve answers the serpent's question correctly, she misses the fact that he asked the wrong question. Worse yet, she misses the fact that he had no right to ask any question. But Satan through the serpent has set the precedent of questioning God, making God to be the liar and himself to be "wise." He has also succeeded, as we have seen, in making Eve think that doing what God has forbidden isn't really wrong. What's wrong is the fact that God forbad it in the first place. Reenter antinomianism.

The serpent succeeds in making Eve think not only that God is unjust but that He isn't even necessary. When the serpent lies--"You shall be as gods"--he promises freedom from accountability, making sin impossible. This lie is, of course, the taproot of antinomianism: if I am my own "god," there can be no laws. Satan's lie to Eve--"You shall not surely die"--means that one bite isn't fatal because, after all, gods don't die. By giving her a false sense of identity, the serpent has given Eve a false sense of authority. God and even her husband are now beneath her as she becomes the new benefactress of wisdom and morality. The serpent has twisted himself around Eve's soul, warping her worldview with rebellion against God and defiance against consequences for that rebellion. He has taught her to look for loopholes in the literalness of what God said so that sin could slip through without being sin.

This type of dual-sided rebellion against God is embodied in the archetypal wolf in sheep's clothing. Both the wolf (antinomianism) and the sheep's clothing (legalism) allow sin to masquerade as innocence.  Satan's logic always twists the paradoxes of truth and tries to make fallacies appear logical. And that is how he has twisted our culture's perception of obedience and grace. Whether he uses the big lie or the glittering generality, his scales of justice are always rigged. Self always weighs more than God, and that is precisely what legalism and antinomianism have in common. The hypocrisy that unites them together says, on the one hand, that I only have to do what the law literally says, while, on the other, saying that there aren't any laws after all.

Legalism and antinomianism, far from opposites, are twin expressions of Satan's own rebellion against God. Satan's mindset is that "rules were made (legalism) to be broken (antinomianism)." Therefore, it behooves him on the one hand to know God's laws well, while, on the other, so subtly to take them out of context that he turns them into a lie. But Satan is the liar, and the fact that he knows more Scripture than most Christians do places cultural Christianity at his disposal. Understanding legalism for what it really is will not only distance it as far as possible from true obedience in Christ but will bear out that, behind it is the desire, not to create law and order, but to legalize sin. Flip the coin over, and that is the true spirit of antinomianism indeed. And we will readily see that our culture is certainly there. The current antipathy to all demands upon the believer in Christ has nothing to do with a sincere fear of legalism, but it has everything to do with the strong delusion that Scripture prophesies will deceive false believers in the last days.  This strong delusion comes from God Himself as He gives a reprobate people over to their apostasy. 

This apostasy will not be atheistic or irreligious; it will embrace the worship of the Antichrist who will tyrannize the whole world, on pretext of controlling global anarchy. Yet the ruling characteristic of the Antichrist will not be law and order but the exaltation of self, with all its lawless rebellion against a holy God. This spirit of lawlessness is even now at work in both the secular and the religious worlds. To the extent that even professing Christians legitimize the reversal of Judeo-Christian social norms, they are playing into the lawless agenda of the Antichrist. The reprobate mind passes its own laws to overrule God's laws. In other words, it passes laws to legitimize lawlessness. And the Antichrist will ultimately enforce these manmade laws with the penalty of death itself, thus simultaneously mimicking and mocking the wages of sin and ushering in the Great Tribulation.

Creating legal ways to sin is exactly how our lawless culture has justified its willful descent into evil. And yet even among believers, the "It's not against the law, so I'll do it" mentality seems to be the measure by which we exercise our Christian "liberty." Yet, suppose that someone says, "I choose not to do that," in opposition to his liberated peers. He will quite likely be judged as a legalist, even though his reason for abstaining has nothing to do with keeping the "law." If his true motivation for avoiding a certain behavior comes from within, how, then, is that legalism? Suppose I choose not to buy my groceries on Sunday--not because there is a specific "law" against it but because I don't want to sully the Lord's Day with the spirit of merchandise. My motivation has nothing to do with legalism and everything to do with love. I love the Lord too much to dirty up His Day. Or suppose my motivation is one of faith. Yes, I might need that "thing" today, but by faith, I will get along without that "thing" until tomorrow. If I have tried and proven that way of life, doesn't that put me in the good company of every person thousands of years ago who gathered enough manna on Friday morning to carry him through Saturday evening?

Faith is, in fact, the true spirit behind all laws of God, which is why David can say that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul (Psalm 19:7). But, sadly, we don't see much these days by way of giving the Lord the benefit of the doubt. We assume that such a thing is legalism, and we want legalism dead. However, our mercenary obedience--if it can even be called obedience--keeps legalism as alive and well as it has ever been. We see its spirit everywhere--and in the very places we would least expect it. It is the licentious man who is legalistic, flaunting his freedom to please himself whenever possible just because he "can." He has given himself so much elbow room in the seat of the scornful that you can barely wiggle sitting next to him. In fact, if you don't agree with him, you can just go and stand in the corner. See this mentality at work in any blog where someone makes a comment erring on the side of caution.

Let's say, for example, that they feel wrong about watching The Chosen because they don't think it's Biblical. They will be shamed as a hater who is dividing the church and discrediting the spread of the gospel--by those who protested one breath earlier that this show isn't the Bible; it's just a show. And these "shamers," congratulating themselves for their broadmindedness, will proceed to excoriate all that they find petty, intolerant, and judgmental in the person who did nothing more hateful than utter a Biblical opinion that wasn't popular. I see conversations like this several times a week. Is there anything more hypocritical than spiritual lawlessness?

Or, how about this example? Recently, it has come to my attention that several household names in the Christian world today have openly popularized their infatuation with playing tournament poker, rationalizing that it is not gambling, since it is a game of skill (a point disputed even by AI), and since their winnings are small (in comparison to their annual salaries). Total winnings of a mere $53,000 are but pocket change when your annual salary is $1.1 million (these are actual figures). And yet the "compassion" that oozes from these people as they nod to the "woke" agenda makes me want to remind them that, to the people who lost this money, it was not necessarily "pocket change." How is gambling--or whatever they call it--consistent with "social justice"? God calls the love of money sin--right there in the Tenth Commandment that prohibits coveting. Jesus says we cannot serve God and mammon.

But, again, try to confront such behavior with the Word of God, no matter how lovingly, and find that popular opinion rejects God's Word, especially among professing "believers." The arguments go something like this: God's Word isn't authoritative the way you use it, for you can't keep it because

you sin. How anyone knows this, they don't bother to say--for it is a given that everyone sins and that all sins are equal. If you say you don't, then, of course, you're the worst hypocrite of all (and we're back to the same circular reasoning and the same worn out whataboutism).

The dystopian apostasy about which Paul warned Timothy has certainly arrived. The church does not endure sound doctrine but cancels it as legalism, while false doctrines prevail with a tyrannical force that is truly frightening. Go to almost any website on a score of biblical topics, and you will find an eerie distortion of once-familiar doctrines of the faith.  See if you can find a biblical view of repentance, faith, or grace.  Wade through the Reformed Calvinist’s determinism or the antinomian’s progressivism or the NAR’s Pentecostalism and walk away with your head spinning.  Worst of all is the biting sarcasm that runs through some of these blogs. Ultimately, an unholy dogmatism has replaced the authority of the Word of God--dogmatism that I would call the new legalism.

As in the days of the judges, many professing believers do and say what is right in their own eyes. There is no fear of God before their eyes, for the spirit of antinomianism has redefined their God as one of love and grace. Of this they are militantly certain. In this "spirit" of grace, progressive churches broadcast their inclusiveness and downplay their distinctiveness.  Churches around the globe sing worship songs composed by heretics who pedal prosperity while denying the Trinity and affirming their own identity as "little gods." The holy fire of eternal truth scarcely flickers across most pulpits today. In fact, most "pulpits" have quite literally disappeared in favor of "ghost" lecterns or even barstools. Some preachers prance across the stage before thousands of cheering, whistling fans.

Churches have lost not only their savor but their light, their first love, their identity in Christ.  Indeed, most have lost the Holy Spirit in their services, if they ever knew Him in the first place.  Without exaggeration, we may conclude that the antinomian mind set free by "grace" catapults the legalist’s stone against the truly obedient in heart, finding an enemy in repentance and holiness.  Obsessed with taking spiritual selfies that document their celebrity-status piety, these “brave new Christians” of an Orwellian spiritual dystopia promote their own identity, not Christ’s. 

What is Satan's Temptation for Our Age?   

And what is Christ's identity? It is enlightening to realize that Satan would have had Christ prove His identity by destroying Himself—by casting Himself down from the temple to prove that the angels could catch Him.  If they did not catch Him, then He was not God.  But if they did catch Him--then He was God? A God Who needed His creation to save Him?  Jesus refutes Satan's idiocy by saying, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”  What does this mean?  Certainly, it means that we have no right to violate the laws of nature to prove the existence of God.  God’s authority is proven just as clearly by the existence of natural law as by divine intervention.  In fact, the Deist saw natural law as proof itself of the existence of God, oddly denying the supernatural in consequence.  But what Jesus is saying is that God is not going to rush to my rescue when I trigger my own demise.  If He did, He would be violating His own natural rule of law.  Doing so would make suicide acceptable—for we would always expect a bailout, whether in this life or the next.

Just as Satan was mocking God's natural laws for Jesus, so he mocks spiritual laws for the believer today. We cannot flout the spiritual laws "natural" to salvation in order to invoke some higher principle of grace.  We must first obey the law in hand—the spiritual laws natural to our new life in Christ—without expecting a divine exemption from the consequences of our own bad decisions.  Casting myself headlong from the pinnacle of salvation into a freefall of sin but expecting grace to deliver me from sin’s wages of death is what the antinomian, like Satan, is urging me to do.  The very authority of God that I have rejected is somehow supposed to save me—but I prove the force of the law by my very need to be saved.  I would not need angels to catch me if jumping did not bring certain death. 

But the proud heart deceives itself by heeding the illogic of Satan.  So is the church doing by denying the law of love that governs our new life in Christ (Matthew 22:37-40; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14). But, like Christ, we don't “prove” our identity--or security--as believers by obeying Satan's temptation to destroy ourselves.  And yet that is exactly what the hyper-grace, antinomian "believer" is doing when he indulges a life of sin. Paul "nailed" the false logic of antinomianism by verbalizing its absurdity, "Let us do evil, that good may come" (Romans 3:8).

As it was for Jesus, God's Word is still our only safety net against the sin that would cast us down from the Temple of grace. As Jesus said to Satan, "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). We cannot rewrite the Bible, and we cannot sin and call it grace. Neither can we save ourselves (legalism) by falsely claiming a promise from God (Word of Faith) as a tradeoff for the obedience we have ignored. Every Christian must live a new life in Christ as he bears his cross that crucifies the sin principle as long as he lives. He doesn't climb to the pinnacle of the temple to destroy himself; he climbs the lonely hill of Calvary to deny himself. He shuns the voice of Satan that would numb all Biblical common sense--"you won't surely die; grace will save you"--and heeds the voice of his Savior, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15). That isn't legalism; that is love, exactly as Christ says.

At work in the world today is a demonic spirit that erases God’s boundaries of morality. When the church imbibes of this spirit under the guise of grace, it reaps the consequences. E. Stanley Jones, lifetime Methodist missionary to India in the early 1900s, rightly argued that we do not break God's laws; we only break ourselves upon them. God's Word is still true, and His truth is marching on, even in days as dystopian as these.