Recently, I have been seeing an argument from antinomians that we are not under the Old Testament law, but rather under the Law of Christ. When I have asked them to show me where that law is found, if they try to give any answer at all, they make a vague reference to "the law of love" or to the first and second commandments (Matthew 22:37-40). When I ask them to define "love" apart from the law, they usually disappear. Same thing when I point to Jesus words about His two commandments: "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40). My point is simply that the Law of the Old Testament is the Law of Jesus. I am sad to say that those who hold the antinomian doctrine never give it up, simply because it is self-refuting. Rather, they always fall back on that antinomian trump card, "You are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14, ignoring context).
On the other hand, if my challenge to them is that men are then left free to decide right and wrong for themselves (Genesis 3:5), they deny that, too, trying to play both sides. Logically, it must be one or the other, as Gary North described in his book, "Tools of Dominion" (p. 315): "To argue that there ever was, ever is, or ever will be a time when men are not under God's specified judicial sanctions is to argue that they are under sanctions imposed by autonomous man, meaning the self-proclaimed autonomous State. In short, to argue this is inescapably to argue also that God has in history authorized either the tyranny of the unchained State or else the implicit subsidizing of criminal behavior through the State's unwillingness to impose God's specified sanctions. In either case, victims lose. This is what antinomians of all varieties refuse even to discuss, let alone answer biblically."
I would suggest that our society has arri9ved exactly at the point described by North. Having rejected God's enscripturated Law, Western culture has turned to humanistic morality, maintained not by the inner power of the Holy Spirit, but rather enforced by increasing state violence. Enforced unsuccessfully. The result has been a split competition between a violent state and a violent anarchistic population. This is what a society looks like, when it has turned religion into psychotherapy and pietism.
