The Law of God Versus Lawless Theology

Many people claim that the moral law of the Old Testament was given for Israel alone, not for the Gentiles. They base their claim on the fact that only Israel received the written law from Moses. 

That claim is wrong. 

In a familiar passage, Genesis chapters 18 and 19, we have the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even people with no biblical education know the basics of the story. Why were they destroyed? God says of them, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave" (Genesis 18:20). This account is of an event more than four centuries before God gave Moses the Law on Mount Sinai. So, if there was no moral law before Sinai, by what standard did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah sin, and sin so gravely that they would be erased from the face of the earth? 

The antinomian has no answer. His assertion is based on the logical fallacy of a false equivalency, the equating of the Law per se with the recording of the Law. The antinomian is correct in his claim that there was no written record of God's Law, because that privilege was reserved for the nation of Israel: "What advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:1-2). While all men have the law of God recorded in our consciences (Romans 2:15), the Jews have had the additional blessing of the Law in written form. Thus they were doubly blessed, doubly accountable, and - ultimately - doubly punished (Isaiah 40:2). 

The problem for the antinomian is that, without God's law (I John 3:4), there is no objective standard of right and wrong, and, therefore, no standard by which to proclaim that a person is a sinner. Yet, even the antinomian claims that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). He tries to have it both ways, sinfulness without law.

I suggest that is why the American church has become so impotent in the face of a depraved and self-destructing culture. She has repudiated the one thing given by God to construct a godly society, his Law. The cry of today's average evangelical is, "Any law except God's Law!," and that is what we have received, a godless society, just like they wanted.

The Most-Specious Argument Against Theonomy

Everyone knows the Fifth Commandment by heart: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12). The apostle Paul refers to it as "the first commandment with a promise" (Ephesians 6:2). It is the basis of all human government, arguing from the least to the greatest. That is, if we should honor mother and father, then, obviously, we owe even more honor to the king. 

What few people consider, however, is the importance that God lays on this social order which He instituted: "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear" (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). 

We observe several things here. First, this is a son who is habitually rebellious, not one who is occasionally ill-behaved. Second, the parents have struggled with him, striving to bring him to order. If the parents are sinfully lenient, that is a different sin. Third, they go to the elders of their hometown for action. That is, men who are familiar with the family, and witnesses of both the efforts of the parents and the incorrigibility of the son. And fourth, most importantly, this son is not a child. He is living riotously, including the abuse of alcohol. At the very least, he is a teenager. He is to be removed from society because of his baleful actions and influence on others. Notice the last phrase, which indicates that one of the purposes of this law is to serve as an example to the rest of society. 

Yet, this is the one law which is immediately attacked by the antinomian whenever the proper role of God's law in society ("theonomy") is discussed. "So you want the government to stone children, huh?" Well, as I have already said, we aren't talking about children here. Nor do I want anyone to be stoned. Rather, they make that choice when they commit an act which is legal grounds for capital punishment. What is necessary is not the same as what is subjectively desired. 

Furthermore, look at what has happened to our society as a result of coddling wickedness in our young people! It is impossible to enumerate the crimes that would be prevented before they could happen if the incorrigible wicked were removed before they started their spree of violence. 

So, to answer the challenge of the antinomian: No, I don't want children stoned. I want a society in which children are brought up to respect their elders, society, and, most importantly, the God who rules over us all. 

By What Standard? New Testament Love and the Law

"[L]ove is not a replacement of the Law of God but rather its highest manifestation or fulfillment (Romans 3:10). In addition..., there is no biblical distinction between Old Testament commandments and New Testament commandments, Old Testament law and New Testament law; these distinctions are traditions and doctrines of men."

- Roger Hadad, "Apologia for the Law and the Sabbath," p. 60 

Part of the decay of American Evangelicalism has been the rise of antinomianism, the claim that biblical law has no role in the life of the Christian. While it is orthodox protestantism to say that the Law has no role in our

Moses with the Commandments

justification, it has always been considered heretical to say that it also has no role in our sanctification. 

What, according to these evangelicals, has replaced the Law for the Christian? The law of Christ, they answer. What is that? The law of love. 

In the New Testament, Jesus tells us the two highest laws: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40). And, as the antinomians say, there is much of love stated there. But then the antinomians stop. 

I understand why they stop. Those verses are a problem for the view which I oppose here. How so, you may ask? 

"And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Isn't that just quoting the verse again? No, it isn't. This verse is Deuteronomy 6:5. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." And where is this found? Matthew 22:39, you answer, and correctly. However, before Matthew wrote, it was found in Leviticus 19:18.

Do you see the problem for the antinomian? He claims that love is the law of Christ, in opposition to the law of Moses. Yet, Jesus quoted the law of Moses in order to state His law of love! Unlike the American Evangelical, Jesus was no antinomian.

Noah and the Sabbath Principle

Noah and the Ark

A major argument used by anti-sabbatarians to support their claim that the Sabbath was a Jewish ceremony and not for Christians is that the Sabbath didn't appear in Scripture before the giving of the Ten Commandments. That reasoning equates the doctrine with the word, like the cults that deny the Trinity, just because the word doesn't appear in Scripture. 

But the question they avoid is whether the concept appears before Exodus 20. As I say here, it first appears in Genesis 2:2-3, when God blesses the seventh day in honor of His completion of the Creation. But, as I will argue in this post, that verse is not the only place that we find the Sabbath in the pre-Mosaic scriptures. 

One of the antinomian views is that non-Jews are obligated to obey only the Noahide laws, i. e., those rules given to Noah, the progenitor of the postdiluvian humanity. While I deny that assertion, in this case it is actually self-refuting. 

In Genesis 5:28-29, we have this part of the account of Noah: "When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, 'Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.'" Lameck, the father of Noah, prophesies that his son would bring relief from work and toil to his descendants. Notice the exact language of Genesis 3:18-19, God's curse on Adam: "Thorns and thistles it [i. e., the ground] shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

How is this not a Sabbath rest? And does that not make the Sabbath a part of the so-called Noahide laws?

God's Law or Man's Law?

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.

Apostolic Usage Demonstrates the Continuing Authority of the Law

One of the greatest errors of dispensationalism has passed to a wider audience of evangelicalism. It has become to claim that the moral law is not authoritative for the Christian. Except when quoting Leviticus 18:22 in conversations regarding homosexuality, the evangelical will dismiss quotations from the Pentateuch with a dismissive, "That's Old Testament," or "We're under grace, not under law." 

But, wow, do those same evangelicals turn mean when you cite particular examples in the New Testament of apostolic application of those laws. I have already discussed Paul's application of a law from Leviticus (and repeated in Deuteronomy) to the church at Corinth (I Corinthians 5:1).

I want to bring up another example today. In I Timothy 5:18, Paul write, "For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,' and, 'The laborer deserves his wages.'" And in I Corinthians 9:9, he writes again to the church at Corinth, "It is written in the Law of Moses, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.' Is it for oxen that God is concerned?" So, from where does that quotation come? From Deuteronomy 25:4 (his other quotation to Timothy is from Luke 10:7). That is an Old Testament law. 

These usages should make it clear that the doctrine of the dispensationalists and the attitude of evangelicals toward the Old Testament moral law is not that of the Apostles. The Apostles took Jesus at His word: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:17-19).

How the Church Paved the Way for Humanism

There has long been a tradition of dividing the Ten Commandments into two tables, commandments one through four and then five through ten. I am OK with that division. The first four deal primarily with man's relationship with God, and the other six primarily with his relationship with his fellow man. They are often portrayed this way in images of the commandments. That might be a bit fanciful. We have no record of how they were divided between the two tablets. Or even if they were divided. Some people believe that each tablet displayed all ten.

That's fine so far. 

There is also a common view that the civil government is supposed to enforce the second table, the laws against thievery and murder, etc., but has no authority over the first four. 

My question is this: Why? 

Sometimes the answer is that the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids it. We have freedom of religion in this land, so we can't have laws against idolatry. Yet our country has a heritage of so-called "blue laws," laws that required businesses to be closed on Sunday in honor of the Sabbath. "Blue," in this case, derives from a historical usage, in which "blue" was used for something which was overly strict. It was a pejorative term, but passed into general usage. The courts have upheld Sunday-closing laws on secular grounds, such as the practicality of providing a day off for workers. 

However, the question must be, Why does the First Amendment - in reality, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment - outweigh God's commandments? Should a cultural preference become the standard by which even Christians are to live, over the Word of God? 

When God tells us, "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3), His desire is clear. So also when He says, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (verses 4-5). So, on what grounds do we decide that His will in these two commandments is less important that it is when He says, "You shall not murder" (verse 13)? There is certainly no biblical justification for that judgment. 

When the Westminster Standards were originally written, the Larger Catechism, question and answer 109, included among the sins forbidden by the Second Commandment, "tolerating a false religion."  However, in 1788, when the first Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church met in the newly-independent United States, they removed that clause as offensive to religious liberty. Not as offensive to the Word of God. 

What this should tell us is that the secular humanism which has come to dominate these United States is not a new phenomenon, and did not suddenly puff into existence because prayer was removed from government schools in the 1960's. Rather, it was the culmination of that decision in 1788 to place political and cultural considerations above the enscripturated Word of God. The door was opened to the supposed independence of "secular life" from God. Now we have parts of our lives which are designated "religious," and parts which are designated "secular." And the humanists are perfectly happy with allowing Christians to enjoy that distinction, because it turns all of life outside the church doors over to them. And the church doors are only a temporary barrier, until the humanists have secured their territory against that day.

The Impotence of the Church

These two quotes from Gary North ("Tools of Dominion," p. 48), written in 1990, explain why the church is impotent in the face of the crises of humanistic 2020 America.

"To retreat from this task of applied Christianity is to to turn over the running of the world to pagan humanists and their theological allies, Christian antinomians. It is to turn the medical world over to the God-hating abortionists who are opposed so vigorously by Dr. [James] Dobson. Yet this is precisely what every publicly-visible Christian leader has done throughout the Twentieth Century, and what almost all of them did after the late-Seventeenth Century. It is universally assumed by Christians that the case laws of Exodus are null and void, and should be" (emphasis in the original).

"The tools of dominion, God's law, sit unused, and generally-unread by those who call themselves Christians. They are the best weapons that Christians possess for moral self-defense, since the best defense is a good offense, yet they steadfastly refuse to use them. To use God's revealed law effectively would require them to become intimately familiar with its many subtleties and complex applications, and, even less appealing, to discipline themselves in terms of it. They prefer to let is sit unopened, either in their laps or on their shelves. Christians, therefore, continue to lose the war for civilization."

Jesus, Justice, and the Woman Caught in Adultery

There is a strange and controversial story found in John 7:53-8:11. In the story, the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery. They say, and correctly, that the Law required those convicted of adultery to be put to death (see Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22). Yet, we notice at least one problem with their presentation: Where was the man caught with her? So, the Pharisees ask Jesus, what do You say that we should do with her?

Jesus does not respond with law. Rather, His response is to point at the character of the woman's accusers. Rather, He says, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (verse 7). In our popular culture, this has been taken to mean that any person with any sin has no grounds for criticizing the actions of any other person. Well, we know that Jesus meant no such thing, because He had prescribed righteous judgment just before this story (John 7:24). And that indicates the problem that He had with the Pharisees in this case. Their accusations did not come from righteous grounds, regardless of their pious citation of Moses. Note that these are men who had allowed a guilty man to depart without punishment, while they were prepared to punish the woman with death! I think that this was the specific intent of the response of Jesus, quoted above. These men had justified the man because they shared his same proclivities for illicit sex, but they still wanted to play at being righteous! They all walked away in shame because Jesus had torn off the bandage with which they had been hiding their perversion. 

If the text is a legitimate part of John, a question which I am not qualified to answer, then why is it here? 

I started thinking about this story because of something I read in my private Bible study this morning: "I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin" (Hosea 4:14). Doesn't that sound a lot like the story from John? And in it I found what I surmised about the story that I described above. Jesus was exemplifying the same redemptive purpose that He, in His preincarnate state, had inspired in the prophecy of Hosea. 

Jesus was not, and is not, opposed to true justice. After all, He was also the source of the Law. He was the Yahweh who revealed the commandments to Moses in Exodus 20:1. However, He is also our compassionate Redeemer who went to the cross on behalf of His people. Notice how He deals with the repentant thief on the cross next to Him (Luke 23:40-43). He promised the thief that he would be with Him in Paradise in just a few hours. However, He did not take the thief down from the cross. The thief was redeemed and forgiven, but still received the due temporal, legal consequence of his wicked acts (Luke 23:41). There is no sign here of the sentimental supposition that no one can judge the sins of someone else.

Know the Bad News, then Recognize the Good News

"The law must be applied with power to the conscience, or the preciousness of grace will be very inadequately known. The superficial piety of the present day is owing, in a large degree, to feeble impressions of the malignity of sin" (James Henley Thornwell, "The necessity and Nature of Christianity").

The comment above was part of a long article in the Southern Presbyterian Review in 1849, but would be even more properly written in our current days. If anything, American evangelicalism has degenerated far past that described by Thornwell in his own time. What would he say about "churches" with female ministers, gay marriages, and that serve as laughingstocks to the world.

His diagnosis is correct. As the church has come to despise God's law, she has lost sight of the sinfulness of sin and its insult to the God she claims to serve. If the word is used at all, "sin" is left undefined, and only in occasions of unfortunate poverty and ignorance. Never is any person called a "sinner," because that is harsh and unloving.

A false Gospel that says only that "God loves you" to everyone leaves everyone satisfied with sin. God loves everyone unconditionally, so there is no need to repent. Church discipline is unheard of in our day.

The result is to use Thornwell's words, a feeble church, and people with a superficial piety.

That wasn't the way Jesus lived: "I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7). And His cousin and favorite Apostle tells us: "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" (I John 3:8). When was the last time a minister called out sin as being the influence of the devil, rather than ignorance or poor economic conditions? And what does the Bible say about that silence? "If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:18).

Rather, this is how the Bible defines sin: "Sin is lawlessness" (I John 3:4). And this brings us back to the problem identified by Thornwell. If minsters do not preach on the Law, then their congregants never learn God's standard of right and wrong. And if Christians have no standard, then we have no standard to present to our world: "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" (I Timothy 1:8-10).

Paul the Apostle

The Crucifixion, and What It Reveals About the Law

"That representation of Christianity which makes the sufferings of Jesus a full and perfect satisfaction of the penalty of the law, and His life of spotless obedience the ground to all claim of eternal bliss... rears the fabric of grace, not upon the ruins, but [upon] the fulfillment of the law. God is never seen to be more gloriously just, nor the law more awfully sacred, than when He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. The impression which this event makes is, indeed, solemn, awful, sublime. It was a wonder in Heaven, a

Aspects of Crucifixion

terror in Hell, and is the grand instrument through which the rebellion of earth is subdued and the stout-hearted made to melt at the remembrance of sin" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

There is a common teaching among Evangelicals that God has rid us of the Law with the coming and crosswork of Jesus. That is not just the ceremonial law, with which I would agree, but also the moral law, with which I cannot. Some people simply deny the distinction between ceremonial and moral. However, then they have to ignore the usages of Paul who describes the abrogation of the former in Galatians, but maintains the latter in I Timothy 1:8-10, even referring to it as "in accordance with the gospel" in verse 11. And he specifically applies the law to members of the church at Corinth in I Corinthians 5:1 (Leviticus 18:8, Deuteronomy 22:30). Paul certainly didn't believe in the abrogation of the moral law!

There is also the problem of Christ's crosswork. Have we forgotten that He was beaten, whipped, and crucified? If the Son of God had to suffer so horribly "to magnify His law and make it glorious" (Isaiah 42:21, in one of the Servant passages), just for the law to be dispensed, was His suffering not unnecessary? What a horror for the Father to treat His Son in such a manner, when He was just going to get rid of the law anyway! Can we truly accuse God of such injustice?

Rather, as Isaiah says, the suffering and death of Jesus did not abrogate the law. Rather, it glorified it! The justice and holiness of God was revealed to the eyes of all men. The high price of rebellion against Him was revealed. At the same time, it revealed His grace, indicating what the love of the Son required that He undertake for His people.

Jonathan Edwards on the Law and the Believer

We often assume that the repetition of a frightening stimulus will cause the fright from it to decrease, becoming less with each experience. Maybe I am different, but it doesn't seem to work that way for me. When I have watched a scary movie, I know what is going to happen the next time I see that movie, yet my apprehension seems merely to be increased by the anticipation.

The same thing happens with the shock I feel when people express certain theological views. One would think that my shock at them would decrease, the more often I hear them. However, it seems to work in the opposite direction. "What!? Another person who believes that?!"

One of those thing is when I hear people express disdain for the Law of God. They believe that, since the Law is never a means of salvation, that it is, therefore, something that can be ignored as irrelevant, I am shocked by that for three reasons: one, the Law is the word of God; two, such an attitude implies moral autonomy (see Genesis 3:5); and three, since the Law is the expression of the holiness of God, to ridicule it is to ridicule Him. Of course, that last is the most appalling.

Even though Paul is the author of the statement, "you are not under Law but under grace" (Romans 6:14), he cannot mean that the Law has ceased to be God's standard of moral action, because he also wrote, "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" (I Timothy 1:8-10). How can the Law be good, with a lawful use, if it can be ridiculed by a person who claims to love God? I think those two things are incompatible.

America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, explained it well: "The law of God is the rule of right...: it is the measure of virtue and sin; so much agreement as there is with this rule, so much is there of rectitude, righteousness, or true virtue, and no more; and so much disagreement as there is with this rule, so much sin is there" (Original Sin, Chapter 1, Section 5). In other words, while God's Law has no power to enable us to obey, it is still God's standard of our obedience. It is grace alone which empowers righteousness. And what is righteousness? To walk according to God's Law:: "Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD" (Psalm 119:1).

Love Versus Antinomianism

Dispensationalism has had an unfortunate longterm impact on Evangelicals, at least in America. Folks of that persuasion love to quote the second half of Romans 6:14, while glossing over the first half: "Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." People walk around repeating, "not under law but under grace," like a mantra to keep away evil spirits. Yet, the first half of the verse shows that Paul is talking about a source of power. The Law does not, and cannot, enable us to live righteously; Only grace can do that. There is nothing in that verse about dismissing the Law of God as a rule of life (see I Timothy 1:8-10). Yet, the dispensationalist will deny even that, because, he repeats, "we are not under law but under grace."

But let's consider another verse: "This is love, that we walk according to His commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it" (II John 1:6).

So, we have a logical dilemma. If the dispensationalist is correct, that "we are not under law but under grace" means that the Law has no application to the Christian life, then what about love? John says that love - i. e., to one another, verse 5 - means keeping the Law. "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome" (I John 5:3).

The Whole World Under the Law

I often hear people claim that the moral law of the Old Testament was only for Israel. Now, if we were talking about the ceremonial law, I could see it. But when it is said of the moral law, then the person is saying that it was alright for non-Israelites to steal, to murder, or to commit adultery. I cannot accept that. Furthermore, it would mean that non-Israelites were not sinners, because sin is defined as the breaking of the Law (I John 3:4).

There are two errors that lead people to make this conclusion.

The first is dispensationalism, which teaches a rigid discontinuity between grace and law, such that they cannot coexist. Law was for pre-Christian Israel (or even continues to be for Israel), while grace is for Christians. This is a wrongful use of Romans 6:14, "You are not under Law, but under grace." However, that verse is about the power to resist sin, not to define sin.

The second is really a logical problem, because it involves confusing the written Law with the Law itself. It is true that the Gentiles did not have the written law. However, it is a fallacious leap of logic to take that to mean that they didn't have the Law at all. On the contrary, Paul also tells us, "They [i. e., the Gentiles] show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them" (Romans 2:15). The experience of conscience by a person without knowledge of the written Law is due to that same moral Law written in his heart. The conscience can be suppressed, of course, but that only shows that the written Law is advantageous, Paul's exact point (Romans 3:2). 

The problem is that both of the groups described above cherry-pick the verses that they apply to this topic. The crucial one that they both ignore is Romans 3:19: "Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God." The first half of the sentence talks about those under the Law, and the second half tells us that it is "the whole world." And it is on that basis that every human being, not just Israel, is a lawbreaker under the judgment of God, and thus needing redemption in Jesus Christ.

The Biblical God Has Teeth!

American evangelicalism has become a weak and insipid religion because it teaches a weak and insipid God. He is like an indulgent grandfather who loves everyone, and exists only to make us feel good. We have stripped away His wrath, His sovereignty, even His independence. Evangelicalism has become the religion of happiness, with a God who has been redesigned to provide it.

Things That God Never Said

As part of that process, large parts of Scripture have been discarded, because they are offensive. Some people, such as Andy Stanley, make it explicit, telling us that we should "jettison" the Old Testament, because it will hurt someone's feelings. At least he is consistent: "I don't like what the Bible says, so I'll get rid of it." However, I wonder if he understands that he has demonstrated that he is not a Christian.

The biblical view of God is very different from the candyman of the evangelical: "The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies" (Nahum 1:2).

What the modern evangelical has really jettisoned is the sinfulness of sin. Where sin has now become offending some other human being, the reality of it is that sin is whatever offends God! And where offending a human being is merely saying or doing something which exposes him to anything outside his comfort zone, offending God is an act of treason, to rebel against our creator, lawgiver, and proper Monarch. 

And He responds accordingly, as He says through Nahum.

Love God, Love His Commandments

In general, people understand that Hebrew poetry is different from English poetry. For example, there is no rhyme in Hebrew poetry. And an element it has that English does not is the use of parallelism. Different lines can be parallel in saying the same thing in different ways. We see such a parallelism in this verse:

"Praise the Lord!
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, 
     who greatly delights in His commandments!"
- Psalm 112:1 

The parallelism is between the second and third lines, which describe the blessed man. He fears the Lord and delights in His commandments. In English, those appear as two different things in succession. However, in Hebrew, they are parallels, different ways of saying the same thing. In other words, this verse equates fearing the Lord with delighting in His commandments. 

This hermeneutical principle is important because it demonstrates the erroneous hermeneutic of the dispensationalist, who claims that there is a contrast, an opposition, between loving God and loving the commandments. Rather, they are necessarily complementary.

Free Grace Justification versus the Cults

The Pelagian cults - by which I mean primarily the Church of Rome, the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Oneness Pentecostals - hate the doctrine of salvation by free grace, apart from works. They hate it because it liberates the believer from dependency on their organizational hierarchy. However, their stated reason for opposing it is that it supposedly results in antinomianism, a freedom to sin without the expectation of spiritual consequences.

They will always cite in this regard James 2:24: "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." I have addressed their perversion of that verse here. Mormonism even makes it more explicit in their own scriptures (Doctrine and Covenants 76:52): "That by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power."

However, the truth is the opposite of their assertion. True good works can only be the result of free grace. That is because the natural man is incapable of doing meritorious works: "No one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:12). The Pelagian puts the effect for the cause, and thus puts the supposed righteousness of the sinner in the place of the real righteousness of Christ (Mark 10:18), which is imputed to the repentant sinner by grace through faith alone, to make him righteous (II Corinthians 5:21). In other words, by teaching a doctrine of salvation that is impossible, the Pelagian blocks men from knowing true salvation! Surely there can be no greater sin (Matthew 23:13).

Nineteenth-Century Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell explains the difference: "A penitent sinner is one who has been a transgressor, but is now just; the laws of God are now put within his mind and written on his heart, and his moral condition is evidently one which renders the supposition of punishment incongruous and contradictory. Such a man is as unfit for the atmosphere of Hell as an impenitent transgressor is unfit for the atmosphere of Heaven. There is obviously, therefore, no principle of reason or nature, as there is, unquestionably, none of revelation, which teaches that a man may be penitent and [yet] perish - that he may be driven into final punishment with the love of God in his heart and the praise of God upon his tongue" ("The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

He is expressing the same idea that God does in Ezekiel 33:12: "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins."

Is the Church Teaching the Lie of Satan?

We often talk about Europe as a "post-Christian culture." Then the conversation often moves to America, which is already "post-modern," and moving in the same direction as Europe. The so-called "nones," those who say they have no religion, are increasing as a proportion of the American population. The church has less and less influence in social issues.

Why is that?

In Europe, we see portions that have never known the biblical Gospel, because they were controlled by the Catholic Church. As that organization, not truly a church, lost political power, people were freed from its power, but had no spiritual reality to take its place. In the areas that had known the Gospel because of the Reformation, its influence had been undermined by the influence of higher criticism, and the failure of the

churches to exercise discipline in the face of  bald unbelief. As state churches, they were expected to include the entire population in their membership, and depended on state subsidies for their finances. They simply surrendered to the spirit of unbelief.

Here in America, evangelicalism has always been stronger than in Europe. The separation from the state and a voluntary membership has enabled the churches to exercise discipline - when they chose. While some church organizations have given in to the same higher criticism that conquered Europe, others have maintained their faithfulness to the Gospel and our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

However, now that evangelical remnant is decaying from the inside out. Prominent place has been given to mysticism, mainly through the Pentecostal movement, so that faith has become subjective rather than a faith in objective historical truths and events. A pietistic mentality has taken over, in which one's private spiritual experience takes precedence over the objective facts of the historic Christian faith. And a growing Prosperity movement has come to equate faith with personal success.

In other words, we witness with our eyes the professing evangelical movement's giving itself over to the very promise with which Satan brought down Adam and Eve: "God knows that when you eat of it [i. e., the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). The deception of Satan was his promise to Adam and Even that betraying the God who made them would make them autonomous, with the authority to decide good and evil for themselves, rather than receiving their definitions from God.

And this is what has deprived the American evangelical movement of influence and effect. If personal prosperity and sovereignty are valid, then the truth of God is just an optional alternative. There can be no grounds for calling to account either individuals or officials who stand for wickedness. Wickedness and righteousness become equally valid. The salt has lost its savor: "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet" (Matthew 5:13).

My message of warning is less to the apostates in American society than it is to the remnants of the church: "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent" (Revelation 3:15-19).

Apostle Paul Refutes the Antinomian: Gentiles and the Law

"Let Israel be glad in his Maker;
     let the children of Zion rejoice in their King!
Let them praise His name with dancing,
     making melody to Him with tambourine and lyre!
For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; 
     He adorns the humble with salvation.
Let the godly exult in glory;
     let them sing for joy on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their throats
     and two-edged swords in their hands,
to execute vengeance on the nations
     and punishments on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
     and their nobles with fetters of iron,
to execute on them the judgment written!
     This is honor for all His godly ones.     
      Praise the Lord!"
- Psalm 149:2-9

In debates between Seventh-Day Adventists and evangelicals, I often see the evangelicals argue that the judaizing of the Adventists is wrong because, they claim, the Law was only for Israel. I don't know whether that doctrine originates in dispensationalism, but I do know that it is just as wrong as the Adventists' holding on to Old Testament food laws.

These antinomians appeal to comments in Paul, such as Romans 2:14: "Gentiles, who do not have the Law." Yet, they pass over what he says just before that: "For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law" (verse 12). So, the Gentiles, who are not under the Law, yet sin. What is the definition of sin? "Sin is lawlessness" (I John 3:4). So, what constitutes sin is defined by the Law. Therefore, the question must be, If the Gentiles are not subject to the Law, as the antinomian asserts, then how can he be said to sin? The antinomian cannot answer.

However, the same passage gives us the solution: "They [i. e., the Gentiles] show that the work of the Law is written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15). Therefore, the Gentiles certainly do have, and have always had, the Law. They have simply not had the written Law. The standards of right and wrong applied to the Gentile just as they applied to the Jew. However, the Jew had two advantages: first, he had the law written, and thus was not dependent on his fallen conscience to direct his life; and second, he had the ceremonial Law, which pointed him to the coming Messiah who would redeem him from his sins and their consequences. Not having the written Law, the Gentiles were without the hope of forgiveness and sanctification. 

To show the Old Testament foundation for Paul, I direct your attention to the Psalm above. It starts with the pleasure that God has in His redeemed people. However, it also tells us of the judgment on His enemies. How can the antinomian see any justice in that vengeance if God had provided no means for the Gentiles to know moral truth?

Liberty under Law in the Life of the Christian

"I will keep Your law continually, forever and ever,
And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought Your precepts. 
I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, 
For I find my delight in Your commandments, which I love."
- Psalm 119:44-47

These four verses express an attitude which is strikingly different from that of most modern Christians toward the Law of God. Under the influence of dispensationalism, most professing evangelicals believe that the law is a taskmaster, an enemy to spiritual freedom, joy, and assurance. Yet, the anonymous author of this Psalm would clearly disagree. To him, the Law is liberating and a spiritual blessing.

How can there be such a contrast between the one believer, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and so many others?

One thing that must be granted here is that the Psalmist is using the word "law" in a broad sense, to refer to all of the biblical teachings. However, it must be equally obvious that he is using the word in that sense because he includes the Law in the strict sense under that rubric.

A big part of the problem is the dispensationalist hermeneutic. In particular, it quotes Romans 6:14 ad nauseum, "You are not under law but under grace." However, the dispensationalist ignores one simple consideration: in the sense of justification, no one has ever been under the Law! Notice what Paul does not say in the verse: "You are no longer under law." Yet that is exactly how the dispensationalist reads it!

If any person is looking to the Law for justification, then he is truly under bondage, because it can provide none. Justification comes by grace through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). However, if a justified person then uses the Law for its proper purpose, then it will serve as a bulwark against the sin that so easily besets us (I Timothy 1:8-11, Hebrews 12:1). Thus applied and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Law is the Law of Liberty, indeed (James 1:25).