We live in a day and age in which Christianity throughout North America is primarily antinomian. You're saved by grace perhaps, or at least mostly through grace and partly your free will, so you can be free. Free to do what you want.https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermons/5191514403910 (11 mins)
Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness.
Not infrequently will one hear that we should just "preach the gospel" and then let the Spirit do his work in believers. Of course, this statement can be taken in a number of ways that even the staunches opponent of antinomianism could agree to. But often there is such an overreaction to "moralizing sermons" that preachers fail to give appropriate, soul-searching application in the form of commands. Direct and specific application in the form of commands. Direct and specific application is something that Paul does not omit in his letters. For example, he reminds the Thessalonians to love one another and then urges them "to do this more and more" (1 Thess. 4:10).Antinomianism (Loc 829/ Kindle)
[Antinomians] blur the distinction between impetration and application, and so make Christ totally responsible, not only for our imputed righteousness, but also for our imparted righteousness. On the surface, such a view appears to honor Christ. But on closer inspection, this view obliterates human responsibility to the point that antinomianism ends up becoming a form of hyper-Calvinism.Antinomianism (Loc 693/ Kindle)
Situationist antinomianism says that a motive and intention of love is all that God now requires of Christians, and the commands of the Decalogue and other ethical parts of Scripture, for all that they are ascribed to God directly, are mere rules of thumb for loving, rules that love may at any time disregard. But Romans 1 3:8-10, to which this view appeals, teaches that without love as a motive these specific commands cannot be fulfilled. Once more an unacceptably weak view of Scripture surfaces.Concise Theology
We love God and live obediently because of the Spirit who lives in us, enabling us to be not just loving or kind but loving, kind, joyful, peaceful, patient, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. The Spirit-filled life represents an analogy of how God is all that he is in his simple, undivided essence.God Is, 36
As a simple being, God is graciousness is mercy is patience is love is goodness. He is all these things all the time with all attributes in perfect harmony. All the attributes of God must harmonize with one another in our conception of God, or else the God in our minds is not the true God.God Is, 33
At root then antinomianism separates God's law from God's person, and grace from the union with Christ in which the law is written in the heart. In doing so it jeopardizes not simply the Decalogue; it dismantles the truth of the gospel.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (pp. 154). Crossway
the deepest response to antinomianism is not "You are under the law" but rather You are despising the gospel and failing to understand how the grace of God in the gospel works! There is no condemnation for you under the law because of your faith-union with Christ. But that same faith-union leads to the requirements of the law being fulfilled in you through the Spirit. Your real problem is not that you do not understand the law. It is that you do not understand the gospel. For Paul says that we are "in-lawed to Christ." Our relationship to the law is not a bare legal one, coldly impersonal. No, our conformity to it is the fruit of our marriage to our new husband Jesus Christ.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (pp. 153-154). Crossway
Christ's humiliation and sacrifice point to a new way in which believers are to love one another. And this model of love is a greater model of love than what is found in the Old Testament, since it was ontologically impossible for God to act in sacrifical love toward his people. In other words, it was the incarnation that made a suffering love possible, and therefore it was only after the incarnation that this heightened form of love could be required on the basis of Christ's own example. Therefore, contrary to antinomianism, the New Testament heightens, not lessens, the place of the moral law in the life of the believer, for the indicative has been heightened through Christ's mediatorial work.Antinomianism (Loc 817/ Kindle)
Discussions and writings on holiness often lack a strong Christological basis and center. Without a robust affirmation of the holiness of Christ, and all that that means, calls to holiness, however stirring they may be, well inevitably devolve into a form of man-centered pietism.Antinomianism (Loc 520/ Kindle)
Scholars today who accuse the Puritans of legalism are simply echoing a pattern well established in the seventeenth century by antinomian theologians, who hurled the "legalist" epiphet-as well as "crypto-papist" and the like-at those who were thoroughly Reformed in their theology.Antinomianism (Loc 320 / Kindle)
All things are indeed possible for God, but we should remember that he has ordained that his power be displayed in weakness. Our conception of who God and Christ are must always take into account that God does not work in the way we might expect him to.Knowing Christ (40)
If God's essence could change, a being more powerful than God would have to change it. It is true that we sometimes read of God 'repenting'; however, this is anthropomorphic language, which depicts the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God, who is spirit, in human terms.Knowing Christ (38)