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.
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)
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
[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)
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)
Most prominent in the Ten Commandments is love to God. Four commandments outlining expected love our Maker are the first and the most lengthy portion of this code of conduct. Such prominence signifies that love to God is critical issue in human ethics. The first commandment shows that love to our God requires our exclusive worship of him and service to him. The second prescibes the manner in which love will worship and serve the Lord. The third specifies the attitude of reverence which love will bring to God's worship and service. The fourth stipulates what time is required to express our love to him. So long as we are creatures of time, love must devote time unto him who is the object of our supreme love.Call the Sabbath a Delight
So weakened have Christians become that most of them are not accustomed to thinking about moral laws. Biblical teaching regarding the function of God's law in the life of he Christian and in society is either chaotic or non-existent in many churches.Call the Sabbath a Delight
We should consider it nothing less than shockingly unacceptable for Bible teachers and ministers to undermine the practice of the worship and service of God by teaching against the Sabbath law.Call the Sabbath a Delight
Whether or not people keep the Sabbath holy is not an incidental or insignificant matter. When God issued this fourth commandment he understood humanity much better than we do. Failure to practise this moral law is a root cause of moral decline, social disorder and widespread human suffering. No successful recovery of mankind can be devised without the inclusion of the fourth commandment.Call the Sabbath a Delight
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
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
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)
a Reformed understanding of Christ's person and work- not necessarily more imperatives, though they belong in our preaching--is the true solution to the problem of antinomianism.Antinomianism (Loc 179 / Kindle)