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Sinclair Ferguson (22)
for antinomianism and legalism are not so much antithetical to each other as they are both antithetical to grace.
Sinclair Ferguson
The Whole Christ (pp. 156). Crossway The benefits of the gospel (justification, reconciliation, redemption, adoption) were being separated from Christ, who is himself the gospel. The benefits of the gospel are in Christ. They do not exist apart from him. They are ours only in him. They cannot be abstracted from him as if we ourselves could possess them independently of him.The Whole Christ (p. 44). Crossway
Preaching to the heart, then, is not merely a matter of technique or homiletic style. These things have their proper place and relevance. But the more fundamental, indeed, the more essential thing for the preacher is surely the fact that something has happened in his own heart; it has been laid bare before God by His Word. He, in turn, lays his heart bare before those to whom he ministers. And within that context, the goal he has in view is so to lay bare the truth of the Word of God that the hearts of those who hear are opened vertically to God and horizontally to one another.Feed My Sheep
It bears repeating: assurance of salvation is the fruit of faith in Christ. Christ is able to and does, in fact, save all those who come to him through faith. Since faith is fiducia, trust in Christ as the one who is able to save, there is a certain confidence and assurance seminally inherent in faith. The act of faith, therefore, contains within it the seed of assurance. Indeed, faith in its first exercise is an assurance about Christ. This dimension of assurance is therefore implicit in faith.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 197). Crossway
Paradoxically, today it is often statements like those of the Confession of Faith that are accused of a lack of biblical-theological perspective, for failing to understand the place of the law in redemptive history. But to this the Westminster Divines would surely be entitled to respond, "But how can you read the prophets and say they did not understand these distinctions? Were they not the mouthpieces of God, saying: 'It is not sacrifice and burnt offering that come first, but obedience'? Did they not thereby distinguish ceremonial law from moral law?"The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (pp. 171). Crossway.
Now whatever in the Sinaitic covenant was intended to preserve and distinguish the people as a nation in a particular land, and to point them to Christ by means of ceremonies and sacraments, has ceased to be binding on the church. The Whole Christ (pp. 170). Crossway
Commandments are the railroad tracks on which the life empowered by the love of God poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit runs. Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (pp. 168-169). Crossway.
There is only one genuine cure for legalism. It is the same medicine the gospel prescribes for antinomianism: understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself. This leads to a new love for and obedience to the law of God, which he now mediates to us in the gospel. This alone breaks the bonds of both legalism (the law is no longer divorced from the person of Christ) and antinomianism (we are not divorced from the law, which now comes to us from the hand of Christ and in the empowerment of the Spirit, who writes it in our hearts).The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (pp. 157). Crossway
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
It was in this context that his friend Johannes Agricola (1492-1566) drew what he thought were the logical conclusions of this radical contrast between law and gospel the abolition of any role for the law in the Christian life. He expounded this "antinomianism" first in debate with Philip Melanchthon and then later with Luther himself.The Whole Christ (p. 139). Crossway
It was a consolation to the Marrow Brethren that the preaching and teaching of both Jesus and Paul aroused the same questions and criticism. But antinomianism, like legalism, has many faces.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 138). Crossway
What, then, is the remedy for legalism? At the stage we have reached in reflecting on the Marrow, it scarcely needs to be said. It is grace. But it is not "grace" as commodity, grace as substance. It is grace in Christ. For God's grace to us is Christ.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 134). Crossway
only shock therapy recalibrates the mind, will, and affections rooted in a legal frame.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 129). Crossway
The gospel never overthrows God's law for the simple reason that both the law and the gospel are expressions of God's grace. Therefore the reverse is true: grace confirms the law and its true character.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 88). Crossway
Legalism is simply separating the law of God from the person of God. Eve sees God's law, but she has lost sight of the true God himself. Thus, abstracting his law from his loving and generous person, she was deceived into "hearing" law only as negative deprivation and not as the wisdom of a heavenly Father.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 83). Crossway
This, in fact, is the lie that sinners have believed ever since - the lie of the not-to-be-trusted-because-he-does-not-love-me-false-Father. The gospel is designed to deliver us from this lie. For it reveals that behind and manifested in the coming of Christ and his death for us is the love of a Father who gives us everything he has: first his Son to die for us and then his Spirit to live within us.The Whole Christ (p. 69). Crossway.
The subtle danger here should be obvious: if we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be "paid" a ransom price in order to love us.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 68). Crossway.
John Bunyan put the putting off of the burden too far off from the commencing of the pilgrimage.
The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 59). Crossway.
There is a living Savior who, because he died and rose again, is sufficient to save you and indeed each and every person who comes to him in faith. There is fullness of grace in Christ crucified. And you, too, may find salvation in his name.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 51). Crossway
New Testament Christians did not think of themselves as "Christians"! But if not, how did they think of themselves? Contrast these descriptors with the overwhelmingly dominant way the New Testament describes believers. It is that we are "in Christ." The expression, in one form or another, occurs well over one hundred times in Paul's thirteen letters.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 45). Crossway
The offer of the gospel is to be made not to the righteous or even the repentant, but to all. There are no conditions that need to be met in order for the gospel offer to be made.The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (p. 42). Crossway
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