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This morning, inspired by Corey teaching a couple of weeks ago, and reviewing None Greater, which was the Barrett book that preceded Simply Trinity, both in authorship and also in teaching during Sunday school.
A couple years ago, Corey and I taught through None Greater, a very interesting look at the attributes of God. And the year before that, we taught through a different book called The Whole Christ. Has anybody read The Whole Christ, by the way?
This book right here, if it doesn't look familiar. So, I guess what I'll say about The Whole Christ, I guess we'll ignore the fact that the foreword was written by Tim Keller at this point, but Pastor Mike, when Pat was here, they did a Q &A Sunday night, and one of the questions that Steve asked Pastor Mike was, what book outside the Bible has most changed your life?
And I had a feeling I knew the answer to the question, but I was confirmed when Mike said The Whole Christ, by Sinclair Ferguson. So, I would commend this book to you. It is an excellent book, but what we're gonna do today is we're gonna look at a very quick, high-level summary.
I have 40 minutes, so I don't know how far we're gonna get, but we're gonna give it a shot to look at this thing that The Whole Christ is written about, the Marrow Controversy, what that really means, a look at legalism and antinomianism, and just some interesting conclusions that we can draw out of this, again, all governed by what Sinclair Ferguson has done.
So, who has heard of the Marrow Controversy? You can't raise your hand, you read the book. Anybody else? Who has heard of the Marrow Controversy? Only from me. Well, hopefully also Corey. Okay, all right, good.
The Marrow Controversy, this was 18th century Scotland, and like I said, at the core of this issue was this balance between legalism and antinomianism. So, we're gonna define both of these. We'll start with legalism.
Who wants to define legalism for me? Anyone? You look like you're ready to talk. Yes, we have man-made rules that we try to follow in order to impose them on other people, but also in order to please God.
It's this creation that we have that we get this idea in our head that it's a way that we can please God. The Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology defines it like this, and I like this because it's got some weird stuff in it, so we can then work on defining the definition, which is very good for Sunday school.
It says, the term legalism commonly denotes preoccupation with form at the expense of substance. While it is now used metaphorically in all areas of human life, it appears to have had a theological origin in the 17th century when Edward Fisher used it to designate, quote, one who bringeth the law into the case of justification.
No equivalent term existed in the biblical languages, however, the idea is found in both Testaments. So, I gave you this handy quiz. It's not really a quiz because I'm giving you the answers and now telling you that that's the answer to number one.
Of course, I don't expect you to write that whole thing down, so whatever short thing that you want. Do you guys have a handout? Did you get one? All right, good job. But feel free to ask me after class, I guess, and I'm happy to get these to you.
So, in this definition, there's two things that I think are really interesting. The first one is that it says, preoccupation with form at the expense of substance. Preoccupation with form at the expense of substance.
Can anybody break that down? What do you think that means? Alternately, if you can think of any scriptural examples of that. Sure, absolutely, a hundred percent. Anybody else want to add to that? Yeah, not doing it from your heart, right?
White Washington. Come on, I'm gonna read it. Oh, man, no more calling on Abigail. All right, Matthew 23 is this example. This is Jesus pronouncing woes on the Pharisees. He says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.
Right? That's exactly what that is. You're not paying attention to the things that are actually important, you're just following the rules for the sake of following the rules. See, we've brought some couples together this morning, that's nice.
Okay, Jesus goes on. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outsides of the cup and the plate, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside may also be clean.
I have here in my notes, the vernacular here is, when you order a cup of coffee, are you asking for the most beautiful cup with whatever sludge like Dunkin Donuts inside, or are you more interested in something delicious like pizza or Starbucks?
That's what my notes say. Blame the guy who wrote the notes. Okay, and then Abigail's life verse. I don't want to say that, that's bad. No, Abigail's example. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you're like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.
So you also outwardly appear righteous, and this is the core of this issue. Form the expensive substance. Outwardly appear righteous, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. And it's not even a new idea in the New Testament.
We see it in the Old Testament as well, in Proverbs 15. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination. Well, what? They're doing the thing that the law says for them to do, to sacrifice, but they are wicked, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
First Samuel 15, behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. All right, so that's this idea, this form at the expense of substance, right? But this is legalism, right?
We can't separate the legal part of this. It's the law. When we look at the Old Testament, we see the law. That's the Mosaic Covenant, right? The end of Deuteronomy 26, this is what we see. This is the day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules.
We are commanded to follow these rules, Old Testament. Old Testament believers, Jews, are commanded to follow these rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all of your heart and with all of your soul.
It's not just do them, it is do them fully. So when we explore legalism, what we're looking at is this kind of hollow obedience to the law, and that's what preoccupation at the form of substance means, right?
Sacrifice is commanded by God, would everybody assent to that? Everybody would agree with that, yes? But it's not that, it's the why that is so much more important. At home, we're doing this, like, through the New Testament in a year reading thing with the kids, and right now we're reading through Hebrews, so Hebrews 8, 9, and 10.
I mean, they just sat through sermons on Hebrews for, I don't know, the last seven or eight years or something like that, so you'd think that they would know all the answers, but they don't. But what do we see in this passage, especially in Hebrews 8, and then more so in 9 and 10, it's just a reminder that the sacrifices under the law were never sufficient.
They never solved this problem, but it was the obedience to this, and the reason for that obedience that was important. So that's preoccupation with form at the expense of substance, and the second one is this quote from this guy Fisher, who says that legalism is one who bringeth the law into the case of justification.
One who bringeth the law into the case of justification. Do you guys get a handout on the stool there? Abigail will get one. Don't worry. I mean, really, once you index everything on the death of Jesus Christ and his perfect obedience, everything gets a lot more complicated, right?
But that doesn't answer the question. Come on, man. So what does that mean? One who bringeth the law into the case of justification. We're 50 minutes in, you're like answering questions 7 and 8. That's good.
Simply put, we call this justification by what? By works. If the law is part of justification, obedience to the law is part of justification, that's justification by works. That's a problem. We see this in the New Testament with a particular group of people.
Anybody know who that might be? Anybody remember? I said New Testament. Promise keepers for the tape, sorry. The Judaizers, right? What did the Judaizers believe? What did they do? Yeah, they were trying to kind of graft these two things together.
They're trying to graft these two things together. If you want to obey, if you want to become a Christian, you want to be saved by Jesus, you had to also follow all these Jewish laws as well. And there were some different groups of Judaizers, right?
There were some that were kind of hardcore Judaizers, where you absolutely had to follow all of the Jewish laws in order to be saved. But then there were some who felt more comfortable observing those things.
They grew up with them. You know, you're in your 40s, you're in your 50s, and you get saved, like, I don't know, out of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Maybe you just don't want to eat meat anymore.
You know, it's not about obedience to God anymore, but maybe you're just not comfortable. That's fine, whatever. But the problem was those who would suggest that obedience to the law was necessary in order to be saved, right?
And so even though Fisher's definition sounds a little bit more weird, it's a kind of a simpler explanation. It's this idea of justification by works. So those are the two things that we have that kind of talk about legalism.
I'm so used to looking at that clock, there's a giant clock directly in front of me that I don't look at. So let's talk about antinomianism. Another big word. Who wants to define antinomianism for me?
Sure. Yes, do whatever you want. I mean, shall we sin that grace may abound? It may never be. My definition, and I don't, I have no idea where I got this from, because I was pulling things out of my old notes, defines antinomianism as a form of spiritual anarchy which rejects the law as having any place in the Christian life, whether as instructor or as assessor.
Paul's teaching that Christians are free from the law is sometimes misunderstood as antinomianism. But Paul reveres God's law and teaches believers who are free from the law as a system of salvation, to keep it out of gratitude for salvation freely given, and because holiness is defined by the law.
Holiness as defined by the law is the Christian calling. So Corey broke it down. Anti against nomos, law against the law. That's question two. This is what was recently referred to as the free grace controversy.
Some people would call this easy-believism. It's this idea that, okay, I believe and I don't really have to do anything. There's nothing for me to follow. There's nothing for us to do. And ultimately this idea, whether Christians are to obey the law or not, and this kind of antinomian perspective that they didn't, has huge ramifications in our preaching.
If you believe that you don't really need to do anything and just believe it and change nothing, that's this kind of antinomian mindset. And I think it's interesting when you listen to Pastor Mike preach, especially knowing that this book is one of those books that has so fundamentally changed his life.
For those of us who have been here for a while, we see the difference in his preaching. We can see the change. And it doesn't surprise me to hear people accuse him of being antinomian, even though I know he isn't, because it's so important.
And we're going to get into some of that, I think, as we as we go along, depending on time. I think we'll have plenty of time. Yes, sir? Sure, I love that. That's a great question. I think the only thing that can make this book better...
Did he do the audiobook for this? Right, with his lovely Scottish accent. Yeah, that would make the book better, but I think that might be it. Okay, all right, so I mentioned Romans 6 already. What shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? And that's it. It changes everything. Now here's my question to you. If we need to obey the law to be justified, how assured would we be of our salvation?
How's your assurance? That's exactly it, right? Every Sunday you'd be in that booth, right? Yeah, I think of Martin Luther. He's in the monastery, dedicating his entire life to God, and he's just crushed by the weight of his sin, because he had this mix-up, this idea that he had to obey the law, right?
And it just destroyed him. It changed his entire life to recognize the grace of God. Okay, so that's our backdrop, right? So we haven't really gotten into the marrow controversy yet, but defining legalism and defining antinomianism is absolutely critical to this.
So here's the story. In the early 1700s, the Church in Scotland was dominated by Presbyterianism. The Presbyterian Church, not unlike a lot of other organized denominations, has a structure to it. So you'd have local assemblies that were led by elders.
These leaders would meet on occasion at the local presbytery. Then there was a larger group, which was a collection of presbyteries called a synod. And then once or twice a year, they would all meet at this thing called the General Assembly.
And so for a minister to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church, they have to go through a series of tests. I'm flying blind now. I'll be okay. They had to preach. They had to present church exercises.
They had to complete a dissertation, and sometimes some more stuff. And in 1716, in Octorator, Scotland, a man named William Craig was candidating to become a minister. Now, I don't have a sheet in front of me, but I believe question three is who was William Craig.
So it's almost like I wrote it. Okay, so that's who this is. A man who was candidating to become a Presbyterian minister. So, during the examinations, he's kind of sitting there. Has anybody seen an elder get ordained here?
Pradeep? Has anybody seen when Pradeep got ordained? So he sits here, and of course we know Pradeep. Pradeep is, I don't know, tied with Spencer Canard as the nicest person in this church, I think. But they're asking him these questions, right?
They're testing his theological knowledge. And it's similar there. They're asking questions of this man, William Craig. And one of the questions that was brought to Craig became known as the Octorator Creed.
And here's the question. So I'm gonna read it the way it was written, and then I'm going to restate it in, you know, English. Instead of Scottish, right? Okay, here's the question. And your response, when you hear this, I want you to think, okay, my response to this is supposed to be yes or no.
I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ and in stating us in covenant with God. Hmm? Well, I already said that I was gonna say it again, so I figured I would just read it slower the second time.
Here we go. I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to come to Christ and initiate us into covenant with God. Now, my first question for the 18th century Presbyterians is, could you have possibly asked this in a more confusing way?
But, all right, now, don't look around the room, because that might be cheating. Who would say yes, I affirm this statement? Okay, sure, I'll read it again. This is not an affirmation, I'm just asking a question.
It's a yes or no question. Here we go. Tough crowds are fun. All right, I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to come to Christ and initiate us into covenant with God.
Who would affirm that statement? Who would not affirm that statement? Okay, I have hands on both sides, including my own, so we're good. I've condemned my... Like I said, could they possibly have asked this in a more confusing way?
So, Craig answers... Oh, look, look at... See, I told you he was one of the nicest people in the church. Thank you. So, Craig answers this question. He gets licensed to preach. He comes back to explain his answers, change his answer.
So, they revoked his license to preach. That's what they did. Okay, Corey, what was the answer? Yes, it's incredibly confusing. Okay, so how about this? Let's, for the sake of argument, drop the initiate us into covenant with God.
Is it sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to come to Christ? Do we forsake sin in order to come to Christ? Yes or no? This is perfect. Do we forsake sin in order to come to Christ?
Yes. Yes. We'll do hands again. Yes. No. Okay, the correct answer is no. We cannot forsake sin unless we're already saved. It totally is an order of salutis thing. Yes. Then that's the core, I mean, and we'll get into some more of that.
That's the core of the controversy, is the Presbyterians believed, oh, well, if you haven't shown evidence in your life that you're willing to come to God, we're not even gonna let you listen to the preaching, right?
So we are commanded, somebody said it, I don't know who, repent and believe, right? How do we do that? Only because we've been saved and we respond with repentance and belief. And so if that's true, that the only way that we can repent and believe is because we've been saved, then we can't say that we have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ, because God is already drawing us.
And we still sin anyway, right? That's true. All right, I'm gonna read from the book. In the months that followed, this is after he has changed his position formally and he has been, you know, booted.
In the months that followed, through a process of appeal against the Presbytery decision, the issue of the Octorata Creed came before the next meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
I just like saying the Church of Scotland, it sounds so good. Anyway, the fathers and brethren of the Kirk condemned the Creed and declared their abhorrence of the foresaid proposition as unsound and most detestable doctrine as it stands and was offered by the said Presbytery to the said Mr. William Craig.
Man, we don't talk like that anymore. The Presbytery of Octorata was ordered to restore his license. The fight keeps going on, and even possibly it could have ended there, except in the General Assembly were these two guys, John Drummond and Thomas Boston.
So, you know, they got to chatting, as they do, over coffee afterwards, and Boston told Drummond about a couple of books that he had read. One of them by John Saltmarsh, Saltmarsh unnoted, antinomian, but this other one, this book called The Marrow of Modern Divinity.
This is where it all, this is where the rock has been kicked off the hill and it is rolling down. So this book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, is a 17th century book, an allegorical book, a lot like Pilgrim's Progress.
So if you kind of think of the way that Pilgrim's Progress explains the journey of Christian, it explores theological themes through the use of characters who represent Christians at different points in their lives.
Again, does this sound familiar? The first part of the book features Neophytus, a young Christian, Evangelista, Danny, not Danny, a pastor, that's a couple hundred years before, and gnomista and antinomista.
Not very original, but a legalist and an antinomian. So the Church of Scotland accused Marrow, the book, of being antinomian and actually passed an ordinance forbidding ordained ministers from reading it, teaching it, talking about it, whatever.
It sounds super cultish, doesn't it? Like it's weird. So we have this question, this confusing weird Scottish question, seemingly innocuous, whatever, and this big divide. There became this group of men, sorry, there became this group of men known as the Marrow men, who would really kind of talk about this idea and really preach it.
But here's the thing that Corey was talking about. The Presbytery was so legalistic, they had kind of put forth this idea that people weren't to be preached to until they had shown some evidence of salvation, right?
But Scripture says what? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So that's salvation by works, right? So that's a problem. It's legalism by putting obedience before the preaching of the gospel.
So it's clear that full-blown legalists are wrong. It's clear that antinomians are wrong. We looked at kind of both of those with scriptural examples of the problems with both of them. But there is a careful balance between those two things, and striking that balance is kind of the core of this issue, right?
This is where we talked about bowling, where you have to keep it out of both gutters, right? You've got to keep the ball on the lane. All right, my heart strings. So let's explore this legalism and antinomianism.
We see both of them in Scripture, but if we break these apart, we'll see something very interesting. Fundamentally, what was happening, here's your question four, is that the Presbyterian Church was separating the law of God from the love of God, or the person of God.
They said that you had to show submission to the law of God before the love or the character of God could be preached to you, essentially. That's kind of what they're saying, and that has very far-reaching ramifications.
This goes, I think it was Jonathan who said this, that in legalism there's this idea that you can do something, anything, to change God's disposition towards you. Anything, whatever that thing might be, with regards to salvation.
We do know about things like heaping up rewards in heaven, things like that, but in the context of salvation, that's this lie that legalism teaches. And the only way that that can persist is if we separate the love of God and the law of God.
The law, the way by which we earn God's favor, is separate from God's disposition. God becomes he whose favor must be earned. Kind of this, like, ogre God idea, right? And so, separating the love of God from the law of God is kind of this fundamental underpinning of legalism.
Nope. I was cackling madly to myself when I put this quiz together last night. We'll get there, we'll talk about that. Okay, so let's look at this separation in Scripture and try to, come on man, have faith in me.
Let's try to understand this. So, we already talked about the Pharisees, right, out of Matthew 23. So, let's look at something different. Let's look at, I don't know, Eve in the garden. What happened in Genesis 2?
God constructs the earth. He constructs this paradise for Adam. He puts him in the garden. It's wonderful. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. It goes on, verse 15, and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, you may surely eat of every tree in the garden, whatever you want, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
This is paradise. Work wasn't even hard. It was work, but it wasn't toil. Anybody actually have a job doing what they love? Sometimes, once in a while, it's kind of not work, you know. Sometimes. It's only in the context of that.
It's only in the context of this paradise that God has put Jesus in, that he says, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
So that's the context. You're in Hawaii. Just don't climb a tree and knock a coconut down. That's it. Right? Something like that. But then Genesis 3 happens. So Genesis 2 happens. We see all this great stuff.
We see the command in context. Genesis 3 happens, and here's what we see. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
He said more than that, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
So it would be bad persuasive technique for the serpent to give the full picture. It would be bad for him to say, hey, you know, God's really nice to you. Look at all this incredible stuff that he's done for you.
Why would he do that? He's trying to make this case for Eve to do the incorrect thing. No, what he does is he laser focuses on what? The one thing that God said that she could not do. The one thing that would be a problem.
So we know what Eve does, right? She rejects the law. She basically says, don't tell me how to live my life. That's the big joke at home. She just obeys the law, right? Anti-law. Anti-gnomian. This is not news to us.
We know this, but this happened because of that separation that we talked about. The separation of the love of God. Behold all of these things that I have given to you, and the law of God. Obey me in this one thing.
When you hold up that one restriction, right? If you go into a classroom and the only thing is, I don't know, do not throw spit wads at the teacher or something like that, and that's it. Right now it's like, oh, I gotta make some spit wads.
Right? Like that's the, you know, that's our natural human response. But if it's, here's 17 amazing things that you can do. Just please, you know, I like being clean. Please don't, you know, throw spit wads at me or whatever.
I don't know. I don't even know why I'm coming up with that. But what it does is it changes this reasonable command into something onerous. Into something where God looks like an ogre. Serpent didn't talk about the love of God.
He just talked about this one rule. So we saw legalism. Now we're looking at anti-gnomianism. So we answered question five. Separating the law of God from the love of God is the fundamental underpinning of legalism.
Question six. Separating the love of God from the law of God is a fundamental underpinning of anti-gnomianism. Well, that's interesting. So where do we go from here? How do we bring these together? Okay, here we go.
We can look at this and say, oh, the Presbyterian Church was wrong. We can look at, you know, Genesis 3 and say, oh, clearly the serpent was deceiving Eve. He was wrong. But the truth is that the biggest struggle that we have with legalism within the context of the Christian Church is self-reliance and self-righteousness.
What is our response when we are convicted of our sin? Do better. There it is. Dovecrans coming up with it. Do better. Right? Sorry, that's legalism. Do better. Work. That's self-reliance. I can do this.
I can do better. I cannot fail. I mean, certainly we're called to, right? I will try much harder. But it is a worldly response. Like, you fall off the diet wagon. I had a big meal. We went out for Chinese food last night and I had some sushi.
I got on the scale this morning. It was like, mmm, that's the sushi talking. It was delicious. Or if we mess up at work, do better, right? But when we apply this kind of, like, this secular thinking, because that's what the world says, do better, work harder, you know, whatever.
How do you move up in the world? You got to be better than the next guy, right? You only have to run faster than your slowest friend. You know, all these things, like, all this stuff, it's all kind of in context of everyone else.
When we apply secular thinking to the sacred, we run into problems. We lose weight by our works. We are rewarded at work by our works. But we are not saved by our works. So, how do we bring antinomianism and legalism together and kind of understand the balance between these two things?
There is a story in the Bible where we see one person struggling with both of these things in his life. Does anybody know what this story is? Does Corey remember what this story is? I have notes. It's like cheating.
Okay, it is the story of the prodigal son. Here we go. So, the story of the prodigal son. The son took his inheritance. He didn't want to follow his dad's rules. He's like, listen, I'm out of here. Give me my inheritance now.
I'm going to go off. I'm going to do my own thing. But what happens? He blows his inheritance. He wastes the whole thing. He's destitute. He's in ruin, right? He doesn't want to follow the rules. Antinomian.
And then, Luke 15, verse 19, he says, wait, I can fix this. I can do what? I can work harder. He goes to his dad and says, make me a hired servant so that I can regain your trust. The prodigal son had the same foundation the whole time.
Even when he thought his heart had changed, his understanding, his foundation of acceptance was still the same. He had separated his father's expectations from his father's character. But he was still, he was negotiating for being taken back under these terms.
Correct. Right. Right. The second son, who always obeyed, ends up in a worse state than the first son, whose life was a train wreck. Right? We're still working on that part at home. But yeah. Yeah. Does that kind of answer, you know, where you're at right now?
I mean, yeah. Clearly, the prodigal son shows humility in coming back. But the picture in that, it is the tale of two sons. The father is the active agent. I think that's true. But that wasn't what he said.
He said, I'm an idiot. Please hire me so that I can work to gain your approval again. Yeah. So I don't disagree with you about that. But I think that as we look at our position before God, the prodigal son's response was not quite what you're describing, which I think is good.
Well, so I mean, we're very much running out of time, which is always the classic cop-out answer. But so the important thing is to understand that our obedience is in light of and not to facilitate our salvation.
That's the important thing. So is obedience important? Yes. Is our salvation conditional on our obedience? No. That's basically my last point. So, you know, I think we're good. We're pretty much out of time.
So I'll answer the last two questions. Does our sanctification confirm our justification? Kind of a soft yes. So it's a soft yes, I think. Does our sanctification strengthen our justification? Strong no.
All right. And it is after 945. So it is time to pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this time that we've had together where we could look at this fine point in our understanding of the salvation that you have wrought for us.
We just praise you, Lord, for this day where we can come together to celebrate your Son through communion. I just thank you, Father, for all of these people that are here this morning and their contributions.
I just pray, Lord, that this would have been glorifying to you and that all that we do and say today and throughout this week would bring praise to your name. In your name we pray. Amen.