Are You a Legalist or an Antinomian? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Are you a legalist or an antinomian? Most people would say they're neither one, but there is clearly a problem in the church in terms of knowing what to do with God's law.

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We're going to talk about the law today and the gospel and seek to answer the question, how in the world could Paul say that he delights in the law of God in his inner man?

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We hope this is encouraging. We hope it's helpful. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are

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John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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We have met again this week, John, to podcast. It is the grind of a weekly podcast, my friend.

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Yes. Here we are on another Wednesday morning. Yes. Yeah. I've mentioned this before, but this is like my sixth year podcasting.

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We do about 50 episodes a year. It's a lot of work, but we love it.

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Because of the podcast, we've been able to see churches planted, and I've met you and Jimmy. There's definitely a lot of bonuses to church planning.

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One of the things that we like to do is new to Theocast is give things away that have been significant to us.

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If you want us to give something away, just shoot us an email. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll give away a car.

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Apparently, we're getting into benevolence ministry. I don't know. Maybe Benny Hinn will donate his plane. We'll get to give it away to somebody.

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I don't know. A book that Justin Perdue has recommended quite often. We wanted to give some of these away that we have found useful.

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It's called God's Way of Peace by Horatius Bonar. The subtitle is pretty helpful, kind of giving it away.

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What's the subtitle? A book for the anxious. By that, he doesn't mean anxious like we might mean anxiety today in a therapeutic sense.

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He means a book for those who are anxious before God in terms of their standing before Him. It's a really good book.

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We were discussing how his name is pronounced. I've always pronounced it as Bonar.

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I think he could go either way. You can. I've heard Bonar and Bonner. By God's sovereignty and the choice of the wheel of names, we're going to give one of these away to our members today.

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We ran that wheel this morning. It takes a while because there's a lot of names in there. Mr. Jason Glass, you have won yourself a free copy of this book.

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When you hear this podcast, just go ahead and send us an email to confirm your address and we will ship that out to you. If you would like a copy of this book, we're going to give it away for free.

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If you don't want to wait, but if you want to earn one for free, go right now. If it's Wednesday morning, go to our social media,

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Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. There'll be instructions there on how to win a free copy of this book.

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We put it out every Wednesday morning and then Thursday, we will pick one of you through the random, the sovereign choice of the

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Wheel of Names. Yeah, well, and you'll find out on Thursday and we'll send that to you. Every time.

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Thank you, guys. Good. Every time I hear Wheel of Names right now, I immediately think Wheel of Fortune because Wheel of Fortune, the

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Purdue family of late, Wheel of Fortune is now on Netflix for those who don't know. And we have been watching

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Wheel of Fortune with our kids sometimes. And our kids are just all about it. They're just saying everything.

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It's still on, man. I always think of the scene from Rain Man, you know, where he's just like, Wheel of Fortune. You know, and I feel like that's what's going on, like, in my household.

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My kids all the time are just like, can we watch Wheel of Fortune? Anyway. Yep. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune were what

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I watched with my grandma all the time. That little tidbit from the Purdue house was free. Didn't have to pay for that.

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So, Justin. That's what people tune in for, I guess. Speaking of Fortune and Wheel, I have no transition for us other than.

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Yeah, I don't see that going anywhere, John. We should just go ahead and talk about it. I'm just going to go ahead and talk about our topic today.

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So we have observed that there is a problem in the evangelical church, broadly speaking, with respect to God's law.

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It seems that many evangelicals and John, I mean, you and I, just to be very clear, at one point, absolutely would have been here ourselves in the midst of this struggle, and it's only by God's grace and just other people who have helped us see some good things that we are no longer where we once were on this.

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And it's not that we've got it all figured out, but, you know, praise God, we're not where we used to be. So there's this problem in evangelicalism with respect to God's law.

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Like, we just don't know what to do with it. What do we do with God's law? You see some people on the one side of the equation who maybe are bent towards self -righteousness, who have a reasonable amount of confidence in themselves that they can do the right things, or maybe they're the kind of people that just tend to do the right stuff often anyway.

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And those people look to God's law and don't have a lot of problem with it because they have diluted themselves somehow into thinking that they can keep it, that they can meet

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God's standard or do well enough that God would look favorably upon them. And then on the other side of the aisle, you have people who have a more tender conscience, perhaps are aware in some ways of their own weakness and their own frailty, and they look at God's law and see something that is threatening and condemning.

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And thereby, deep down, there's a resentment and a hatred even of God's law and even of God himself, because they fear that he's going to drop the hammer on them at some point.

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And so, yeah, you've got sort of these two camps. One might be referred to as a more legalistic camp that is often characterized by self -righteousness and condescension and the like, and thinking that they can do enough to earn righteousness or be considered righteous in the eyes of God.

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And then this other side that we might call the antinomian camp, who are maybe comprised of people that have a more tender conscience, that see

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God's law as threatening, and thereby sort of hate God and his commandments. And so there don't seem to be too many people in between who have a right and biblical understanding of God, his law, and his commandments, what he requires of us.

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For example, John, we read the words of Paul in Romans 7, and you may not want to talk about this just yet.

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I'm just going to go ahead and drop this bomb and set the grenade on the table and pull the pin. We read the words of Paul in Romans 7, verse 22, that he delights in the law of God and his inner man.

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And I mean, some people might read that and be incredibly puzzled by it in terms of how could a person say such a thing.

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Other people might read that and just assume that like, well, yeah, I mean, maybe even a non -Christian could say that, because you hear some people say that Romans 7 is about Paul in an unregenerate state, which we don't agree with, and we'll explain why.

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Yeah, we will explain that. One of the things that I feel like we have to clarify as new people keep coming to the podcast, and even people that have been here for a while, there are categories that people throw around that don't match up with the theological teachings of the

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Bible. And for years, we have been told that we have an improper view of the law.

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We are antinomians. Meaning anti -namas, meaning against the law. Against the law.

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And one of the things that we want to do in this podcast is clarify the difference between those who are against the law and those who love the law, and then those who are inappropriately using the law, which would be legalists.

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So, being able to identify where you're at. That's really good, John. Those who hate the law, who are against it, antinomians.

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Those who are, like in a 1 Timothy 1 kind of way, not using the law lawfully. That is the legalists.

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And then there's something in between. Where Paul is, we would argue in Romans 7, where he is a believer who understands that he's a sinner, but he can still say he delights in God's law.

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How is that possible? So, Justin, one of the things we probably should start with is a clear definition of what the law is, then we can identify how people fall off on either side, whether it's antinomian or legalism.

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So, start with, why don't you start with the definition of the law, and then I'll talk about how we fall off, how one can fall off into antinomianism with misunderstanding the law.

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Yeah. So, what I'm about to articulate is really an answer to the question, what is the law for?

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If you were really pressed to answer that, it's a good exercise, even for the listener, if you were pressed to give one answer, now, obviously there are multiple things that the law is for, but at its most primary basic level, why did

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God give the law? And we would find the answers to that question, or the answer, I should say, to that question, most pointedly in Romans chapter 5,

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Galatians chapter 3, where the apostle Paul makes it very clear that the law was given to increase the trespass of man.

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The law was given to, in other words, show us the depth of our corruption, to show us the extent of our sinfulness before the

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Lord, and to thereby drive us outside of ourselves to the only hope that we could ever have for salvation.

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And namely, that is God's Christ, Jesus, who did everything that we need in order to be reconciled to God, which

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I can go and talk about right now, John, if you want me to, I mean, just in terms of a right understanding of law and gospel really is what I'm getting at now.

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So as we understand the law rightly, that it was given to increase the trespass, to show us the depth of our sin, and to drive us to Christ, we see in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, in God's gospel, the fact that Christ did multiple things for us, he died the death that we deserve, because lawbreakers deserve to die.

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And so Jesus died a lawbreaker's death, and in him, we died to the law, Galatians 2. So his death is counted to us.

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The penalty we deserve, he took for us. The wrath and the condemnation and the judgment we deserve, he took upon himself for us, so he fulfilled the penalties of the law in the place of those who trust in him, but then he also, go ahead.

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Just to add to that, even in God's sovereignty in the narrative, Jesus died as a lawbreaker to Rome, as an insurrectionist.

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He took the place of Barabbas, just to make it as clear as possible. So anyways.

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Yeah. So, you know, and he became a curse for us, right? He was hung on a tree, cursed as everyone who's hung on a tree. All of these things

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Christ did for us so that he could pay the penalty the law requires of every lawbreaker.

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And not only did Christ do that, he also accomplished everything that we need with respect to the law by fulfilling it for us.

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So Jesus has a perfect record of obedience at the level of his thoughts, his desires, his deeds, his motivation, everything was always perfect in his earthly life.

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And in doing that, he fulfilled the law in a flawless manner. And so our record is trash, his record is perfect, and we get his obedience and righteousness counted to us.

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And so a right understanding of the law and the gospel is critical for the Christian life wholesale.

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You know, if we're going to be able to make up and down and heads and tails of stuff, and if we're ever going to think of God's law rightly, you've got to think of it in these terms.

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And yeah, man, I could riff for a while. We got a lot more to say. I want to give you an opportunity.

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So go talk about how people kind of fall off one side or the other because they don't understand some of what we're talking about.

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Right. So one of the things that happens is that when you start emphasizing the gospel and you start preaching by grace alone, through Christ alone, there's no condemnation for those who in Christ Jesus, immediately people begin to get a little nervous if you don't emphasize back into that gospel, the law.

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And so they throw at you, hey, be careful, you're becoming an antinomian. And so what their fear is, is this.

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If you're saying it's all by grace and there's no works necessary, then you are saying that holiness is not necessary.

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And then they'll say, if you're teaching that, you're an antinomian. And so let's be clear historically on what an antinomian is.

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An antinomian is one who literally says they do not believe that there is any law or use of the law for the

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Christian after regeneration or after coming to Christ. There is no need for the law whatsoever.

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And so they don't think there's no necessary to obey any of the commands of scripture, there's no moral law, nothing.

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And so I walk by faith and there's no need to obey. That is a true antinomian.

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Now, I will agree with that if we're talking about one's justification. If we're talking about your justification, then the law has no use in your justification other than to show you your need for it.

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Right. To show you your need of Christ. Right. An antinomian, unfortunately, says, oh, no, it's not only for your, not for your justification, but it's also not for your

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Christian walk, walking, going forward. That's a true antinomian. Yep. So we would have to say, come in and say, well,

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Paul and James and Timothy and second Peter all make it very clear that post salvation, when

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Paul says in Ephesians, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. He then describes meekness and patience and gentleness and love.

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Those are commands. Those are laws given to the believer, what we call the third use of the law. Romans 13, you know, love your neighbor, love one another and thereby fulfill the law.

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But those are not part of our justification. We call that the work of the spirit. We call that the fruit of the spirit.

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So the spirit works within us and therefore we love. So when we emphasize justification by faith alone, we literally mean by faith alone, when people say, but the danger is here, and this is why we're having this conversation, the danger is immediately people come in and say, yeah, but faith without works is dead.

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And there's this necessity to always throw that on there. And that is where I would say one is falling off on the other side, which is legalism.

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So I know this could sound like a really nuanced conversation, but it's important for us to understand that when someone says antinomian, you need to understand they mean there is absolutely no obedience and no law for the believer post salvation.

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That's a true antinomian. That's what it truly, really means to be an antinomian. We have to keep that clear.

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So when someone says to, I mean, I love the Martin Lewis Jones quote when he says, if you aren't being accused of being an antinomian after preaching the gospel, you haven't preached the gospel rightly because there is no law in the gospel.

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There, let me say it again, there is no law in the gospel. This is why we talk about law, gospel distinction.

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Yeah, I think we need to understand that these two camps, as we're describing them, one being the antinomian camp, one being the legalistic camp, just to describe them a little bit more before we maybe pivot here, the antinomian is a person who understands something of God's holiness, understands something of the requirements of the law, and thereby sees that he or she can't quite do that.

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And there is this kind of threatening judgment, kind of exacting thing going on with the law. And that person has not rightly understood the work of Christ in his or her place, and thereby has this disdain deep down in his or her heart for the law, and thereby is running away from it as fast as he or she can.

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I mean, that is the project of antinomianism, right? It's to kind of plug our ears and scream at the top of our lungs and run away from the law because deep down we hate it, right?

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That's that side. But then on the legalistic side, you have people who actually, though they love to talk about holiness and obedience and all these things, they have not understood the holiness of God because they don't understand what he actually requires and how everything that they have ever done is tainted with sin, and they have dumbed down the law to a level of thinking that they can fulfill it and keep it and all those kinds of things.

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And so they have lacked understanding as well and have also not seen the gospel in terms of the work of Christ in their place.

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And so neither of those places is where we want to be.

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What we see presented in scripture is something different, where it is very clear that Christ has accomplished everything that is necessary for us to be saved.

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He has paid our debt, paid our penalty, accomplished our righteousness, given us his own holiness. We are safe and we are secure.

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And we can then say we love God's law. So what in the world does that mean?

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What in the world does that look like? For example, in Romans 7, 22, Paul says that he delights in the law of God in his inner man.

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A couple of thoughts on this, John, from me. There are people out there who will say that Romans 7 is

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Paul writing about his unregenerate state or about a non -believer with this whole situation of,

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I want to do good, but I can't. I don't want to do evil, but I do evil. Whenever I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.

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I have a desire to do what's right, but I can't pull it off. And I delight in the law of God in my inner man, but I see in my members another law waging war against my mind.

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When Paul writes in those ways, people will say, well, he's talking about somebody who isn't a Christian, to which

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I would say that's clearly not true on multiple levels. Look at the flow of the letter, first of all.

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But then another observation is, well, how does a person who naturally is opposed to God and doesn't delight in the things of God, doesn't even understand the things of God naturally, 1

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Corinthians 2, how could such a person delight in God's law? I don't think it's possible. But second observation, which is more relevant to our conversation today, only a person, and this is maybe the most important thing that I'm going to say today, only a person who has been justified, forgiven, and absolved could ever make such a statement that they delight in God's law.

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I'm going to say that again, only a person who has been justified, forgiven, and absolved could ever say that he or she delights in God's law.

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Why? Because unless you know that you've been declared righteous, unless you know that you've been forgiven of sin, and unless you know that you have been absolved of all guilt because of Christ alone, by the means of faith alone, you could never say that you delight in God's law because God's law condemns you.

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And God's law threatens you, and God is still your judge, and thereby, unless you know that you've been justified, forgiven, and absolved, you're going to hate

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God's law, and you're going to hate Him, frankly. And so Paul clearly, in Romans 7, is writing as a believer who understands his position, his identity.

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He knows he's justified. That's his status, Romans 5. He knows his identity. He's united to Christ, Romans 6.

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And yet here's his experience, but he can say he delights in God's law because he knows that he's justified, forgiven, and absolved of guilt.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

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And we have to say the right, the law is rejected, rightly understood. There are many people today who will change the law of God.

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And so you'll talk for that clarification. Yeah. They will change the law of God and they will say things like, Oh no.

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Yeah. You know, I think God just requires people to be a good person and then they, then God will let them come into heaven.

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Well, they just changed the requirements of the law and they like that law. Ah, good person.

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Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm better than most. So, uh, I just, every time I say that, I think of that tiger quote, better than most, better than most.

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Yeah. On the TPC sawgrass. Yeah. The, on the 17th hole. Yeah. Players. We all, we all hope

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Gary Koch making the call. There it is. We hope Mr. Tiger gets better soon. Anyways, um, we changed the law and the, the weight of the law should crush everyone, absolutely crush them.

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So when someone says, well, I think this is what God requires and it doesn't crush you as an unbeliever,

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I should say as an unbeliever, um, then you, then that's not God's law. That's your law. That's your misinterpretation of God's law.

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God's law should, someone should hear it as an unbeliever and go, that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous.

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No one can do that. No one can do that. And you're like, now you understand God's law. Well, then I don't like God. Exactly. Exactly.

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Then you are redeemed, pulled out from underneath the weight of the law. And all of a sudden you look down at the law from God's view, not underneath the weight of it, but looking down upon it and you're like, wow, this is beautiful.

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This is glorious. This is, this is the nature of God. This is, this is what God looks like within a broken humanity.

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This is, this is the perspective we should have. So the law and it's threatening first use sense is characterized by statements such as this.

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You must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. If you break the law in any way, you're guilty of breaking all of it.

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You know, James two. Um, if your works are going to contribute to your salvation, then you need to keep the whole law in Galatians five.

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Then also, you know, those who do these things, she'll live by them. Leviticus 18, five, uh,

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Deuteronomy 27, 26, anybody who does not keep everything that's written in this law is cursed, right?

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Like this is how the law speaks. And to your point, John, if we understand that rightly in terms of what the Lord requires and Jesus in the sermon on the

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Mount makes it very clear that it's not just some external conformity, it's actually at the level of the heart and the mind, then yes, we read that and we hear that and we say, well,

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I hate that because that in, because that is my death sentence and I'm ruined.

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And like, what can I do? And at that point, like you said, at that point, you are ready to hear the gospel because then the message of the gospel is everything that the law is pointing out, that weight that's impossible for you to bear,

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Christ took that. He bore that. He said, you know what? That burden that you can't bear, I'm happy to take that.

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I'll carry it for you and I will pay your penalty because you deserve it. And I will accomplish your righteousness because you need it.

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Trust me. Right. And it's done. You're safe. You're secure. You'll live with God forever. You know, you will be bodily resurrected, imperishable, incorruptible, and you will forever obey

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God perfectly and rejoice in him perfectly. And I have secured that for you. To which we say hallelujah and praise the

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Lord. Right. And that, so that's the law and the gospel distinction that we're talking And it's so clear, John, biblically that that conversion, right?

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Coming from death to life, et cetera, has to happen for a person to ever be able to say that I delight in God's law.

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So for example, consider the pattern even of some of the words in the Psalms. Psalm 130 and verse four reads this way.

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But with you, speaking of God, but with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared.

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Listen to that sequence. With the Lord, there is forgiveness of sins. And the fact that the Lord forgives sins, right?

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Think Exodus 34. I am a God merciful and gracious and slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, right?

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Because that's who God is, that actually leads his people to reverence him and to fear him, to love him, right?

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Or Psalm 119 and verse 32 says that we will run after God's commandments when you have enlarged my heart, right?

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When you have done something internally for me, I will run after your commandments. It's exactly what

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Paul is saying in Romans seven, that because I know I'm safe and because I've been justified, forgiven, and absolved,

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I can now look to God's law and say, I delight in it. It's good. It's wonderful because why?

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It no longer condemns me. It no longer threatens me because Christ has removed its sting and now

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I can look to it as the perfect, holy, righteous, all good guide for my life.

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So in other words, this allows us to then look at the law and use it in the third use kind of way as the perfect guide for the life of the

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Christian. The other side of this, and this is where there's a confusion between law and gospel, so the antinomian just pretty much rejects the law after justification.

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The legalist confuses the law and the gospel and collapses them together.

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So you have one abandoning law and now you have one mixing law, okay? So it's really important to understand this because again, antinomian is one to reject the law after justification.

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There's no use for it and they hate it. The legalist then mixes the law and the gospel.

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So here's a great example of this is that, yes, we are saved by faith alone and they will preach that from the mountaintops, but they will call your salvation or your assurance into question based upon your level of obedience to the law, right?

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So this is where it's highly confusing because they will say, oh no, sola fide, sola fide, faith alone, faith alone.

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But if you don't do this, this, and this, which is law, anytime you say you must do this, this is law, in order for this result, which is your assurance, that's a mixture of the law and gospel.

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So please be very clear on what we're saying. Christians are called to obey. It is actually not a call, it's a promise.

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Those to whom the spirit indwells, there will be obedience, right? To what level is varying?

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It's a varying level. There will also be struggle against sin. I love saying this because it throws people off.

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God expects you to sin. Otherwise, 1 John 1 .9 would not be in the

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Bible. James 5 .16, confess your sins to one another. Exactly. So the legalist, what they're doing, this is how to identify if you're a legalist.

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If you are seeing that there is absolute requirements for you to perform in a justification or you do not have justification, there's two kinds of legalists.

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There's those who use the law to gain salvation, and there's those who use the law to maintain salvation.

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So there's probably no one listening to this podcast, unless maybe you come from a Roman Catholic background, there's no one who's using the law to try and gain justification, you know, your salvation.

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But there are plenty of people who use the law to try and affirm it or maintain it. So, Justin, what are your thoughts on kind of that mixture of or that explanation of legalism?

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I agree with you, and I have something else in my mind that's related to something you were saying, even about antinomianism.

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So I think at the heart of antinomianism too, this is just my thought and observation here, is a lack of understanding and is a misunderstanding even of the gospel and what

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Christ has accomplished for us. And I get this mainly from Romans 5 and 6. So a lot of times people think that the antidote to antinomianism, being against the law, is to preach the law, and I don't think that's right.

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I think that the antidote to antinomianism is actually to preach the gospel and to clarify who we are now in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It's all about identity, right? Because that's how Paul responds.

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He realizes that the gospel that he has laid out in the first several chapters of Romans would lead a person to ask the question, so we can just sin now, right?

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Because not only has Jesus accomplished all these things for us, and that the righteousness of God is revealed apart from the law for all those who have faith in Christ, and God justifies the ungodly by faith.

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Not only is all that true, you just said that the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.

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So should we just sin? Paul answers, well, by no means, and he doesn't say, well, by no means, because here's what the law says.

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He says, by no means, because here's who you are now. You've been united to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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You've been baptized into him. This is what your baptism was about. You've been united to him in his death. In him, you died to the law.

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His death is your death. You've been united to him in his perfect life and in his resurrection, which not only secures your resurrection, but means that even now, you are raised to walk in newness of life, and you are no longer under the dominion of sin, and you've become obedient from the heart.

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In other words, obey because you can. Obey because you want to for the first time in your life. Remember who you are now.

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You're not who you used to be. That's his response, and so I think that antinomian out there who is running as fast as he can away from the law because he hates it has not fully understood the work of Christ in his place and has not fully understood his new identity and who he is and that he's not who he used to be because it's only in understanding all of those things,

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John, like 1 Corinthians 1 .30, that Jesus has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness, like he is our righteousness.

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He's sanctification for us and redemption for us. He's secured everything. He's everything.

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It's in understanding that that we can actually look at the commandments of God and say those are good.

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They're not a burden. I mean, he who began a good work in you will complete it. You're realizing that's a wonderful promise.

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Mike McDonald It is a wonderful promise, and the commandments are good because we can look to them and they no longer come across like a trip to the

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DMV or they no longer come across like I've just been sentenced to the electric chair.

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They come across now as, no, this is good for me. This is actually the way that I want to live now, and this is how

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I'm called to live because of Christ and what he did for me, and now I am going to love my brothers and sisters and aim to orient my life in such a way that I'm good for them.

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And then God, of course, gets the glory for that, but I look at the commands and they're good. So this is how we can understand the third use of the law, and it's not threatening in any way, as Calvin has said before.

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I mean, a long time before us, as I've said before on this podcast, Calvin calls the law our kind advisor in Christ.

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And so I think when the Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 1 that we uphold the law as long as it's used lawfully, I think he's got all of this in mind, that we use the law lawfully in its first use.

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We preach it in all of its holiness to drive sinners to Christ, and then we uphold it in the Lord Jesus because it's no longer a threat to us, and we see it as good and not a burden.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, well, it's interesting, too. So I'm going to walk through kind of what I would say the three intentions of how one understands the law to kind of summarize what

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Justin just said. So the antinomian says no obedience is necessary, and that's out of flat -out ignorance.

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They're like, no obedience, do whatever you want, God's grace has got you covered. Justin Perdue Right, just love

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Jesus and you're good or whatever. So Paul says, may it never be. Very clearly, may that not be your attitude.

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Second attitude, legalist requires obedience out of fear of loss, right?

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So you best obey or you will lose something, whether it be God's affection, your assurance, it could be a number of things.

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But the legalist sees the requirements to obedience out of fear. The way the

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New Testament describes obedience to the believer is out of response to their justification and love, right?

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Here's a great example of this. We read this passage all the time, but I think it's helpful. Second Peter gets done talking about love and mercy and kindness and dignity and holy and affection toward your brother.

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And if you're not doing this, he says this, for if these qualities, I'm sorry, for whoever lacks these qualities of second

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Peter one, nine, whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgot that he was cleansed from his former sins.

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Peter says, your lack of obedience is your forgetfulness of your justification.

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You've been set free. You are cleansed. This is no longer who you are. He's pointing to your affections for Christ, right?

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Second Corinthians three, when we look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we're transformed to his image.

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We look at the beauty of Jesus. That's our motivation to love our brother, to obey God's law.

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By the way, sometimes, Justin, I'm going to say this real quick. This is kind of a little side note. I know when

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I was in the independent fundamental Baptist world, I didn't fully understood what the law was.

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And sometimes when people hear us say law, they're thinking ceremonial law. They're thinking Old Testament law.

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What we mean are the commands, the moral commands given to the New Testament church, like patience and meekness and mercy, loving, long -suffering, right?

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These are the commands that we are referencing to, which are the things that horizontally you do to your brother.

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So, love God, love your neighbor. And when we talk about the law, we're not talking about the ceremonial law or the civil law that govern the nation of Israel.

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Jesus has fulfilled all that, and they've been abrogated in him. What we are referring to is God's moral law that could also be called the law of creation that God wrote into creation when he made the world.

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And this is why Paul will use language like in Romans 5, how death reigned from Adam to Moses, even though the law had not been given, because all the giving of the law to Moses is is the writing down of the moral law on tablets of stone.

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It already existed, right? And so, the moral law transcends any kind of redemptive historical epic in that way.

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And so, we uphold the moral law as even the Decalogue, right? The Ten Commandments as a guide for life.

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And so, that's what we mean. Yeah, the imperatives in the New Testament and also God's moral law that transcends. And those imperatives in the

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New Testament are really just an unpacking and a reflection of that moral law. Yeah, I think there's a lot of confusion out there as to what we even mean when we say law.

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That's good. So, for those of you that might be new to this and in our tagline, we say from a reformed perspective.

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Some of you might be saying, man, I've never heard it explained this way before. This is so new.

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Where are you guys getting this? Well, you know, the Holy Spirit came to Justin and I in our sleep and just at the same time revealed to us the truth of this truth.

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Oh, my gosh. Didn't see that coming. Dreams and visions.

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Dreams and visions. God told me that to separate his law from his gospel. No, actually, this is a very, you know, we believe it's very biblical.

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But the way in which it was brought to us to help us see this clearly is from men that have been defending

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God's word for hundreds of years. And then they end up writing clarification documents for us called confessions.

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So, a lot of what we are describing for you, everything that we're describing for you and being able to understand the difference between an antinomian and a legalist and rightly dividing the law from the gospel is understanding the categories of things like justification, sanctification, glorification.

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That comes to us from our confession. So, Justin and I both hold to the 1689, which is an adjustment from the

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Westminster. We would highly recommend either of those and find a church that uses these because it helps keep the

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Christian firmly resting on the sufficiency of Christ. When we're there, we find that rest, then obedience is not a burden.

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I tell people, if your church or your Christian faith has you exhausted, then you are not in a line with Jesus when he says, come to me and I will give you rest.

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My burden is easy. My yoke is light, right? So, when

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I hear anyone who is preaching a burden upon someone and they aren't giving them the relief of Christ, often that comes from someone who isn't understanding the historic faith, that which has been handed down to us, that which has kind of been affirmed and fought for and I would say recovered during the

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Reformation. This is why we like the word reformed and we're even starting a ministry, a little bomb drop, called

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Simple Reformando. Always reforming. We want to help people continue moving this

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Reformation forward. Justin Perdue All of this language comes from the era of the Reformation. Some of this language would come from Martin Luther and our

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Lutheran friends as well. So, there is agreement between confessionally reformed folks and our

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Lutheran friends about this distinction between law and gospel. I trust that pretty much everything that we have said today, our

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Lutheran friends would agree with as we have tried to maintain the distinction between the law and the gospel. Even this idea that until one knows that he has been forgiven and counted righteous and absolved of guilt, there's no way in the world we could ever delight in the law of God.

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I agree with John. If you're in a church context where commandments and imperatives are made to sound threatening and scary and burdensome, then there is a theological problem there.

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You know that you're on the right track. As far as Christians are concerned, when we're talking to one another in Christ, when imperatives and commands and even

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God's law becomes a joy and not a burden. We know that the threat has been removed and the heaviness has been taken from us, and now we have been set free in the

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Lord Jesus Christ unto righteousness. We get to do all of these good things that we actually want to do in our hearts.

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We have become obedient from the heart. In our inner man, we delight in God's law and we want to live in accord with it.

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That's how we talk as believers. It's a much different tone and a much different posture.

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Sin is still taken seriously, and yet it's not just fear and dread and judgment all the time.

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That's right. So, I would dare to say most people listening to this podcast have been in a legalistic context and struggle with legalism.

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So, one of the things that we want to do, we do a second podcast right now. It's called the Members Podcast, but we're going to be changing all of this very soon.

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Stay tuned for that. At least the Lord stays the same. Amen. But in this next section, what

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I want to do is kind of maybe help someone. How do you process yourself through this resting in Christ out of legalism?

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Or maybe you've been listening to Theocast for a while, and how is it that you can help people?

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Because this transition, we did a podcast I'd recommend called the Slow Death of Pietism. We'll put it in the notes.

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You should listen to that. Processing this information is really tough, and it's everywhere.

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The mixture of the law and the gospel, legalism is everywhere. The unfortunate thing that's happening right now is that people just throw out this word, oh, antinomian.

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So, when we're trying to be biblical using a reformed perspective, people say antinomian.

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I'm like, no, no, that's not antinomianism. Actually, you're promoting legalism. I don't like just throwing words back and forth.

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I say, how about we just sit down and take the time to walk through these terms and walk through the Bible and make sure that we are not allowing our emotions to drive this conversation, but we can look at things from the text and ask ourselves, are we hearing in our words the words of Christ when he says, come to me and you will find rest?

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I will tell you, the legalist and the antinomian, neither of them are finding rest there. Justin Perdue No, they're not.

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In addition to everything that you said as we're making our way over the members area, one other thought, too, is that there is a tendency for people to swing on a pendulum from legalism to antinomianism, and there is a reason for that.

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We're going to talk about that perhaps some in the members area. There is a reason for that, and it's very clear.

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If you would like to listen to us talk about that and some other stuff in the members podcast, and you're not even sure what the members podcast is, you can find information about that on our website, theocast .org.

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We hope that a number of you make your way over to the members area to continue this conversation with us.

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For those of you who may not, for whatever reason, be able to make it over there, we hope that this conversation, even up to now, has been clarifying for you and encouraging and that it has pointed you to Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished in your place and has helped you see that the law of God is good because it no longer threatens or condemns you.

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It's always a pleasure for us to be able to speak with you in this way, and we look forward to having another conversation next week.