The Law of God: Pastoral Exhortations
I will say something, as I begin here, about the theme of this year’s conference. It is the law of God. We have the quote from Psalm 119, “I love your law,” on the cover of our conference brochure, and this really began (this, what led to our having the whole theme of the conference on the law of God) with a suggestion that I made sometime last year, I believe, when we began to talk about what should we do for next year’s conference and I suggested that we at least have a message on the subject of antinomianism.
I said that because I think there’s a sense in which I see an Antinomian behind every bush. I kind of feel like John Gill. Spurgeon, I think, wrote about John Gill, that he saw an Arminian behind every bush, and I don’t think the Arminians were always there were Gill saw them, but I think I do see an Antinomian almost behind every bush.
It’s a subject that I’ve been concerned about over the years and so I brought this up for discussion with my fellow elders. We discussed it a little bit and then we continued the discussion when a couple of the brethren who are here with us from NJ also drove with us, three elders from Trinity, out to a pastor’s fraternal in Grand Rapids Michigan back in—I think it was March (either that or April) of this year.
And then while we were driving I had said to the men, “Well, why don’t we have further discussion about the subject for next year’s conference and we could even get the input of these other brethren.”
So, we began to discuss that and by time we left that subject, probably somewhere in Pennsylvania, we had concluded that we would have the whole conference on the subject of the law of God even though that’s not something we’ve done generally over the years—is have one constant or common theme for the whole conference, and in a sense, I guess we could say, antinomianism almost got lost in the shuffle.
I don’t think there are any messages directly relating to the subject of antinomianism in the conference, but really, teaching on the law of God, whatever biblical angle we come from is the way, really, to combat antinomianism.
So, whether you men completely share my apprehensions over the growing dangers of antinomianism in our present world and in the Christian church or not I hope you are attuned to the great danger that it is to Christ’s church and that you are aware of its prevalence in our day and age.
In this session, this first morning session, we’re departing a little bit from our normal format in which this is a devotional message in preparation from our time of prayer and yet I don’t want to completely depart from that practice. I’m going to focus on the subject of God’s law but I want to be practical and experimental in what I would say and I want to stir us up to prayer in the coming hour when we gather together again here at 11:15 and have that hour of prayer.
Robert Oliver quotes the Baptist, Abraham Booth, in his book, The History of The English Calvinistic Baptists, regarding William Huntingdon who was not a particular Baptist but whose teaching did affect (it affected in a negative way) particular Baptists in the eighteenth century in England. He said this—this is Abraham Booth, “Were I as young as I have been, one of the first things to which I would devote my time should be a confutation of the system of that man, William Huntingdon.”
He said, “I would to the best of my ability confute his teaching by an appeal to the Scriptures and in doing this I should think I was rendering one of the best services in my power to the churches of Christ, but now,” he says, “I am too old to undertake it.”
And as Robert Oliver wrote about this man, William Huntingdon, he said that this man was not a practical Antinomian, (in other words, he did not tell people, “you should live in such a way as if you want to break God’s commandments”) but he definitely was a doctrinal Antinomian. He said that people should not be concerned to keep God’s moral law. He said a lot of the things that we hear people say in our day and age.
And Robert Oliver went on to remark—he said, “Andrew Fuller suggested that antinomianism had advanced in the late eighteenth century,” and now he quotes Fuller, “while our best writers and preachers have been directing their whole force against Socinian, Arian and Arminian heterodoxy,” unquote.
In other words, he’s saying, this is a problem that has existed for some time. It has been growing and now we’re living with the results of it and we haven’t addressed it and met it head on.
Now, I am not going to devote my life and ministry to combating antinomianism, at least not constantly directly, but I hope for all of us this conference will be a helpful shot in the arm in this regard: to stir us up to a proper understanding of the law of God and a love for the law of God and that we will be faithful preachers of the law of God as we heard yesterday in the morning that we want to use the law of God rightly. May God help us to that end.
So I’m simply going to give five exhortations—if I have the time. I’m going to stop at the top of the hour, regardless of where I am, but I do have five exhortations as we begin our time together and the first one does have to do directly with antinomianism and it’s this:
1. Be aware of the subtlety and the danger of antinomianism.
You all know what antinomianism is, I’m preaching to preachers. It’s against the law, literally. It’s the idea that the law of God does not apply to our lives.
First, be aware of the many ways that antinomianism tries to make inroads.
While I was getting dressed this morning, I thought of the illustration of a tree. It tries to make inroads in that it comes to us in many ways. The roots of it are many just like the roots of a tree: there are all different kinds, they’re all spread out. To follow the analogy up, it works at another point, as well. The branches of it are many as well. They’re not all labeled antinomianism, and they don’t all come right out and say anything directly about the law of God, but there are many ways that antinomianism tries to make inroads.
I touched on it a little bit in my sermon yesterday morning.
First of all, it tries to make in roads through doctrine.
It comes in through other doctrines. You don’t look at that, it doesn’t come with a flag that says, “this is antinomianism here” but it’s there in a lot of ways.
I’ve heard people refer in recent days to something, and I know a book was written on this subject, and I’m just going to say I have not read the book. I presume it’s a good book. I haven’t heard a lot of things about it, but I’ve heard people speak and other people write about something that I hadn’t heard of in many years before in my ministry called the elder brother syndrome.
And they’ve said it and it’s made me feel almost that they’re referring to me when they say the elder brother syndrome and so, having a sensitive conscience as I do, I go back to the parable of the prodigal son or, as some people are calling it, the parable of the elder brother.
I’ve heard people say that what they mean is this, the person with the elder brother syndrome denounces people because of the way that they are living perhaps. And what people are doing is they’re saying if you have standards for Christians, or if you expect other Christians to follow your standards, you are an elder brother.
So, I thought, well, you know, I do have standards, and I thought, I do like to tell other people that they should live by my standards as long as I can show them that those standards are the standards of the Word of God.
So as I went back to my Bible, I asked, is that really the elder brother syndrome? I looked at the parable and I saw that the parable says this, that the elder brother’s sin was resenting his brother because he in the past lived in a very ungodly way and yet he received great mercy from God. He resented that. That’s what the elder brother’s sin was, first of all, and then secondly, it was this: he resented his father for showing such great mercy to his younger brother. The elder brother’s problem was not that he expected the prodigal to live up to his profession of repentance after he was forgiven. That would be Jesus, when he said to the adulterous woman, when he pardoned her, “Go and sin no more.” My point is, that’s one of the ways antinomianism tries to make inroads in a doctrinal way.
Or, even the great emphasis we’ve had in our day and age in the last few decades, I would say, the great emphasis on grace. Now, I believe in grace, the doctrines of grace. We talk about them all the time. We constantly preach upon them. It’s in a sense what makes us distinctive as reformed people, the doctrines of grace, and we are thankful to God for the resurgence of the doctrines of grace in our lifetimes for most of us, we can say. It’s a very good thing.
But we also hear preaching about grace in our day and age in such a way that we get the impression that no other generation of Christians really understood grace. For example, because other generations, past generations of Christians had moral standard for believers and it’s as if they didn’t get grace because of that fact.
Or, people will suggest that we don’t preach Christ if people go away from our preaching under conviction for their sins or sometimes even if they feel conviction at any point while we’re preaching, it’s as if we’re not preaching grace.
Well, brethren, we need to remind ourselves, slap ourselves in the face a little bit sometimes, and remind ourselves of people like Martin Luther and the way God saved them. They were under great conviction. I’m not saying we make Luther or Bunyan the model for every conversion. I’ve also seen people question whether people are really converted because they weren’t mourning and grieving under their sins like Luther or Bunyan.
But, we need to remind ourselves about how God often works, how as the Puritans said, He does begin the work of grace with a law work in bringing sinners to see their sinfulness and to be humbled.
It was refreshing—I wasn’t able to be there because I’ve been sick this past week, but we had membership interviews this past week and it was announced here yesterday morning (if you were here you heard it) that we have five people, God willing, that will be added to the membership in the near future, but I did read all their testimonies and I think it was true of every one of these five people that (I think at least with one of them or two of them it began God’s work in their hearts after they had been professing Christians for some years, but it began with one of them hearing or reading something from Ray Comfort who is known for using the law of God to try to convict people and that’s how he begins his evangelism) and every one of these said how “God brought me under conviction of sin, He confronted me with His law, I thought I had been a Christian. I realize I was not living in anyway like a Christian ought to live.”
It was very refreshing and encouraging and these young people are not legalists. They’re Christian people who are hungry for the Word of God and this is the way God works so often.
Or, antinomianism can try to make inroads with our people in different ways. Now I’m not saying this is always the case, but isn’t it often true that it’s really some kind of Antinomian thinking that is behind the desire for different kinds of worship? I am not saying anybody who has any kind of different desire or asks the pastor a question or makes a suggestion is doing something wrong or that he’s an Antinomian, but what I’m saying is this: isn’t the reason so many people in our day and age are so agitated about changing things is because for them, what God says is not really the great thing? It’s an Antinomian mindset in so many ways.
Then brethren, especially, and this is where I’m concerned, antinomianism tries to make inroads with us; I think its doing that many times when people say that they don’t think you’re preaching Christ.
Now, when people say, “You’re not preaching Christ,” I grant, they could be right, and when someone ever says that to you I hope this is your practice: you should always examine yourself. You should listen to the person. You should say, “Could it be, Lord, that what this brother, this sister is telling me, this non-Christian is right? That it’s true?” You should do that, but very often—at least, it’s been my experience and what I’ve heard from other men as well—they’re not right when they say that, when they say, “You’re not preaching Christ.” So often it’s based on some of the things I’ve mentioned. People come with that mentality and they say, “Therefore you are not preaching Christ.”
Or, so often it means something like this, “Well, there’s a preacher I listen to and he’s always talking about grace and he’s always focusing directly on Christ and you’re not.”
In other words, what it comes down to is this: you’re not like him. You’re not like this other preacher I know or that I like. You don’t preach Christ the way this preacher does.
What I say to that is this: I say, “Maybe not, and probably there’s a lot I can learn from a guy like him” (depends who it is) but then, I also say this, and I say this to you brethren, maybe you’re different from that preacher because you’re a more faithful man. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe you’re a more faithful man.
Listen to Robert Oliver speaking about this man, William Huntingdon again. He says, “although Huntingdon must be cleared of any charge of practical antinomianism,” (that is, he didn’t tell people, “Don’t obey God’s commandments) he said, “His failure in one area of his witness did lay him open to criticism. His preaching failed to inculcate Christian duty. Ebenezer Hooper alleged that he preached on doctrinal and experimental themes to the exclusion of practical ones. This allegation,” he says, “is supported by a study of his published sermons.”
My point is, is that sometimes when people say, you should be more like this preacher, what they’re saying is, “I don’t want to hear a message like—” and I’ll just use my own self for an illustration: when I’ve been teaching the adult class recently it’s been on the use of the tongue. When you address a subject like that and you just read a few Proverbs you really step on a lot of people’s toes and probably make a lot of people feel like saying, “you’re not preaching Christ,” but we need to preach the whole counsel of God. I agree we need to preach Christ and the whole counsel of God.
Or, maybe, here’s another thing you should think about when someone says, “you’re not preaching Christ”—if it’s true, if you’re examining yourself and you really think, I am, maybe the reason is this, maybe you’re different from that preacher simply because there’s a legitimate degree of diversity among faithful ministers of the gospel. There’s a legitimate degree of diversity.
You know, I think—let me assume that every one of you men, at least everyone who’s a pastor, is a faithful minister of Christ and you preach the whole counsel of God. I’m certain there are preachers out there that I would rather listen to on a radio or on a CD than you guys because of their gifts and because of the way that they can expound some subjects, but, if you are what I’ve said, faithful ministers of the gospel who preach the whole counsel of God, let me tell you this: I want to sit under your ministries if it’s a matter of where I live and who oversees my soul.
But now, I’m simply saying this, even among faithful ministers there’s a legitimate degree of diversity among preachers.
Listen to McCheyne on this subject for a minute—he wasn’t addressing this subject, he was addressing something else, but it fits what I’m saying, definitely.
What he was doing here, and this is in The Memoir and Remains of McCheyene published by Banner, written by Bonar, he was answering some questions about the revivals that were going on in 1840 and the questions were asked from a committee of his presbytery and here’s one question:
What special circumstances in the preaching or ministrations of the instruments appear to have produced the results in each particular case which may have come under your notice?
In other words, they were trying to figure out—what has led to this awakening, this strange thing that was going on? They looked at it very negatively and so they were asking him to justify what was going on and his part in it.
He said, “I don’t know of anything in the ministrations of those who have occupied my pulpit that may with propriety be called peculiar or that is different from what I conceive ought to characterize the services of all true ministers of Christ. They have preached, so far as I can judge, nothing but the pure gospel of the grace of God. They have done this fully, clearly, solemnly, with discrimination, urgency and affection. None of them read their sermons, they all, I think seek the immediate conversion of the people and they believe that under a living gospel ministry success is more or less the rule and want of success the exception.” (They believe people were gonna be converted.) “They are, I believe, in general, peculiarly given to secret prayer and they have also been accustomed to have much united prayer when together especially before and after engaging in public worship.” and then, listen to this, he said, “Some of them have been peculiarly aided in declaring the terrors of the Lord and others in setting forth the fullness and freeness of Christ as the Savior of sinners and the same persons have at different times remarkably assisted in both these ways. So far as I am aware, no unscriptural doctrines have been taught nor has there been a keeping back of any part of the whole counsel of God.”
(But isn’t it interesting that when he said, “some have been peculiarly aided in setting forth the terrors of the Lord,” he didn’t put in parentheses, “those rascals”?)
He was simply saying, God has put some men together and gifted them in such a way that they can proclaim the terrors of the Lord in a way that other men don’t. They’re thundering the law of God as part of the gospel message, but there’s a legitimate diversity. This is what he’s acknowledging here.
Isn’t that a mature way of looking at it for a twenty-some-year-old McCheyne?
We need to realize, brethren, that apart from Jesus, there is not the ideal preacher out there. It’s not you. It’s not me. There’s diversity.
Listen to Octavius Winslow. He said—this is part of a sermon, he’s addressing sinners. He says, “Have you been brought to a true and deep repentance for sin? Every glorified saint in heaven was once a mourning sinner on earth. I ask not whether Sinai or Calvary, the law or the gospel has awakened it, whether it flows from a terrific sight of hell or a loving view of Jesus. All I ask is, has your heart been broken and your spirit become contrite before God?”
See what he’s saying? He’s saying that we don’t just say someone’s preaching is legitimate only if people come to conviction of their sins when he’s preaching directly on the cross. May it be that more and more people will, but he’s saying that it might be Sinai, it might be Calvary. It might be the law, it might be the gospel.
I’m not saying these things to justify legalism (we should abominate it), but I’m simply saying that this is one of the dangers we need to be aware of. We should be aware of the subtlety of antinomianism and the danger of it.
We should be aware of the many different ways it tries to make inroads.
Secondly, we should be aware of how insidious it is.
Yesterday I quoted Caleb Evans, a Particular Baptist regarding that matter of the Antinomian controversy of the 18th century in England. His comments had to do with the idea that the law is not the believer’s rule of life, that’s what this man Huntingdon taught. What I said yesterday in quoting him I’ll repeat for those of you who weren’t here. He said, “A notion more corrupt,” that is, that the law is not the rule of life for the believer, “a notion more corrupt, more false, more full of evil and dangerous consequences cannot possibly infect the human mind. The peace it brings is a false peace and it will be found to be only the prelude of destruction.”
Now, as I said yesterday, we have to regard that as perhaps as hyperbole. I could find some doctrine that’s at least as pernicious as antinomianism, as deadly, but the point is, he’s on the mark in that this is a very serious doctrinal and practical error.
Listen to John Angel James. You listen to this, you’ll say it’s the same kind of hyperbole, but he’s right in his overall thrust. He wrote (James was an English independent) about his own day and age, “This Antinomian spirit that we are seeing has become the pest of many churches. It is the most mischievous and disgusting of all errors.” Maybe they saw things develop to a place beyond which we have yet, brethren, but, anyway, he says, “if the heresies which abound in the spiritual world were represented by the venomous animals of the natural world we could find some errors that would answer to the vulture, the tiger, and the serpent, but we could find nothing that would be an adequate emblem of antinomianism unless by a creation of our own we united in some monstrous reptile the venom of the wasp with the deformity of the spider and the slime of the snail.”
I remember one time, very early in my ministry, when someone from a place within driving distance of our church, it was some hours, was asking us to come and help supply the pulpit. Our church was small, I was younger, I thought, I really can’t do this, but I called Pastor Waldron, my old pastor Sam, and I said, “Do you really think I should be doing this?” He knew a little bit of the setting, because there was a former member of the church there in Grand Rapids who was part of this group, and he knew some of the doctrinal background of the people who would otherwise be preaching. So, he said, “Yeah, I think you should go if you can.” He said, “We don’t want to give them up to the Antinomian wolves.”
I remember as a young man thinking, really? But upon more mature reflection, he’s right in what he said and I’m glad (the thing folded after not very long), but I’m glad we made an effort because if people who are spiritual leaders are really some kind of Antinomians, if they’re bona fide Antinomians, whether practical or doctrinal, there’s at least a sense in which they could be called wolves because they are not preaching the whole counsel of God and they are leaving people very, very vulnerable.
Some people who might fit those descriptions might be good Christian people, but isn’t it kind of like this, brethren: higher life doctrine? There are people who teach that stuff which is so terrible, so unscriptural, so harmful to people who are very godly people themselves.
I look at it that way sometimes. I say, “I hear this person say this, and I know his life and when it comes to his life, I can’t shine his shoes, but his doctrine is bad and what’s really bad is this: when their teaching goes to seed in their followers. Because they may be good people, but when that happens—Katy, bar the door—you don’t know what is going to come.”
William Huntingdon was a very popular preacher in London for the last thirty years of his life. He died in 1913. Three years later the Baptist Robert Hall wrote this, he said, “Little penetration is requisite” (you don’t have to think long or hard about it) “to perceive that antinomianism is the epidemic malady of the present and that it is an evil of gigantic size and deadly malignity.”
So, that’s my first exhortation: be aware of the subtlety and danger of antinomianism.
I guess now, technically, we have had a message directly on the subject of antinomianism, but, anyway, the second is just very brief but it follows on that first:
2. Be aware of the tendency to relax and to coast in your life and in your ministry.
To coast means to just let up, to just let up.
There’s a sense in which I know that’s in my own heart. I remember when I first—the thought was first raised to me about moving to New Jersey. I’ll tell you, honestly, one of the first thoughts that went through my mind: I’m fifty years old, I have grandchildren here. Our church is small, but God has given me a comfortable life. My problems are relatively small and few because there aren’t that many people in the pews. Nobody bothers me. They don’t care about what I think or what I say. Why do I want to get up and move halfway across the country and make my life difficult?
There’s some of that in everyone of us, I’m sure. We want to just let back on the throttle and go downhill for the rest of our years and I’m simply saying that the tendency to relax and to coast in our Christian life or our ministry can begin right here: with antinomianism within ourselves.
I’m not assuming anybody here is an Antinomian or that you’re on the road to it. I’m just assuming at least some of you are like me and remember that Jesus said “because lawlessness will abound the love of many will grow cold.” We are in a lawless age, in an Antinomian age, in the world around us and in the church around us and the quickest way for us as individuals to start going down that path ourselves it for us to think that we can’t, that it will never happen to us: “I will never deny you, Lord.”
I remember twenty six years ago when I came here, moved here with my family and became a student in the Trinity Ministerial Academy and I was sitting in a classroom downstairs. I think it’s now Pastor Carlson’s office. I can still remember what part of the room I was sitting in and Pastor Martin was addressing us as part of our orientation day. We heard two or three sermons that day I think it was, but I do remember one part of it. I don’t know what his text was, I don’t know what his overall thrust was of the message, but I remember he was saying, using himself as an example, telling us that we should persevere in the good things that we learn while we’re here during the days of our studies and then he said, “Brethren, this is where I’m at,” he says, “I want to finish well.” And he said, “I’ve seen so many men who have begun well but who have not finished well.”
I did some calculations here, preparing for this morning, he was fifty-one years old. I’m fifty-three now. I think I understood what he was saying then, but I really do get it now in a way that I didn’t then. It’s hard to keep pressing on year after year after year.
It’s hard to continue to be faithful, year in, year out and the thing that makes it hard is not my theology so much. It’s my flesh. That’s what makes it hard—but all the flesh needs is just a little room to work with, just a little room and that little room can and often does start with a theological deviation. It starts in the mind and if it starts here in this area of God’s law that is giving the flesh not just a little room, it’s not just cracking the door a little, it’s cracking it a lot. I’m simply saying, don’t give in to your flesh. Don’t give your flesh that kind of room to work with.
The third exhortation is this:
3. Apply God’s law, the ten commandments, to your own hearts.
I remember many years ago (I don’t remember when it was, it was when I was still, I think it was before I ever moved here to NJ so probably I was in my early twenties. I was a young Christian, I was relatively new to the Reformed faith) someone gave me Banner of Truth magazine. I think I was reading a borrowed copy— regardless, if anyone, if this strikes a bell with anybody, let me know because I’d like to still find this article, but anyway, in it—I think it was an article by Ted Donnelly. Don’t know the subject of it, maybe it was on Luther, but as part of the article he mentioned Martin Luther’s own devotional practice.
I mentioned yesterday morning how Luther did believe in the third use of the law, applying the law to the life of the believers and this would back that up. He said that Luther, every day as part of his prayer would pray over everyone of the ten commandments and he would approach it in something like this (like I said, I haven’t been able to read these words in many years) but he started out by thanking God for the commandment because he knew it was good and right and needed by him, he confessed any areas of sin that he knew of in himself against that particular commandment. He asked God for forgiveness for it. He thanked God for forgiving him through the blood of Jesus Christ and then he asked God for grace and strength and understanding so that he would better keep that commandment that day and daily Martin Luther, that great preacher of grace, began his day this way.
And so, I thought, I can learn something from Luther, and not right at that time but some time later, when God began to show me my sins, more and more, whether from Calvary or Sinai, I don’t remember, but I thought, I need to do something like what Luther did, because like I said yesterday morning, I recognize that in my heart there’s this constant fountain bubbling up that says, “I don’t like commandments. I don’t like being fettered. It’s not the kind of person I am” and so I started doing as Luther.
I don’t pray for three hours a day like Luther so I didn’t take ten commandments every day. I took one a day, but I had a regimen. For some years I did it and then from time to time I say to myself, you should go back to that, but I took one commandment a day and I’d go to do it like this: I start out Monday with the preface, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, then commandments one, two three, but I always tried to end up so on Saturday—because I had a problem, in my heart, I knew, with the fourth commandment—always on Saturday I would be on the fourth commandment then. Then the next week I’d start out again with the rest of the commandments, end up with the fourth and then the next week I would take out The Larger Catechism and do the same thing for two weeks, praying over The Larger Catechism which is such a good exposition, a practical exposition of the Ten Commandments and for which I have been so thankful for many, many, many years that I have done that, because I do believe to some degree, God has humbled me and chastened me and tamed me through that and made me a more faithful preacher to other men. I think He has made me a better Christian through that as well.
But you don’t have to do what Luther did, and you don’t have to do what I do. I’m simply saying, brethren, apply God’s law however you do it, to your own hearts like Paul said to Timothy, that the law is good and right if we use it lawfully.
These are lawful ways for us as Christians to use God’s law to show us our sins, to show us what God requires of us, what pleases Him when we’re living before Him and to show us our constant need for Christ so that we will constantly run to Christ and to give us a greater appreciation for Christ, for all that He has done in keeping God’s law perfectly in our place as we never could do.
Calvin said this, “We ought not to be frightened away from the law or to shun its instruction merely because it requires a much stricter moral purity than we shall reach while we bear about with us the prison house of our body, for the law is not now acting toward us as a rigorous enforcement officer who is not satisfied unless the requirements are met, but, in this perfection to which it exhorts us, the law points out the goal toward which throughout life we are to strive.”
Let’s look at it that way. Let’s use it in that way. First for our own selves, realize that if you have a right understanding of it, the law is your friend when it is lawfully used and then use it.
Fourth exhortation is this:
4. Realize your own proneness to legalism and resist it as well.
There are some truths, we look at the Bible and we say that they’re a razor’s edge. It’s hard to stay right on the edge of the truth because it’s difficult to come to an understanding of what the Bible teaches and then the edge of it is so narrow that if you deviate just a little bit you start to fall off the edge. Some truth is like that. It’s like a razor’s edge.
I look at this whole subject, the difference between antinomianism and legalism in that way as well in terms of my own self and my own life and my own sins in that way, that it’s hard because I have a Pharisee within me and I have a Libertine within me and they’re always both working. So, I’ve acknowledged I have Antinomian tendencies; I know I have legalistic tendencies as well in the whole broad spectrum of what legalism is.
Robert Godfrey said in The New Dictionary of Theology in an article, I think on the subject of law, he said, “The much greater danger” and he means, than antinomianism, because he addressed that in the paragraph preceding, “the much greater danger historically facing the reformation balance of law and gospel has been moralism and legalism.”
So he’s saying, that’s a greater danger, I think he means among Reformed believers, or people who’ve called themselves Reformed. I’m just going to say he’s right. He knows church history better than I. Perhaps this is what we’re seeing in the drifting back in the direction of Rome regarding the doctrine of justification, maybe that’s proof of what he’s saying.
Regardless, just two things I would say at this point in terms of realizing your proneness to legalism and resisting that. Many, many things could be said, but first is this, regarding your own self, as you face the law of God, the Antinomian tendency is to say, “I don’t need that, I’m not under that, I’m good enough. I’m good. I don’t need to look in that mirror and find out what I really am.” The legalistic tendency is to look at it and say, “I like that. I do need to obey that and I do and I’m good.”
So, first of all, regarding yourself and the danger of legalism is this: let the law truly humble you. Let it show you who and what you really, really are. Maybe you’re a good enough person as a general rule that you really need to go deep with it, but I’m saying, do that, then, and realize, who and what you really, really are and let it humble you.
Be humble is what I’m saying. See yourself as a great sinner. Yeah, you’re qualified to be a pastor. You’re in a church that has high standards, biblical standards, and you, in some of your cases, nobody else in the whole church is qualified to be a pastor. You’re that good. In that sense, you’re better than your sheep. You are a great sinner, no matter what God has made you, no matter how much grace He has given you, you are a great sinner. See that in God’s law and see that you are utterly dependent on Jesus Christ to do any single good thing. To do one good thing that constitutes the keeping of His commandments at all, you are utterly dependent on Jesus Christ and see that and let yourself be humbled so that you will keep crying out because you sense your own spiritual bankruptcy in and of yourself and your great need for Christ every single day. You need Him every hour.
And then, the second thing is this, in resisting your proneness to legalism, I speak to you as pastors who are shepherds of the souls of others: for your own self, it’s be humble, but for others it’s be patient.
You know the passage, 2nd Timothy chapter 2, I’ll just read verses 24-26.
Let the law of God have this impact on you when you think of your people or people who are just visitors or regular attenders and they ask stupid questions or they do terrible things even:
“A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
I believe the law helps us here as well, brethren—not that you look at the law and you see all the things that the people should be doing that they aren’t doing. You need to have that use of the law, but that’s not what I’m talking about right now.
It’s that as you see how you fall so far short of God’s righteous requirements. You realize that we all, you and your congregation, you and the sheep, we all, what we all are up against, we’re up against these sinful souls, these sinful selves that we are. You and God’s people included are all up against that. The things that the law shows you are in your own heart are also in the hearts of your people and be patient.
And remember that the law tells us to be patient because the law tells us what it is to be Christ-like, doesn’t it?
Then, the fifth and final exhortation is this:
5. Hold fast the Bible’s teaching regarding God’s law.
As I said, it’s our conference theme because we look at it as a needed subject for our day and age for all of us. The sermon I preached yesterday morning was a little bit modified, but it was a sermon I first preached several years ago at a men’s conference here. The title for the whole conference was, Things to Hold Fast in The Twenty-First Century and my perspective is, it’s still something that we need to focus on and hold fast—it’s still the twenty-first century.
My point is this: when I say hold fast the Bible’s teaching about God’s law, for all of you men, I urge you to really wrestle with the things you hear this week about God’s moral law and all the specific commandments of it, including the fourth commandment. I don’t know if it’s going to be touched on directly by anyone, and I’m not saying you need to believe anything because I say it or because the other speakers say it or because it’s said in this conference. What I’m saying is this: you need to believe whatever the Bible says about the law of God.
I’m recognizing the phenomenon here that men do believe and say and do things for other reasons than just because it says it in the Bible and I’m saying, don’t be one of those people. Pray that God will help you not to be one of them.
Don’t cave into temptations. You will face temptations to cave in, in our day and age on the subject of the law of God regarding some or one of the specific commandments.
You will face temptations to give up because hardly anybody else believes the things you’re saying, why do you keep saying these things? When you do face those temptations and especially when you find yourself beginning to entertain the idea of caving in and giving up, face honestly whether it is because you really don’t believe what you know the Scriptures teach, or at least at one time you knew that they taught that, or if it’s some other thing, do you really doubt that the Bible teaches those things about the law, that it’s abiding in its perpetuity?
About the decalogue and the ten commandments–if you’ve started to back away from those things, ask your self, has it been your diligent, painstaking conscientious faithful Bible study that has led you to where you are or is it something else that has led you to start changing from what you once did and what you once believed?
Is it that you’ve lost friends, you’ve lost church members, church members who were friends, church members who were friends and maybe family to boot? Is that the reason? Is it that you are seeing true Calvinists, and I mean that, no quotes on that, true Calvinists, men who call themselves “Reformed” even (I will put quotes on that) or at least others will call them reformed, (You know? young, restless and reformed) who don’t believe what you believe about the law of God, what the Bible teaches, who don’t follow it, who don’t teach it themselves and you see them, and you say, they’re celebrating! Their books are read and their churches grow, all without having to make themselves nuisances and pests. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen to men. I’ve known men who have gone down that road, men with whom I sometimes have had much spiritual unity and I see others that I confess I worry about and so I simply close with this exhortation:
Fellow gospel ministers, whatever you do, do with your eyes open and with your Bibles open and with a good conscience and do it because the Bible, not anything else, compels you to do it. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank You for Your Word and we ask that You would help us as we stand before Your Word to learn Your commandments. We pray that You would write them on our hearts that You would change and fashion us by them into godlier men and faithful ministers of the gospel that You would through them make us more like Your Son, Jesus Christ. Use this conference to that end, that we might better understand Your holy law. That we might better use it and proclaim it and that we will love it more and our people as well. We pray all these things for the glory of Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord who loved us enough to keep all of Your commandments and to lay down His life because of all of our violations of it, and we ask it in His name. Amen.
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