Seems we can't get away from extremes: Antinomianism and Legalism

It seems that we can't seem to get away from the extremes.



People want a Christianity that is about feelings and buttercups. They don't want a cross and they don't want theology. We may safely put the majority of professing Christians in this category. Here, intellectual content is useless if not entirely devilish to their "religious experiences", and the idea of denial of oneself so foreign they forget that it is in the Bible. We often classify this type of thinking as antinomianism.



Another group of people are those who may have an interest in a cross but care little about the theology behind it. They are strong in emphasizing self-denial and "practical" holiness, but theology and sound doctrine is at best secondary and at worst, "dead orthodoxy". The stress upon belief in correct doctrine is usually countered by this group with James 2:19. At any rate, they deny themselves sundry different pleasures and are strong on preaching repentance. They know something needs to change dramatically in the church. However, because of the mitigation of sound doctrine and the reducing saving faith to the "faith of demons", we may classify this group as legalism. "Faith" is of little importance; one must work for salvation.



The Protestant/Evangelical/Reformed view has always been that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone and that good works necessarily follow from the regenerate heart. Action follows belief. Good works proceed from saving faith. Antinomianism and legalism are done away with. Antinomianism sees good works as useless and the law abrogated. However, the same Spirit that regenerates is the same Spirit that sanctifies and one does not come without the other and the Spirit sanctifies by way the law-word of God, not by leaving us to our own devices. Legalism is done away with because we are saved by grace, not works. No matter how good one thinks oneself to be, at best, your works will only compare to that of filthy rags. On your best day, God could at any moment say, "depart from me you workers of iniquity". Legalism is the attempt to stand before God without the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It sees the operations of salvation through faith as insufficient.



Christianity is intellectual and practical. It is not a "heart" religion, at least not in the colloquial sense of the word. It is about knowing and applying. It is about understanding the One true God of Scripture that voluntarily revealed Himself to man and gave man the knowledge of Himself and the way that man is to walk before God. It is about God saving wretched sinners for Himself and giving them His perfect law to live by. It is about the working of all things to the glory of God and the furtherance of Christ's glorious Kingdom on earth, in time and in history.